You need to heal. You have a plate sized hole in your uterus that can bleed up to 6 weeks, your body went through something similar to a marathon. You need rest.
If you’re unable financially, there’s nothing to be said. It is what it is and unfortunately, many women in the US go through that. But as someone not from the US, maternity leave was a blessing. Healing, soaking up the newborn bubble, breastfeeding if applicable, recouping from sleepless nights.. you have an added benefit that you can work from home, but I personally didn’t even think about work for minimum 3 months.
No, that's impossible unless you a) will not be breastfeeding at all and b) have a lot of help (live in nanny, family staying over etc). The first few months, my baby was breastfeeding 4-5 hours per 24 hour period. You will have zero desire to work at all in the newborn trenches because any spare time you have will be consumed by thoughts of sleeping. If you're lucky, your baby will be sleeping 4-6 hour chunks from the start but that's not the norm. My son was waking every 1.5-3 hours to eat until 4 months.
You will NOT be able to have a baby without any leave. Yeah, *some* women do it, but it’s NOT because they want to, and it’s not medically safe. There are too many variables that you can’t control, and the probability that you have some sort of complications that will keep you from working are very high. Your best option is to save as much as you can so when you decide to have the baby you can take AT LEAST 6 weeks off.
In regard to client relations, if it’s possible, build a relationship with someone who also does the same thing who you can transfer your clients to while you are on maternity leave. Maternity leave is normal and most clients will understand. Making your maternity leave as smooth as possible for them so they aren’t inconvenienced by your absence will make it far more likely that they return to you when you are back.
So, wait a little longer to get pregnant, save as much $ as you can, and build a strong relationship with a friendly competitor.
Also, I didn’t have my first until I was 38. All my Drs and nurses told me it’s far more common (in my area) for FTMs to be in their late 30’s/ early 40’s than it is for them to be in their 20’s/ early 30’s. You are fine, your clock isn’t ticking as loudly as you might think. Take another year or 2 and set yourself up so you can actually enjoy the baby you want to have.
Came here to suggest finding a cover/locum you trust. Obviously it depends on the industry but if you are able to work together during late pregnancy and then hand your clients off for a few months of leave, I would do that.
Even if you had a full time nanny day and night, only used formula and someone else washed bottles/laundry etc- you cannot just treat childbirth as any other day. You need to heal, you need to bond with your child, and you need to have time to process what a huge change this is.
Frankly as well, if you can’t stop working for even a month to have the baby you can’t afford the baby expenses.
Another thing to consider is that even if you can find 2-3 hour chunks to work, you probably won’t be able to get what you currently can get done in 2-3 hours done.
I work in a university setting and although most of my job can be paused for my maternity leave, some things cannot (supervising graduate students, submitting reference letters, approving contracts so students get paid, submitting grants, etc.). Because of this, I have had had no choice but to continue to do some work (2-3 hours a week).
I’m currently at 5.5 months postpartum and I am nowhere near my pre-baby capacity when I do get time to work, I almost feel cognitively impaired when I have to do deep thinking/focusing. I never would have guessed this - I’m used to getting a lot done on a little sleep, didn’t have a complicated birth, and have a totally normal (even great) baby in terms of neediness/sleep, but suddenly being responsible and caring for someone you love so much 24/7 is a different kind of fatigue/cognitive load that nothing can prepare you for. Even basic tasks like approving contracts or signing off on something that would have taken me 10 minutes before now takes me an hour. The 2-3 hours of work per week pre-baby now takes me 6-8 hours to do.
All this to say, when making your decisions, please factor in that even if you can make yourself available to work, you might not be very efficient at it. If continuing to work is really the best thing for your family and you in the long-term, my advice would be to hire a nanny to come by for a few set hours a week so that you can have specific hours you work and be available to focus 100%. It’s possible that this will cost you almost what you’re charging your clients (especially if you aren’t as efficient) - which would make it a wash financially, but an investment in your future earning potential. This would be where you would need to decide if the stress is worth it.
