Hellobee

Much like when I was pregnant with M in 2013, I’m planning to take the full year of leave offered to me by the Canadian government. The process mystified me last time, and gave me a lot of anxiety, but I feel a bit better equipped to navigate the system the second time around. Still, there’s planning to do — at work, financially, and also, until recently, deciding when I’m actually going to leave!

The quick summary of the maternity leave system in Ontario is that mothers get 15 weeks of maternity leave, and both parents get 35 combined, to dole out as they wish. Mac Daddy will not be taking any of the parental leave, which gives me 50 weeks — a two-week unpaid waiting period brings it up to 52 weeks, or a full year. The two-week period is because it all goes through the same system as our employment insurance, i.e., the funds you can access when you are laid off from a job. That means you have to serve out the same waiting period you would if you were unemployed, once your leave starts. Also, if you have any outstanding funds, like if your vacation gets paid out in a lump sum when you start your leave, you have to run those out based on your calculated benefits, before regular benefits roll in.

When I went on leave with M I asked my employer to pay out my vacation, which was reported to the government through my record of employment, and then I forgot to inform them the baby was born, so they withheld benefits from me for about a month. And, my kiddo was late to arrive so I spent a big chunk of time sitting around waiting for her to show up. I just saw a Timehop post from three years ago — apparently I did a lot of cooking and cleaning while I was waiting!

This time around I’m intending to run out my vacation time by going on a sitting at home, waiting for the baby to arrive ‘staycation.’ That way, my first day of leave will be later on, and I won’t have to go back as early. With M, I left two weeks in advance, then she was two weeks late, and I had to go back to work when she was 11 months old.

Now that I know exactly when this baby is going to be born via c-section I was able to schedule my leave accordingly. I’m taking a week off, which I think my vacation time will cover, and starting my leave officially when it runs out, right around baby’s birthday.

Financially, I’m a bit worried, but I know we can handle it because we did last time. I make more money now than I did before so my benefits will be a bit higher, to start, and Mac Daddy also makes more than he did when we had M. Of course, that’s more than completely negated by the fact that we’re keeping her in preschool, likely until summer 2017, and our fees are going way up at the exact same time I’m losing half my income. I now have freelance work I do on the side, and need to sort out how much time I should take away from that, especially knowing that we’ll need that extra income. My regular employer doesn’t offer any kind of top-up.

I’ve got about a month of solid work time left, and so far being pregnant hasn’t overly impacted my abilities to do my regular duties, but I know I need to do some transitioning, and soon. Some of it is work I exclusively do, that I’ve handed off to a coworker after I did training with him. Some of it is not really my responsibility — namely, finding someone to actually do my job for the year I’m off — but I work in a very small office and would feel much better leaving knowing that someone is sitting in my desk!

All of it is really not hugely important in the grand scheme of things — we will work out the finances as things happen; my coworkers will exist just fine without me. I’m very grateful to get a full year off, at half-pay, knowing that my job is protected while I’m gone. At the same time, I have to remind myself that this is my legal right, that I’ve done it before and it was fine, and that my family comes before my work obligations no matter how much I want to ensure things are set up as best as they can be before I leave.

How did you plan for a parental leave, if you took one? Is there anything that worried you that turned out to be nothing, or something you didn’t think of that turned out to be an issue?