Maternity Leave-Self Employed Therapist

Unfortunately you just need to start saving money now and take off what you can afford. It sucks but that's the system. I only took off 5 weeks when I had my son because at my job there was no paid maternity leave and I was the bread winner in the house. I had racked up 2 weeks worth of PTO so that kind of helped but I had to go back to work pretty soon or else who would pay the bills lol. Gonna be the same with this baby too. At least save up a month's worth of rent so you have that and you can ask friends and family for meals to bring when the baby is born so you don't have to worry too much about groceries for at least a week or so.

With my last two pregnancies I started seeing clients weekly virtually after 4 weeks pp. I started with the low acuity ones that won’t be too much of a mental strain and the mid to higher ones on a biweekly basis until I came back on full time.

Depending on your case load you can also start to do part time at another practice as a 1099 to stack up especially if you have a niche that could accept private pay or go on sites like grow therapy and just try to really fill you calendar before baby arrives.

Lastly look for other states that would be easy to get licensed with endorsement and then you can find an established virtual office there to link up with.

It’s going to be a grind but hopefully not impossible to stack a good amount before baby comes 🩵