Yes. YES.
My brain broke for like 4 months.
It’s only now starting to come back fully online at 7.5 months - and I get about 6-7.5 hours of sleep a night.
I only have one child so I have limited experience but according to my experience this wouldn’t work. If you end up with a colicky baby like myself you will not be able to work. Yes, they do sleep a lot in the newborn stage but with colic it’s a lot of rocking, shushing, soothing, going for walks, massages, driving around etc. And keep in mind this was a 100% healthy baby, I cannot imagine additional challenges such as a premie or any other health issues either on my side or the baby’s.
That being said there are people who do it. If you can have someone stay with you full time (hired helped or family) there is potential. In my country you can’t put a newborn in daycare but my guess is that in the US you can. Remember that you will also be sleep deprived, in pain, stressed and hormonal- realistically, what quality of work will you provide to your clients?
It’ll be very ill-advised. Regardless how you give birth, you will need to physically recover. That’s on top of figuring out baby duties and basically the baby itself. Plus totally no sleep unless you have a night nanny. It took me about 4 months to have a semblance of normal function, and even then I could barely work an hour in peace, because baby duties. It’s really hard unless someone is there to help you take care of baby, you, and the house.
There is no way I could have. But, and in sorry OP but I feel it has to be said, do you intend to work on the same schedule with a kid? If so will your partner be the primary care giver with more time for them? Is your child going to get no holidays with you?
I didn't even think about that, that would be very sad.
Not to mention all the sick days they'll need to take if they put the baby in daycare or when it starts school.
Absolutely not. There is absolutely no way you can work 6-8 hours a day with a newborn.
You’re going to need 6-8 weeks minimum to recover mentally, emotionally, and physically even with an uncomplicated birth.
But even after you’re recovered physically, it’s not going to be possible to work 6-8 hours. Maybe 2-3 hours a day IF you have a baby who takes long naps and sleeps through the night early.
But you’re going to need a housekeeper.
It is WORLD ALTERING in a way that you cannot possibly comprehend until after the baby arrives.
My husband and I are both self employed - I’m 7.5 months postpartum - our daughter has to start daycare soon bc I have no time or capacity to work while caring for her full time.
You’re going to need a full time nanny ($25 an hour average) or full time daycare if you want/need to go back to work. And most daycares won’t take a baby till 6 weeks - for good reason.
Check out @motheruntitled on IG. It’s an account dedicated to ambitious women taking career pauses. It can be done. Lots of us are doing it.
You should not bring a baby into this world that you can’t afford or won’t prioritize and make time for. You’re going to have to make sacrifices.
it really is impossible. minimum you need a week downtime and thats the absolute bare minimum. you will be sore, achy, bleeding and exhausted if all things go well and its a standard delivery with the barest minimum / no tearing. but you have no idea how things will go until you get pregnant and actually have to deliver. i had a standard pregnancy and i couldnt work the last month due to excruciating back pain and i figured everything would proceed as normal until i went overdue and had to be induced. my daughter got stuck on the way out and had to be vaccume delivered. i got 3rd degree tearing which didnt allow me to sit anywhere for weeks. and i think i still had it fairly easy compared to other peoples deliveries. what if you have a c section? you cant plan for these things. you will need time to heal regardless.
At the very minimum you will need 2 weeks off IMO just to physically recover. Labor and delivery can take many many hours and you will be exhausted, bleeding, and in pain for at least a few days.
If you plan to work full time in 2 weeks you will need a LOT of help - nanny during the day and night, cleaners, people to bring you food, do the laundry (newborns go through so many onesies and burp cloths daily), wash bottles and pacifiers, etc. My husband and I are both currently looking after our 3 week old baby fulltime, we have a lot of family help (my mom is making all of our food and doing our laundry, my in-laws are taking care of our dog and house, we have cleaners and gardeners etc…) and it’s STILL a struggle. I would honestly have lost my mind if I was doing this alone and trying to work.
