Hi all,

I am currently pregnant with baby due (1st baby) in May. I am currently deciding on what to do with regards returning to teaching after the baby's born and also how best to present my ideas to students and parents.

As it stands at the moment I plan to start my Maternity Leave at the beginning of April and start teaching again in September. My reasons for choosing these dates is that the beginning of April ties in with the school term therefore any students staying with me would only have the summer term without lessons. The majority of my students take the holidays off from lessons so I can effectively knock the easter and summer hols out of the equation. Then starting back in September in line with the school term again.

Currently I have 19 students that I teach weekly. The majority of these are children that have after school lessons. Of these students 8 come to my home for lessons and I visit the other 11 in their own homes which works out quite nicely.

When the baby arrives realistically I am not going to be able to teach at home, because even if my husband was home to deal with baby the house is so small that any baby noise would disrupt lessons. As such I am proposing (or can see it going these ways) 3 options to students:

1. Finish lessons and them go to another teacher permanently either because they're not happy with length of break or because their own home set up isn't suitable for me to visit them

2. Current home visits continue in September as normal for those happy with the break. In the meantime I would prepare folders for each student with things to keep them occupied.

3. Students that currently come to me and that are happy with the break change to having home visits providing they have a suitable instrument at home and they don't live to far away.

From what I understand I am also allowed to do a certain amount of Keep In Touch days whilst claiming maternity allowance, so for any students waiting for my return I could perhaps organise a lesson day once a month or something to check that everybody's still on track.

Do these options sound reasonable? Does anybody have any other suggestions?

I am fully prepared for the fact that I will lose some students (some quite willingly!) and I think I wouldn't actually be able to fit all current students in anyway due to Husbands working hours. I'd also be interested in hearing when people think is a good time to start telling students that I'm pregnant and about the new arrangements? I'm a little worried that if I tell people too early they might move elsewhere immediately!

Sarah

Hi Sarah

Firstly congratulations!

You sound like you've thought things through very carefully. I like the idea that you make your leave in line with school terms and the contact lessons are a good idea - if you take out the time that they would be on holiday anyway why don't you do a contact lesson during the last week of each half term?

In terms of when to tell people - it will soon become apparent that you're pregnant so I think you'd be better telling people beforehand rather than being on the backfoot when someone asks you about it.

You're right to be realistic - you will lose some people but the plans you have in place are probably going to help you keep some, if not most, of them. I would suggest that you talk to the students but also have letters for them to take home to their parents detailing what you would like to happen and inviting them to either come and see you or ring you for a chat about it.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

Catherine

Yes congratulations! Do you mostly teach at home or visit other people's homes, I'm not clear about that one?

And I do so love giving my opinion to all and sundry anyway!

Thanks Catherine and Jane!

It's split about 60:40 between home visits and lessons at my home. The students I'm most keen to continue with are mostly home visits as they tend to be much more reliable and grateful for the fact I go to them.

I think I'm allowed 10 Keep In Touch days so I would need to get as many students as possible to agree to the same days so as not to use them all up too quickly.

Do you think I can get away with not telling people til after Xmas? I will be 20 weeks by New Year but I'm quite a large girl anyway so it's not going to be obvious as early. I'm certainly not showing in anyway yet.

Sarah

Congratulations.

Yes it's well to be realistic over what might happen. When we were in this situation we found another teacher for our son as we felt that even with the offer of some fill in lessons it was too long a gap to go without. He settled with the replacement and we decided to stick with her.
Our other son's teacher arranged for one of her students to teacher for her when she was off for a long time as she taught students to teach. We stuck with her as the arrangement worked well.
Do you know someone who could perhaps do the same for you? you may loose some pupils but you could loose them anyway if they decide that the gap is too long to be without lessons.

Thanks Stringmum! I had considered trying to find someone to cover but it would be a case of having to find someone. I don't know any of the teachers in the area personally so I don't know who's good or not. Also, I am by far the cheapest teacher in the area and I would have to ask them to move to somebody more expensive.
Although, this in itself my be a reason for students staying with me particularly considering I don't know of anybody else in the area that offers home visits.

