In a couple of hours I will start my 16 week maternity leave! Sweet..... As you can tell I am spending my last day at work productive with updating my blog, cleaning my desk, eating cake with my colleagues and turning on my out of office reply....... He, you got to ease into it.
In Holland it is standard to have 16 weeks off. You have to stop working 4 weeks before the due date, but you can also decide to stop 6 weeks before. So when you stop at 4 weeks, you have 12 weeks after the baby is born, and when you stop at 6 weeks you have 10 weeks left.
I decided early on in the pregnancy that I would try to work as long as I could, because I like to have as much time as possible with Jr after the delivery. Even if I were to deliver 2 weeks late I still get 12 weeks after (so then my leave would be even 18 weeks).
I think I would have been ok to work longer. Physically I feel fine, it was more mentally hard the last 2 weeks. Like living up to a vacation, those last couple of weeks before are always difficult and you just don't feel like dealing with difficult clients, bosses etc anymore.
But none the less it is still very nice to be able to prepare and completely focus on the pregnancy from now on. I made a list of things I would like to do in the next couple of weeks, like washing the baby clothes, packing my hospital bag etc.....
Our first born (Clover) will also be very happy that I have extra time to spent with her!!
