Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Maternity Leave Sucks
I found out today that maternity leave is not what I expected at all and it left me slightly (okay a little more than slightly) heartbroken. Maternity Leave: 1 week of vacation time before you can take the 5 weeks of leave at 60% of your pay. You can take an additional 12 weeks under FMLA but it's unpaid. Maybe I'm naive but I truly thought maternity leave meant 6 weeks of full pay and the 12 weeks was at a reduced rate. So now our goal is to make 2 extra student loan and mortgage payments before SugarPlum is born so that I can spend time with him/her without worrying so much.
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8 comments:
Welcome to American motherhood. I had to use all my vacay time and the remining time was totally unpaid. Being a 1-income household, I had to limit it to 7 weeks total with Farty. I took the 12 weeks with Ceara, totally unpaid but I was still married then. Sucks!!! If things get too tight, having a baby qualifies you for an economic hardship forebearance on student loans. I thought about it but scraped by. If you get a tax refund, you could save that to buy a little extra leave time.
Sadly that's the norm:(
Isn't it awful! I did the research before we started trying and was horrified at how little time new parents are allowed to take off. I have been hoarding my vacation and sick time so that I'll be able to use the days for maternity leave someday.
Sounds like they are making you use your short term disability for the 5 weeks.Can you figure out a way to extend that?
Totally sucks. I'm in the same boat. Using my 2 weeks vacation and then 6 weeks short tern disability at 60% pay :(
So yeah, I'm Canadian, hearing this breaks my heart. I just can't understand why maternity leave seems to be to HEAL only and not to allow you to spend time with your child. How productive can you possibly be going back to work so soon? I don't get it at all.
That does suck! I also thought it was 6 weeks full pay.
Lisa - Answering from your question on my blog (please don't hate me! lol). We get 17 weeks maternity leave (taken by birth mom) and then 35 weeks parental (which can be taken by either partner). We get paid by employment insurance (if we qualify) for 55% of our salary to a max of approx. $450/week. Sometimes work will top up that amount for full coverage of your salary but not mine!
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