I became pregnant in the 3rd year of my PhD and received overwhelming support from my supervisor and the School of Physics and Astronomy. My stipend did not cover maternity leave at all but the School provided a stipend for me. I planned to take 4 months of maternity leave, which was immediately accepted by my supervisor and the School. Subsequently I was easily able to extend my leave to the full amount of 6 months as I wasn’t able to return to work as quickly as I wanted due to postnatal depression. However, during the whole time, I received warm support from the whole school and always felt welcome.
I had finished all my research work for my PhD before my child was born so that I “only” had to write up the thesis and to adapt a few figures from my publications. As I returned to write up my thesis, I was able to work flexible hours and locations, which made it much easier to continue breastfeeding my child. It worked perfectly fine (but it was still demanding) and I was able to submit my thesis and to pass my viva well in time. Looking back, I’m really happy that I had finished the research work before leaving so that I was able to do the easier task with writing up while my child was younger than 1 year.