Sarah

Congratulations!!

You sound much more organised than I was!! I had some private at school and some at home. I also was convinced my baby would be this sleepy little dreambabe that would lie peacefully in it's chair while I taught and rocked it with my foot...of course she didn't!!
I was lucky my mum took over my school ones for a few weeks then did the Grandma bit and looked after her while I did a few hours at school. I actually finished teaching the day before I went into labour and went back a fortnight later but I don't actually recommend this!
The home ones were chaotic, I did drop a few, and re-arranged a few around feeds, but I found many mothers were quite happy to play with my baby while I taught theirs. Talk to them, some of mine were really helpful.

Congratulations! I am not a teacher so I will just answer your last question. I think you could probably wait until you are 20 weeks with a first baby. With my first I didn't have a bump until about 24 weeks. This time round it was very obvious at 16 weeks - but I am expecting twins.

Hi, congratulations!

You sound really sensible and realistic. I did similar things with both of my girls (now 4 and 1) - took a term off for each, with just occasional lessons (think it was 2 or 3 per student) during that time, and also set work. I had a couple of good 17/18 year olds who helped out with some of the littlest ones for a while too, although only the ones whose parents wanted this. About 8 pupils ended up leaving, but my schools kept me on, and I retained about two thirds of my private pupils. I'm now back at full capacity. Yes, be prepared that some will go elsewhere - but some of the ones that don't return might have been thinking of stopping and will find this as good an excuse as any to give up.

The only thing I did differently was to stop home visits and just teach at home. My girls went to nursery for a few hours week as soon as they were old enough, which covered some of my teaching. Hubby arranged a mid-week day off to look after them and works some weekends instead, and I've moved some of my teaching to later in the evening, when the girls are in bed. Driving around would have added more hours to my workload, and I found I had less time to spare. I'm currently teaching for 22 hours a week and thinking about having another baby one day! I do make sure that when I'm teaching, there is someone in the house to look after the children. If there isn't, I can't teach at that time.

Hope some of this helps - all the best!

If you tell people sooner, rather than later, you may still lose some, but they also might feel that you have kept them informed, do you think? Difficult one to balance, but you still have a couple of weeks to make up your mind.

David has offered a good solution with the ad hoc lessons, to keep those most keen with some lessons to keep them going. Could you use these alongside your keep in touch days? I presume you go through an agency or a music school.

Can you swap childcare with another mother? Either you may know someone already, or will make contact through ante natal classes and the maternity ward, I made some lasting friendships like that. Even if the childcare is a temporary arrangement, it can be free and give you a precious couple of months while you consider something more permaent, or could indeed become perm after trialling as a temp arrangement.

One of my friends has recently, this year had a baby, and has kept a few pupils going as suited her, so I'll see what she has to say, but that will take a week or so.

Best of luck old bean!

[size=2]Don't think that having a baby necessarily means you can't teach at home. I'm talking as a adult pupil here. When my teacher had her first two children she had them in the room, well at least the second one. Daddy kept the first one occupied at times. Sometimes she even sat with baby number 2 on her lap and breast fed during my lesson. I had both piano and flute lessons with her and at about 8/10 months I held my flute over to the baby and her mouth went straight to the embouchure hole which I thought was amazing. She must have been taking so much in and turned out the most musical of the four. Shortly after that I started looking after the girls, feeding, bathing them etc. while my teacher taught on the days I was there. On the other days she had a neighbours teenager to sit in the playroom with them but for me it opened up a wonderful new world. I have never had and would now be unable to have children of my own. As our relationship grew I would take the girls out for the day, bring them to my house, to McDonalds etc and it's something I will never forget. Unfortunately I haven't seen them for the last two years but I hope to put that right soon. The girls are now away at university doing their own thing. So for me, my teacher getting pregnant turned into some of the most wonderful times for me and I would never change it for the world. O.K. I know I'm an adult and made that choice myself and I can see it being difficult if you are teaching someone else's child but you never know it might just work!