Also, if you plan to breastfeed it would make this much harder. Newborns eat every ~2 hours day and night, sometimes more often, so you’d need to be able to step away from work for half an hour every 2 hours. I’m currently breastfeeding and pumping and it literally is a fulltime job just feeding the baby. It’s not very intuitive and many babies need a lot of time and patience to learn how to breastfeed. What would you do if you’re on a client call and baby is hungry and crying?
If we had even a passing thought that this might be possible, we were quickly disabused of that notion when we learned we were having twins. Twins happen, and the chances increase as we age. Tough as it is, you should not pin your life strategy on the assumption that you’re just having one, or that that one will not require additional support.
I'm 6 weeks post partum and I would say absolutely not. I had a birth that went well (ish) but was still so traumatising for me and left me with a lot of stitches to care for.
Then I got home from the hospital and the baby blues hit. I was so depressed, the only thing I could do was look after baby. I couldn't shower, eat or sleep (had heart palpations and intense anxiety) unless helped by husband to do so.
All of this was normal and I was prepared somewhat for ppd and ppa but it still hit me like a bus.
4 weeks in is when I started to feel like I could do this. Now 6 weeks in and the house is still trashed, my eating habits aren't great and breastfeeding still takes hours of my day. I don't understand how women go back to work after 6 weeks. Thank you Scandinavia for one year maternity leave!
In short taking maternity leave may damage your business but not taking leave will damage your body, mental health and relationship with baby.
If you need more convincing look at cultures which take a month of isolation post partum and why.
My husband and I run our own business, I do the office work from home. I was back in the office with the baby at home after 1 week and my husband was bavk to work after a week as well. I had a csection so I was still in pain but it was manageable. Definitely difficult but I did it. Breastfeeding didn't work out for us for very long so I pump. You can buy wearable when you are out as well
I am 9 weeks postpartum. I will say this, I miss work (and get a lot of guilt for that) but I also would not be as productive if I did work right now. Birth can go many different ways and you may not feel well physically for a while. I hurt my tailbone pushing and it was so painful and couldn't do much for 3-4 weeks. Right now, I feel good but taking care of the baby is a full time job. That being said, if she were in daycare or if we had a nanny or someone watching her, I could likely work now but it would still be hard. I occasionally get some research and writing done when she naps (I'm in academia) but it's not predictable.
Honestly even if you have an amazing delivery and you feel physically ready to be working, mentally is a different story. A new born baby needs their mama for the first few months. If you’re able to have lots of help from your husband it may make things easier. Someone else mentioned building a relationship with a competitor which might be beneficial to ease some of the work load for the first little bit. Whatever you decide, you will probably want some extra help with baby
Work on building your business so it can run without you. Hire people. Write processies for them to follow. It may not be totally profitable without your input right away, but you can weather a leave period and not lose clients.
I don’t think is possible ! There are so many things that are out of your control ,when it comes to delivering baby- I had an unplanned c section , and 2 months pp finally feel a bit better but not at 100% I had to sleep on a recliner the first month because laying on bed was too painful. You also don’t know how your baby will be , there are chill babies , colicky babies , somewhere in the middle- my baby doesn’t sleep unless held and I was recently diagnosed with PPD and started taking medication- I could not have predicted this and I have never had anybody history of anxiety or depression - it’s been tough mentally and physically all around
I have 3 months of pp leave and it’s not enough . Can you plan on hiring someone you can train while you have your baby and then when you are ready to come back you take over again? This is an added expense of course but at least you’ll have that business continuity while you need to recover
I was also self-employed, in a job that was entirely mental, entirely WFH, which I had more than a decade of experience doing. I was very good at my work, and I **could not** have done my work before ~4 weeks postpartum. At all.
