I also was the main income earner, working full time and travelling over 200km a day to get to work before having Angus, but we were committed to me taking 12 months unpaid maternity leave. It has meant we needed to adjust our lifestyle and our spending commitments (mortgage etc) but I couldn't have gone back to work when he was 8, 10 or 12 weeks old. He's still fully BF and I can't see how I could go back to work now even.

Can you look at your family lifestyle, expenditure etc and make some significant cuts to allow you more time off? I ended up having an unexpected c section and I couldn't have managed to return to work physically due to that within the first 4 months. I don't buy myself any new clothes, we don't go out to dinner any more, I don't go shopping in the nearest big town just for fun (petrol is too expensive), I don't get my hair done so often, my husband doesn't play golf hardly at all. I buy food etc when things are on special or in season, buy cheap meat and make casseroles, economise in all things. But this is what we needed to do for one of us to be at home full time for at least his first year of life.