Thanks for all the replies!

Miffy - you sound like Superwoman going back after 2 weeks!

Jane/David - any adhoc days I did would have to be part of the 10 Keep In Touch days otherwise I would lose my Maternity Allowance

Ellie - I've had a look into nurserys in the area, but most only seem to be open until 6pm so would only cover half my teaching hours and to be honest I don't think that it is financially a viable option. My husband has a fairly long commute to work. At the moment he is out of the house from 7.30am- 7pm however a couple of the guys he works with who've had children have been allowed to start work at 7 (on the basis they've been woken up early by crying baby anyway!) and finish at 3.30pm which means he could be home by 5 allowing me to start teaching at 5.30. I think we will be trying to do this on a couple of days per week.

Jane - I don't know any other mothers at the moment but I'm not against childcare swapping in the future. One of the difficulties for us is that we don't have any family or close friends where we live. A couple of people we know but not enough to entrust our child with. Our closest family are husbands parents who live and hour and a half away so we don't have any babysitting backup!

Gofeen - Thats great how the situation worked for you! I don't think I could personally deal with a baby in house and teaching at the same time. I wouldn't feel able to really concentrate on the student - I find it hard enough with my dog in the house sometimes! I am going to be offering this to one of my adult students though who is more of a friend now and comes for lessons in the day. They'll be a more casual affair for which I would charge less.

I think having read all your opinions I'm happy with what I'm proposing for students and am going to write a detailed letter for students/parents with these options explained. I think I will hand the letters out on last lessons before xmas when I'll be about 17/18 weeks in. This gives them plenty of time to decide what they'd like to do and hopefully they won't feel like I've been keeping them in the dark.

In the long run, if I end up losing all of my students we will still be able to manage financially, but it would be reassuring to have an extra couple of hundred coming in a month!

Sarah

Be careful of swapping childcare with someone else - you may need to be registered as a childminder because you are both recieving 'payment in kind' for the childcare. There were two police officers who fell foul of this fairly recently. It's a stupid rule, but there it is!

I started teaching when my daughter was 18 months and then my son came along another 18 months after that. I only taught 1 afternoon a week and then had an overflow on to Saturday morning when a couple more pupils made enquiries. But I found a friend through antenatal classes who started up child-minding so my son and daughter went there which was great. I still paid her properly, but because I earned more per hour, I still had some cash in my pocket.

Later on, as it was getting difficult for my daughter to go there after school, my father died, and so my mother took over the child-minding at home. You could hear a bit of noise, but not too much.

So it could be that you will find a way forward that will work out very positively especially when you come into contact with other mums, or mums-to-be.

Just a word of warning here - although not wishing to cause you any alarm. You have no way of knowing how you're going to feel after your baby is born, both physically and emotionally. I expected to be able to start teaching again quite soon after having my first baby (admittedly a long time ago!) but when it came to it, I was not at all ready to cope. I did struggle through, as we needed the money, and was fortunate enough to have pupils' mums who were willing to look after the baby while I taught their children. Like you, I had no close family nearby. When baby no 2 came along, I stopped teaching for a year and took 3 years off after the 3rd child. You may well find that you can cope beautifully, and I hope you do, but not everyone can. Good luck!

To add to what Jenny has said (and also not wanting to cause alarm) you also don't know how the end of your pregnancy is going to be. When pregnant with my first daughter I flew to Australia and back when I was seven months pregnant and was fit and active right up to her birth (four days late). With my second I stopped work more than three months before she was due.

DELETED

I would suggest not trying to do too much.
If you think that you will manage financially for a few months or a year or two, then I would personally not continue with teaching with a baby.
Of course I didn't do this myself (!) with Baby no.3, but now, with hindsight, I wish I had.

I remember, and the minister insisted that Ofsted reconsidered their position. Two women swapping childcare is not the same as payment in kind, it is more of a straight swap. And the policewomen, in the end, did not have to register as childminders.