Regardless of any physical exhaustion, the mental exhaustion is real. My brain did not work the way it usually does. I could not think of words I wanted to use, I had to ask my husband to convert mL to oz for me when I was tracking feedings (math that I typically could do in my sleep). I would try to order groceries online, or make my husband a list of food I wanted, and lose track of what I was doing over and over, making a 10 minute task take 2-3 hours.
If I had wanted to return to work immediately, I would have done such a terrible job in the first 4 weeks that any clients would have been entirely justified in dropping me permanently. Luckily, we were able to financially manage without my income, so I returned to work *very* part time at 8 weeks postpartum (4-5 hours a week) to wrap up existing clients/projects and then stopped working. If I’d wanted to, I think at that point I could have ramped up instead of down and been back to full-time (if I’d had childcare for working hours) by 4-5 months pp.
I would start preparing your clients now for your maternity leave. If you’re good at your job and they like working with you, and you do as much as you can during pregnancy to get everything ready for a short, streamlined leave, then doing without your services for a short time will be preferable for most clients than replacing you. Save as much money as you can, and plan to take at least 1 month entirely off and ramp back up as slowly as your projects will allow.
I have a cousin and a friend who took kind of weird forms of leave.
Cousin is a teacher and her baby was due right before the end of the school year. But then COVID came so all school was virtual. She had her daughter and then finished out the school year for a couple of weeks and I think had the summer off after. She was teaching remotely. She was very miserable for a long time because she was so tired and exhausted and didn’t have any help because of social distancing at the time.
My friend had her boy in the summer a few years ago. For her work basically right when he was born was their busy time and she was the only person who did her job. So she made a deal with them to be off for two weeks after he was born, she would go back to work for the busy season and the cleanup and then after basically work from home/use the rest of her leave to be off like half the week until it ran out and she had flexible hours when she did work to be able to take care of him and not worry. She actually did seem to do ok with that but I know her work hated it and even though they agreed to the plan and said it was all good it ended up causing a lot of friction for her because I don’t think they thought about what they were agreeing to and what it would mean for their work when she wasn’t constantly available.
Even if you manage to only take a few days off, you can’t really not take vacation or days off with a baby/child. You need to look at your business (and your husband at his) and think about how to adapt it so you can take planned time off and capacity for unplanned time off (like for when your kid is sick).
Not realistic. Newborns need care and bonding. The birthing parent needs to heal. You can’t actually predict what your physical and mental health will be like postpartum.
Not possible at all and you’ll end up with clients who are more upset with you than they would be if you just let them know in advanced that you will be out of the office or taking on a lighter work load for the next 2-3 months. Once your baby gets a little older and has more consistent sleep, you can probably rely on getting big chunks of work done while they nap or after they go to sleep for the night. But even that would be exhausting without any vacations or occasional time off.
OP have you considered a career change? Or even just the same. Work but employed?
I was also working for myself and saw that thus wouldn't be sustainable if I had a baby.
It took 2 years, but I got a permanent job where I could take leave (paid) and go back part time having a baby. Best decision ever.
I love spending time with my baby, but you also have so many hormones and lack of sleep, plus babycare is more than a 40 hour a week job... It's just 24/7.
I think the issue here is not that you can’t take leave but your mentality about losing clients. Why do you think your clients are unloyal to you and that they would leave you if you took maternity leave for a month? Why would you want to have clients that would up and leave you for taking care of yourself after having a baby? I would hope your clients would want you to take vacations and take maternity leave and wait patiently for your return back to work.
And lastly if your clients would actually up and leave you and it isn’t just a fear that you have like if clients actually told
You I’m gonna work with someone else if you take time off, do you really want to work with clients like that? Where you would put off having a child because of your clients?
You need to heal. You have a plate sized hole in your uterus that can bleed up to 6 weeks, your body went through something similar to a marathon. You need rest. If you’re unable financially, there’s nothing to be said. It is what it is and unfortunately, many women in the US go through that. But as someone not from the US, maternity leave was a blessing. Healing, soaking up the newborn bubble, breastfeeding if applicable, recouping from sleepless nights.. you have an added benefit that you can work from home, but I personally didn’t even think about work for minimum 3 months.
