Maternity Leave

I frequent a few message boards for expectant/new moms, and "What's your company's maternity leave policy?" is a common question. I knew my company had a good policy, but I didn't realize how good until I saw the large number of people who don't get paid maternity leave - or realized that my company's policy is usually the best out of all of the ones listed (Canadians have great benefits). I'm ending up with 16 weeks of leave paid at 100% - this is the max. Our policy has 3 components:

1. Up to two weeks before your due date. If the baby comes before the due date, any unused time is lost. Since Claire arrived 2 days after her due date, I got the full two weeks plus two days.
2. Short term disability - 6 weeks, with an additional 2 weeks for a C-section - so 8 weeks for me.
3. Parental leave - up to 6 weeks, taken within a year of birth. I'm still deciding whether to take the full 6 weeks now, or save one or two weeks for later in the year.

In addition, you continue to accrue vacation time while you're on leave. I get 22 vacation days per year, so I accrue almost 2 days per month. If I take the full parental leave, I return to work on July 15th. I already have 14 days accrued, so I could take another three weeks off. It about makes up for all of the long hours and difficult clients! I have a client with work in July, so I'm planning to go back for that, but it's nice to know that I can use some of the leave or vacation time during slow periods - I'd rather spend time with Claire than try to find something to keep me busy at work when things are quiet.

Before getting pregnant, I'd never paid that much attention to maternity leave policies, but it will definitely be high on my list of priorities if I ever go to a new company. It's such a blessing to be able to spend so much time with our precious new baby!