As far as teaching after the birth has happened, well, it is true that you won't know until then exactly how you will be feeling. But also, you might have bags more energy and cope fantastically well, even allowing for the occasional bad day! Most women seem to cope if they decide to do so. I'm well aware, that isn't so easy for some, but let's assume that all will be well, and with any luck, all will indeed turn out to be well!

Congratulations!

I'm going to sound like superwoman here (I'm not!), but I took just three weeks off when I had my first child. I just couldn't afford to lose anyone, and I couldn't survive on the measly ?50 a week they would have given me in maternity leave. So I taught right up until the day before my daughter was born and resumed when she was 3 weeks old. I'm not suggesting for a minute it would be right for everyone, but it worked for me. It certainly got me back into reality quickly!

I teach entirely from home, always have, and never had any trouble continuing when either of my girls were born. I did have to rearrange a bit and scatter people throughout the week - I couldn't have any long blocks because I was feeding them. It sounds hard, but I knew they had been fed and would be OK for an hour or two. I used to sit them on my lap or have them in the room with me, and no one seemed to mind at all. If they cried, I put them upstairs in the cot. Amazingly, by the time they were about 6 weeks old, neither of them would ever cry during a lesson. Even at that age they learnt that being quiet meant they stayed with me, and crying meant they didn't. I think they used to like listening to the music, too. They are now 13 and 10 and have been fantastic when I teach ever since babyhood (and I have a great relationship with both of them, so I don't think it has done any lasting damage! ). So you might not find the working from home as impossible as you think.

When my second was born, she was due at the end of August, which was lucky as I was much more tired during the pregnancy. I stopped a little early for summer, early July ish. I told everyone I would start after the October half term, so I had nearly 4 months off with only half a term of lessons missed. When I started back, I staggered the start, with beginners first for a week or so, and worked my way up the grades, taking them back gradually. I told parents I would be doing it this way on the grounds that begninners are least able to keep themselves going whereas a Grade 8 could quite feasibly be set some work to learn and spend a good few months on it unaided.

One or two parents had started to guess by the time I was about 18 weeks, even though I was very small and had a tiny bump. So I sent out clear information then as I felt it stopped panic and speculation behind my back.

I had one or two difficult pupils that I used the birth of my youngest as an excuse not to take them back, but apart from that, I never lost a single pupil in either pregnancy or the months afterwards.

I'm not suggesting you should do things this way at all, just I thought I would offer my experiences as food for thought.

I am in a simliar situation. I'm due in June with my second child. I'm fully self employed so won't be able to afford to take the full maternity leave. I'm going to tell my pupils after xmas but I'm only planning to take about 2-4 weeks off so I'm hoping no one will go elsewhere. I'm lucky because my mum will be able to babysit whilst I'm teaching and I'll be able to have the baby everyday until 2 so I won't feel as if I'm missing out too much.

Good luck with it all, I think if the pupil's are happy with you the majority of them will wait.

Hello Sarah,

Just want to say thank you for putting the question and your solutions. I've been looking for some answers to your exact question - for some confirmation. I'm in a very similar situation. I teach piano privately at home and have home visits too. I'm due at the end of June with my first child. It's early days yet to tell students. With one-to-one teaching, I find there's a long lasting relationship with each student, which is difficult to say goodbye.

I think the most important thing is to talk to the parents and the students, be honest with the situation and what can be done. I find they often listen and understand.

Could you change all your pupils to come to your home and is there a childminder you could find who could look after the baby in another room whilst you are teaching? My baby was born 4 weeks before all my pupils had their exams in November so I couldn't take much time off. Luckily I had family to help out with babysitting her whilst I was teaching, and I would space my pupils out so that I could breastfeed her every 2 or 3 hours. Babies do a lot of sleeping in the first 3 months so you could perhaps keep teaching? Although I was kind of teaching on auto-pilot as I was fairly exhausted!