I am similar to you. I am a graphic designer and work for a company that only has 3 people in the office. I am the only woman of child bearing age in the company and they don't have a maternity leave policy other than the fact they have to give me 52 weeks by law without pay. I have had initial talks with GM already and he didn't offer any form of part payment maternity leave. This was a bit of a shock to me. Based on this I am not sure what I can do now. So far we have come to the following ideas.
- Baby comes January 13 (aprox) so I will have earned just enough annual leave to cover me for up till the birth.
- I will then take perhaps 6 weeks off where I will do what ever hours I can and he will pay me the hours I have worked. Not sure how long this will last for.
- Then I would like to go back to work 2 days in the office and 3 days at home. So this would be classed as full time.

But I am not sure if I am that happy with that now cause because what if I don't feel like doing any work at all for the 6-8 weeks after. What if I just want to enjoy my baby? I would like to do that without having to think about work stuff.
I said I would find a back up plan. A temp just in case for this amount of time. But I was worried that we couldn't afford that much time off financially. But I have saved some money and will continue to cause I think I will want to do that. If I don't I feel I might regret it later.
If we do this and when the 6-8 weeks is over I may only want to come back to work part time perhaps 3 days a week. So the other 2 days I am completely enjoying my baby and free to go to mothers groups and parks etc. I am not sure what that will do for us financially as my pay pays for all the bills and food. We have a healthy mortgage and the way things are going its only going to get harder financially. I feel ripped off because I am scared that I will be forced to go back to work and not get to spend the time I want to with my baby because of the financial situation this country is in at the moment.
I am scared and I don't want to be. I wish I could just take the time off that I wanted without having to worry about falling into the red!