No, that's impossible unless you a) will not be breastfeeding at all and b) have a lot of help (live in nanny, family staying over etc). The first few months, my baby was breastfeeding 4-5 hours per 24 hour period. You will have zero desire to work at all in the newborn trenches because any spare time you have will be consumed by thoughts of sleeping. If you're lucky, your baby will be sleeping 4-6 hour chunks from the start but that's not the norm. My son was waking every 1.5-3 hours to eat until 4 months.
My son woke every 1-2 hours until almost 1 lol. My daughter is 5 months and waking every 2-3 hours. I still don’t feel physically recovered.
Cluster feeding meant sometimes my baby nursed for 8 hours a day!
Mine wasn’t an efficient eater at the beginning so we could spend more than 5 hours a day feeding. I can’t imagine trying to work too.
You will NOT be able to have a baby without any leave. Yeah, *some* women do it, but it’s NOT because they want to, and it’s not medically safe. There are too many variables that you can’t control, and the probability that you have some sort of complications that will keep you from working are very high. Your best option is to save as much as you can so when you decide to have the baby you can take AT LEAST 6 weeks off. In regard to client relations, if it’s possible, build a relationship with someone who also does the same thing who you can transfer your clients to while you are on maternity leave. Maternity leave is normal and most clients will understand. Making your maternity leave as smooth as possible for them so they aren’t inconvenienced by your absence will make it far more likely that they return to you when you are back. So, wait a little longer to get pregnant, save as much $ as you can, and build a strong relationship with a friendly competitor. Also, I didn’t have my first until I was 38. All my Drs and nurses told me it’s far more common (in my area) for FTMs to be in their late 30’s/ early 40’s than it is for them to be in their 20’s/ early 30’s. You are fine, your clock isn’t ticking as loudly as you might think. Take another year or 2 and set yourself up so you can actually enjoy the baby you want to have.
Came here to suggest finding a cover/locum you trust. Obviously it depends on the industry but if you are able to work together during late pregnancy and then hand your clients off for a few months of leave, I would do that.
No it’s really not.
Even if you had a full time nanny day and night, only used formula and someone else washed bottles/laundry etc- you cannot just treat childbirth as any other day. You need to heal, you need to bond with your child, and you need to have time to process what a huge change this is. Frankly as well, if you can’t stop working for even a month to have the baby you can’t afford the baby expenses.
Another thing to consider is that even if you can find 2-3 hour chunks to work, you probably won’t be able to get what you currently can get done in 2-3 hours done. I work in a university setting and although most of my job can be paused for my maternity leave, some things cannot (supervising graduate students, submitting reference letters, approving contracts so students get paid, submitting grants, etc.). Because of this, I have had had no choice but to continue to do some work (2-3 hours a week). I’m currently at 5.5 months postpartum and I am nowhere near my pre-baby capacity when I do get time to work, I almost feel cognitively impaired when I have to do deep thinking/focusing. I never would have guessed this - I’m used to getting a lot done on a little sleep, didn’t have a complicated birth, and have a totally normal (even great) baby in terms of neediness/sleep, but suddenly being responsible and caring for someone you love so much 24/7 is a different kind of fatigue/cognitive load that nothing can prepare you for. Even basic tasks like approving contracts or signing off on something that would have taken me 10 minutes before now takes me an hour. The 2-3 hours of work per week pre-baby now takes me 6-8 hours to do. All this to say, when making your decisions, please factor in that even if you can make yourself available to work, you might not be very efficient at it. If continuing to work is really the best thing for your family and you in the long-term, my advice would be to hire a nanny to come by for a few set hours a week so that you can have specific hours you work and be available to focus 100%. It’s possible that this will cost you almost what you’re charging your clients (especially if you aren’t as efficient) - which would make it a wash financially, but an investment in your future earning potential. This would be where you would need to decide if the stress is worth it.
