Hi everyone,

I hope some of you can maybe help me. I am thinking about getting pregnant. My PhD scholarship has quite a good maternity leave policy. Unfortunately it will end on the 1st of December (I know it is not the best timing. I am quite late). I wondered if maternity leave only kicks in when a baby is born or if starts earlier (like a month before the due date). It seems to be such a tricky decision when to try to have a baby as most postdoc positions are short term. I have only recently started to look into it. I can see that getting pregnant any time past April would be a really bad idea so I would like to know till when it is safe to try and when I should stop (applying for jobs being six months pregnant would probably be very difficult). And advice will be very welcome. Thanks!

I'm afraid there is no "safe" time to have a baby as regards your career. Trying to time these things won't necessarily help you either. You risk getting stressed out and your body will have a number of ways of frustrating what you want. You simply cannot say "I'll have a baby in this period of the year but not in this other period". It doesn't work like that.

You can't equally prioritise both career and pregnancy. One will have to take priority over the other for a while at least. I think you need to make that decision before you do anything else.

Maternity pay kicks in when you go on leave for it. My wife left about a month beforehand but this was quite a few years ago so it might have changed. I think it will be your decision and you should be able to work right up until the wee beggar pops out :-)

Hi Charlotta_25

I understand the desire to want to plan your pregnancy, currently considering when its best to have my 4th!

I do think that there is value in trying not to get to worried however, as pm133 rightly says these things are not necessarily as predictable as we would like to be and being too stressed will not help. I think that the best thing to do is to try for baby and see what happens. Not an entirely helpful answer I know but ultimately if you want children there are sacrifices to be made and everything else will fall into place.

x