Maternity Leave

My leave is all messed up, which I've alluded to in a previous post. I was hoping it would get straightened out, and I suppose that it now has mostly been, I just don't like the way it was resolved.

The bad thing about starting a new job when you're 8 months pregnant is that you don't have any FMLA protections. The bad thing about working for a relatively small organization is that no one knows the answers to anything. We outsource our HR, so not only do I have to deal with someone on the internal company policies, but I also have to deal with someone from the HR company.

I get a 30 day maternity leave through my employer, 100% paid. It turns out it's 20 work days. That's fine, and actually pretty generous (especially considering I have only worked there for less than a month). The company starts that the day I went off work, which in my case was two days before I actually had the baby. I was disabled because of the drugs I was on, and my doctor will write me a note saying so in order to apply for Pregnancy Disability Leave, but that's a separate process run through the state-- not my employer and not the outside HR company. So that's another person/entity I have to deal with. What my company is telling me is that I need to exhaust my maternity leave first and then apply for that disability leave, which seems weird, but okay.

Unless I want to take time unpaid, I will only end up taking off 20 days of maternity leave. Except it's really less than that because I was out and in the hospital for a number of days, and have spent about a week since trying to get this all nailed down. A week of not working, that is. So at this point, I have about 11 work days off left before I have to go back to being a full-time employee.

Why not take unpaid leave time? Because of the other wrench in the works-- health insurance. When I left my last job, I had health insurance coverage through the end of November, but had to elect Cobra for December. My benefits with the new job were scheduled to kick in January 1, 2010. Except since I've been on maternity leave with no FMLA protection, I'm not considered an active employee and I will still need to work a consecutive 30 days (and then wait until the 1st of the month after those 30 days) before my benefits kick in. So not only do I have an $800 Cobra bill for me and the baby for December, but I will have to pay $850 (benefit costs go up with the new year) each month for the two of us to have coverage until my benefits kick in. At this point, because of the timing, if I finish out my 11 remaining days of maternity leave, that puts me into January, which means I need to work all of January plus however many days of February to get to 30 consecutive days, and then my benefits will kick in March 1. So $800 for December + $850 for January + $850 for March, just for me and Michaela to have coverage. Mike, meanwhile, has no health insurance because he quit his job, didn't elect Cobra, and won't have insurance until mine kicks in and he's on mine.

We have the money in savings to pay for the Cobra, and we also have the money in savings for me to take some unpaid leave, but the combination of the two would drain our savings at a really fast rate. Especially because any unpaid days I take delay my getting health insurance. So doing one prolongs the other, continuing the rapid drawing down of our savings at a time when I'm the only one working and Mike is taking time with the baby and on the renovations of our house (as opposed to actively seeking out work).

So right now, what I think I'm planning to do is to go back to work on Monday. Yup, Monday, December 28. Sixteen days after I gave birth. That way, I'll only have to do Cobra for December and January, my benefits will start February 1, and it will get my family the coverage we need soonest and with the least expense. I'm really unhappy with having to go back to work so soon, but I don't know what else I can do. I'll still have the other 11 days of leave, so after Feb. 1, I can't take those days.

Of course, I'm not sure how good of an employee I'll be when I'm on so little sleep and my mind is totally somewhere else, but I guess you go what you gotta do.