How soon is too soon?

[Novella]

I think its different for each family

With DD1 I went back to work 1 weekend a fortnight and it wasn't soon enough, I needed the stimulation and think I might have had PND if I had stayed home longer. I eventually increased to 3 days a week

With DD I think it was around 8 months and went back 5 days a fortnight, working back up to 3 days a week

This time I am in a very lucky position that between paid maternity through work (18 weeks) Long Sevice (9 weeks) Annual leave (5 weeks) and PPL I will have 50 weeks paid leave so am planning to take a full year which will give the first couple of weeks of settling DD1 into year 1 and DD2 into kindy before I go back to 3 days a week. I can take up to 2 years off unpaid ML and then have 12months to adjust my hours before having to revert back to my pre maternity working contract or negotiate a new contract.

Im a nurse so Im currently working 2 afternnons during the week and every second weekend, my DD's go to family day care one afternoon, my mums the other and DH is home on weekends. Once the kids are all at school weekend work might be more difficualt but currently the extra pay from loadings makes it well worth it

I also have a very breastfeeding friendly work place. We can use a special staff room off the maternity ward to express and use the hospitals pumps, we also get an extra paid 30minute break per 8 hour shiftt to express or breastfeed until the child is 12 months old. I dont think I could have continued to breastfeed without this support

[beansbeans!]

Its a personal decision for each new parent. Some people just arent the type who can cope with being at home, some cant do it for the money reasons and so on. The projects article will be useless in its reporting like always, it will go round in circles and end with 'its up to every parent in the end, blah blah blah.'

I stopped working when I was pregnant with DD1 at 35 weeks. And doing the census stuff this year was the first bit of work I have done since 2007. For us, we never made a decision as to when I will return to work. Although I started to think about going back to casual when I found out about DD2, and again this year was the same, found out about sprout. My immunity status means I cant work whilst Im pregnant due to added risks. On top of that Dh gets tues and weds off every week, he works huge hours and we rarely get any family time together. We had initially thought about me working on his days off so that he could care for the girls, but then we would miss out on any family time we could get. After doing the census stuff this year, I know for sure I am not ready to go back to work and miss out on family time. That time right now is more important to our relationship, to our family, than any dollar amount at the moment.

[~Hestia~]

I wouldn't hazard a guess as to what was too soon for anyone else, but for me 12 months was too soon. I was still breastfeeding through the night and having no family around to help meant I just wasn't ready. So I ended up resigning instead of going back to work and have yet to work since.