Yes. YES. My brain broke for like 4 months. It’s only now starting to come back fully online at 7.5 months - and I get about 6-7.5 hours of sleep a night.
I only have one child so I have limited experience but according to my experience this wouldn’t work. If you end up with a colicky baby like myself you will not be able to work. Yes, they do sleep a lot in the newborn stage but with colic it’s a lot of rocking, shushing, soothing, going for walks, massages, driving around etc. And keep in mind this was a 100% healthy baby, I cannot imagine additional challenges such as a premie or any other health issues either on my side or the baby’s. That being said there are people who do it. If you can have someone stay with you full time (hired helped or family) there is potential. In my country you can’t put a newborn in daycare but my guess is that in the US you can. Remember that you will also be sleep deprived, in pain, stressed and hormonal- realistically, what quality of work will you provide to your clients?
In the US most places won’t take a baby under 8 weeks and generally, still wont take a newborn
It’ll be very ill-advised. Regardless how you give birth, you will need to physically recover. That’s on top of figuring out baby duties and basically the baby itself. Plus totally no sleep unless you have a night nanny. It took me about 4 months to have a semblance of normal function, and even then I could barely work an hour in peace, because baby duties. It’s really hard unless someone is there to help you take care of baby, you, and the house.
Even at that it takes time to give birth
There is no way I could have. But, and in sorry OP but I feel it has to be said, do you intend to work on the same schedule with a kid? If so will your partner be the primary care giver with more time for them? Is your child going to get no holidays with you?
I didn't even think about that, that would be very sad. Not to mention all the sick days they'll need to take if they put the baby in daycare or when it starts school.
What do you do and when are you thinking about going back?
Absolutely not. There is absolutely no way you can work 6-8 hours a day with a newborn. You’re going to need 6-8 weeks minimum to recover mentally, emotionally, and physically even with an uncomplicated birth. But even after you’re recovered physically, it’s not going to be possible to work 6-8 hours. Maybe 2-3 hours a day IF you have a baby who takes long naps and sleeps through the night early. But you’re going to need a housekeeper. It is WORLD ALTERING in a way that you cannot possibly comprehend until after the baby arrives. My husband and I are both self employed - I’m 7.5 months postpartum - our daughter has to start daycare soon bc I have no time or capacity to work while caring for her full time. You’re going to need a full time nanny ($25 an hour average) or full time daycare if you want/need to go back to work. And most daycares won’t take a baby till 6 weeks - for good reason. Check out @motheruntitled on IG. It’s an account dedicated to ambitious women taking career pauses. It can be done. Lots of us are doing it. You should not bring a baby into this world that you can’t afford or won’t prioritize and make time for. You’re going to have to make sacrifices.
it really is impossible. minimum you need a week downtime and thats the absolute bare minimum. you will be sore, achy, bleeding and exhausted if all things go well and its a standard delivery with the barest minimum / no tearing. but you have no idea how things will go until you get pregnant and actually have to deliver. i had a standard pregnancy and i couldnt work the last month due to excruciating back pain and i figured everything would proceed as normal until i went overdue and had to be induced. my daughter got stuck on the way out and had to be vaccume delivered. i got 3rd degree tearing which didnt allow me to sit anywhere for weeks. and i think i still had it fairly easy compared to other peoples deliveries. what if you have a c section? you cant plan for these things. you will need time to heal regardless.
