Not stopping working, completely...

Is there anyone who has no officially stopped working to have bub? I have my own business, with doing the majority of my work for one client and then do some smaller private jobs independantly.

All my work is on my laptop - design/drafting/documentation, I was doing site supervision but have pretty much stopped that, just the occassional site visit - and yes I have to wear one of those flurescent vests and steel caps - great look when preggers!!!

From about 27 weeks I started doing Fridays from home, rather than going into the office, I will drop that back to three days in the next few weeks, and as I get closer just spend less time going into the office and working from home, breaking my days up more and spreading my work over more time.

I don't think I will completely stop, just do what i need to do to keep the work rolling along...

Is there anyone who has been in a similar position before, do you have any tips/hints suggestions, I have found even when I take holidays - if I haven't left the state or country I get bored v quickly and need stimulation from my work?

Any suggestions would be useful

GL with it Victoria. I think the hardest time will be during the first few weeks after birth. You will be tired, emotional and overwhelmed and I think that trying to fit work in as well is a big ask. When baby is asleep, you will really need to sleep too. It is almost impossible in those early days to do much housework or anything.

After that initial period, it will be easier for a while most likely. Babies tend to sleep a lot during the day, and when awake can lie on the floor for periods while you do some work. But then once they get mobile it becomes harder again.

It is also possible that once you have your beautiful little bundle, you will just want to spend all your time with him/her and really not have the motivation to work. I am not saying this will happen to you, but I am just letting you know that you will feel differently once the baby arrives. We all do!! So if you are fore-warned, you can prepare for that - maybe reduce the amount of work you plan to do, or find a plan b for if you really can't/don't want to do it.

Best of luck hun, I hope everything works out just the way you want.

I didn't stop completely with bub #3, I had my own business at home that needed to tick over, not stop totally. I set up everything beforehand so I could do the absolute minimum - which was by phone and pc. I did both in bed!

I understand what you mean by the boredom thing, but MR has brought up some good points. Take 6 weeks off TOTALLY, at least - then take it from there. Babies are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get!

Even if you do get one thats fabbo all around, you WILL need to recover physically. No matter how they are born, it takes a toll and the shock of being woken every 3-4 hours takes getting used to as well.

The other thing to consider is - you need time for your MCHN appts and to go to playgroups etc. As much as I love BB, you do need to get out there with other mums and bubs IRL. Factor all these things in - and as much as I bet you loooove planning things out, sometimes you just have to take a 'wait and see' approach.

GL xoxo

Thanks for your comments girls :)

I think it will be and very interesting and challenging time, I think that I will just do what I can, not place any huge expections on myself and see how things pan out.

I will be taking Bean into work with me, when things have settled, to see how things go, and it will be a bit easier before Bean becomes to mobile, then I will have to reassess the situation!

I really hope that I do feel like that MR :)

We have hired another person who we are going to train up over the next few months, her specialty is hand drawing. Although a lot of the work we do is CAD/digital, we needed someone else with good hand drafting skills, as I am the only one, and some of our clients still request the "traditional" form.

At the end September/Early October our other FT LA is going overseas for a few weeks, so I think that time will be when I will need to be trying to do more work, but I think we will also be speaking with our clients to let them know that during that period our output will be reduced.

LuLu2 I am working on a lot of designs at the moment to get them out of the way and trying to get on top of things, also setting up more drawings standard, construction details etc, which will make it a lot easier while I am away. I will just be running Messenger and Email, and will get to the questions when it suits best.

But I will just have to wait and see what arrives!!

Any more comments/advice would be useful!!

I actually found that getting out of bed after the 4am feed was pretty handy. I got MASSES of work done in the still of the morning (2 hrs max), then nothing needed to be done for the rest of the day, and I could go back to bed and stay there all day long!

I have always been a morning person though....

Yeah that may be what I do, as I start work at 7am normally, means we finish up early afternoon, so I am usually up by 6am or earlier! Even when I worked for the Gov I would go in very early as I always got a lot mroe work done before everyone else turned up at 8:30 also after everyone left at 5!!

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!