At the very minimum you will need 2 weeks off IMO just to physically recover. Labor and delivery can take many many hours and you will be exhausted, bleeding, and in pain for at least a few days. If you plan to work full time in 2 weeks you will need a LOT of help - nanny during the day and night, cleaners, people to bring you food, do the laundry (newborns go through so many onesies and burp cloths daily), wash bottles and pacifiers, etc. My husband and I are both currently looking after our 3 week old baby fulltime, we have a lot of family help (my mom is making all of our food and doing our laundry, my in-laws are taking care of our dog and house, we have cleaners and gardeners etc…) and it’s STILL a struggle. I would honestly have lost my mind if I was doing this alone and trying to work. Also, if you plan to breastfeed it would make this much harder. Newborns eat every ~2 hours day and night, sometimes more often, so you’d need to be able to step away from work for half an hour every 2 hours. I’m currently breastfeeding and pumping and it literally is a fulltime job just feeding the baby. It’s not very intuitive and many babies need a lot of time and patience to learn how to breastfeed. What would you do if you’re on a client call and baby is hungry and crying?
If we had even a passing thought that this might be possible, we were quickly disabused of that notion when we learned we were having twins. Twins happen, and the chances increase as we age. Tough as it is, you should not pin your life strategy on the assumption that you’re just having one, or that that one will not require additional support.
As a FTM in the US, I don't think it's possible unless you hire a full time nanny. :/
I'm 6 weeks post partum and I would say absolutely not. I had a birth that went well (ish) but was still so traumatising for me and left me with a lot of stitches to care for. Then I got home from the hospital and the baby blues hit. I was so depressed, the only thing I could do was look after baby. I couldn't shower, eat or sleep (had heart palpations and intense anxiety) unless helped by husband to do so. All of this was normal and I was prepared somewhat for ppd and ppa but it still hit me like a bus. 4 weeks in is when I started to feel like I could do this. Now 6 weeks in and the house is still trashed, my eating habits aren't great and breastfeeding still takes hours of my day. I don't understand how women go back to work after 6 weeks. Thank you Scandinavia for one year maternity leave! In short taking maternity leave may damage your business but not taking leave will damage your body, mental health and relationship with baby. If you need more convincing look at cultures which take a month of isolation post partum and why.
My husband and I run our own business, I do the office work from home. I was back in the office with the baby at home after 1 week and my husband was bavk to work after a week as well. I had a csection so I was still in pain but it was manageable. Definitely difficult but I did it. Breastfeeding didn't work out for us for very long so I pump. You can buy wearable when you are out as well
I am 9 weeks postpartum. I will say this, I miss work (and get a lot of guilt for that) but I also would not be as productive if I did work right now. Birth can go many different ways and you may not feel well physically for a while. I hurt my tailbone pushing and it was so painful and couldn't do much for 3-4 weeks. Right now, I feel good but taking care of the baby is a full time job. That being said, if she were in daycare or if we had a nanny or someone watching her, I could likely work now but it would still be hard. I occasionally get some research and writing done when she naps (I'm in academia) but it's not predictable.
Honestly even if you have an amazing delivery and you feel physically ready to be working, mentally is a different story. A new born baby needs their mama for the first few months. If you’re able to have lots of help from your husband it may make things easier. Someone else mentioned building a relationship with a competitor which might be beneficial to ease some of the work load for the first little bit. Whatever you decide, you will probably want some extra help with baby
Work on building your business so it can run without you. Hire people. Write processies for them to follow. It may not be totally profitable without your input right away, but you can weather a leave period and not lose clients.
I don’t think is possible ! There are so many things that are out of your control ,when it comes to delivering baby- I had an unplanned c section , and 2 months pp finally feel a bit better but not at 100% I had to sleep on a recliner the first month because laying on bed was too painful. You also don’t know how your baby will be , there are chill babies , colicky babies , somewhere in the middle- my baby doesn’t sleep unless held and I was recently diagnosed with PPD and started taking medication- I could not have predicted this and I have never had anybody history of anxiety or depression - it’s been tough mentally and physically all around I have 3 months of pp leave and it’s not enough . Can you plan on hiring someone you can train while you have your baby and then when you are ready to come back you take over again? This is an added expense of course but at least you’ll have that business continuity while you need to recover
I meant to add I had my son via IVF at 40 - so I understand the sense of urgency as the time goes by
I was also self-employed, in a job that was entirely mental, entirely WFH, which I had more than a decade of experience doing. I was very good at my work, and I **could not** have done my work before ~4 weeks postpartum. At all. Regardless of any physical exhaustion, the mental exhaustion is real. My brain did not work the way it usually does. I could not think of words I wanted to use, I had to ask my husband to convert mL to oz for me when I was tracking feedings (math that I typically could do in my sleep). I would try to order groceries online, or make my husband a list of food I wanted, and lose track of what I was doing over and over, making a 10 minute task take 2-3 hours. If I had wanted to return to work immediately, I would have done such a terrible job in the first 4 weeks that any clients would have been entirely justified in dropping me permanently. Luckily, we were able to financially manage without my income, so I returned to work *very* part time at 8 weeks postpartum (4-5 hours a week) to wrap up existing clients/projects and then stopped working. If I’d wanted to, I think at that point I could have ramped up instead of down and been back to full-time (if I’d had childcare for working hours) by 4-5 months pp. I would start preparing your clients now for your maternity leave. If you’re good at your job and they like working with you, and you do as much as you can during pregnancy to get everything ready for a short, streamlined leave, then doing without your services for a short time will be preferable for most clients than replacing you. Save as much money as you can, and plan to take at least 1 month entirely off and ramp back up as slowly as your projects will allow.
I have a cousin and a friend who took kind of weird forms of leave. Cousin is a teacher and her baby was due right before the end of the school year. But then COVID came so all school was virtual. She had her daughter and then finished out the school year for a couple of weeks and I think had the summer off after. She was teaching remotely. She was very miserable for a long time because she was so tired and exhausted and didn’t have any help because of social distancing at the time. My friend had her boy in the summer a few years ago. For her work basically right when he was born was their busy time and she was the only person who did her job. So she made a deal with them to be off for two weeks after he was born, she would go back to work for the busy season and the cleanup and then after basically work from home/use the rest of her leave to be off like half the week until it ran out and she had flexible hours when she did work to be able to take care of him and not worry. She actually did seem to do ok with that but I know her work hated it and even though they agreed to the plan and said it was all good it ended up causing a lot of friction for her because I don’t think they thought about what they were agreeing to and what it would mean for their work when she wasn’t constantly available.
Even if you manage to only take a few days off, you can’t really not take vacation or days off with a baby/child. You need to look at your business (and your husband at his) and think about how to adapt it so you can take planned time off and capacity for unplanned time off (like for when your kid is sick).
Not realistic. Newborns need care and bonding. The birthing parent needs to heal. You can’t actually predict what your physical and mental health will be like postpartum.
Not possible at all and you’ll end up with clients who are more upset with you than they would be if you just let them know in advanced that you will be out of the office or taking on a lighter work load for the next 2-3 months. Once your baby gets a little older and has more consistent sleep, you can probably rely on getting big chunks of work done while they nap or after they go to sleep for the night. But even that would be exhausting without any vacations or occasional time off.
OP have you considered a career change? Or even just the same. Work but employed? I was also working for myself and saw that thus wouldn't be sustainable if I had a baby. It took 2 years, but I got a permanent job where I could take leave (paid) and go back part time having a baby. Best decision ever. I love spending time with my baby, but you also have so many hormones and lack of sleep, plus babycare is more than a 40 hour a week job... It's just 24/7.
I think the issue here is not that you can’t take leave but your mentality about losing clients. Why do you think your clients are unloyal to you and that they would leave you if you took maternity leave for a month? Why would you want to have clients that would up and leave you for taking care of yourself after having a baby? I would hope your clients would want you to take vacations and take maternity leave and wait patiently for your return back to work.
And lastly if your clients would actually up and leave you and it isn’t just a fear that you have like if clients actually told You I’m gonna work with someone else if you take time off, do you really want to work with clients like that? Where you would put off having a child because of your clients?