Jump to content
IGNORED

Jinjer 41: Felicity Nicole 8 lb 3 oz


Coconut Flan

Recommended Posts

I just started my 2nd trimester with my first child.  I'm 31 now, and will be 32 when baby is due.  Part of waiting so long has to do with my own personal hangups of feeling a lot of pressure to do everything in what I was convinced was the "correct" order- college, job, married, house, baby.  And I did.  But now I regret how much time we've lost that we could have been enjoying with children.  I work as a teacher and had a very difficult time getting a job right in the middle of the recession.  Even now I'm unsure of the decision we've made to have kids now before I'm tenured.  

As a woman in a field dominated by women it astounds me that schools far and wide have very little offered to teachers for maternity/parental leave.  If I want to be paid during my allotted six weeks, I need to use all of my sick time to do so.  I have a short-term disability plan that I purchased for this purpose but it doesn't pay the full amount of my salary.  

Luckily, New York is one of the states that offers paid family leave.  Unfortunately, it doesn't apply to public workers, so I can't take advantage of it.  My husband will be able to take advantage of it, and his company also offers parental leave.  We're in an okay spot financially, but we will definitely both need to return to work to be able to support our family.  We'd like more kids eventually, but we haven't figured out how we would be able to juggle the cost of multiple children in daycare.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 620
  • Created
  • Last Reply
7 minutes ago, emscm said:

I just started my 2nd trimester with my first child.  I'm 31 now, and will be 32 when baby is due.  Part of waiting so long has to do with my own personal hangups of feeling a lot of pressure to do everything in what I was convinced was the "correct" order- college, job, married, house, baby.  And I did.  But now I regret how much time we've lost that we could have been enjoying with children.  I work as a teacher and had a very difficult time getting a job right in the middle of the recession.  Even now I'm unsure of the decision we've made to have kids now before I'm tenured.  

As a woman in a field dominated by women it astounds me that schools far and wide have very little offered to teachers for maternity/parental leave.  If I want to be paid during my allotted six weeks, I need to use all of my sick time to do so.  I have a short-term disability plan that I purchased for this purpose but it doesn't pay the full amount of my salary.  

Luckily, New York is one of the states that offers paid family leave.  Unfortunately, it doesn't apply to public workers, so I can't take advantage of it.  My husband will be able to take advantage of it, and his company also offers parental leave.  We're in an okay spot financially, but we will definitely both need to return to work to be able to support our family.  We'd like more kids eventually, but we haven't figured out how we would be able to juggle the cost of multiple children in daycare.  

Just curious, does your school offer paid paternity leave? My last school offered three days paid to new fathers. I did a long term sub for a new mom for seven weeks to end this school year. She got nothing but whatever sick leave she had left while her husband, who worked in another nearby public school, got five days paid paternity leave. And she told me that her district offers five days paid leave to new fathers, too. 

That whole trend just makes me want to scratch the eyes out of the ridiculous boards who approve it. If they are giving paid time to the fathers, they need to give equal paid time to the mothers. And "but she can just use her sick leave if she has it" (which is the answer we were given at my last school) doesn't cut it. So can dad if that's the policy we're going with. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting thing about mat leave in the US vs Canada... I was talking to someone about this while I was about to take mat leave from my US company to spend in Canada with my Canadian baby. 
From the employer perspective - you give your employee 6-8 weeks off (just follow the logic - I know it differs). And in that 6-8 weeks of work - stuff still needs to get done. So the work either gets shuffled off on other people in the department (who were likely already working their own jobs at capacity) - or you hire a temp. If you hire a temp or bring someone in from another group or whatever - you've got a few weeks before they really learn the ropes. So... that's not really efficient. Because you need to do it ALL OVER again the next time someone goes on leave. 

OR The Canadian perspective - typically mat leaves that I've seen have been a year long. So you will hire someone - or move an intern up or what have you - for that role. They'll be trained, they'll get comfortable and when the leave is done - you have another person who is totally trained in your department/company etc. You can hire them on full time - already KNOWING they're capable - and if you decide to part ways - they still have something on their resume that doesn't look like they're just in perpetually short gigs. "worked here 6 weeks, there 5 weeks, there 8" 

So really - it's better from the business perspective. Especially like in my case - where I went off on my 6 week leave thinking I'd likely be back - and never came back. Now they had to find someone for my place. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, emscm said:

I just started my 2nd trimester with my first child.  I'm 31 now, and will be 32 when baby is due.  Part of waiting so long has to do with my own personal hangups of feeling a lot of pressure to do everything in what I was convinced was the "correct" order- college, job, married, house, baby.  And I did.  But now I regret how much time we've lost that we could have been enjoying with children.  I work as a teacher and had a very difficult time getting a job right in the middle of the recession.  Even now I'm unsure of the decision we've made to have kids now before I'm tenured.  

As a woman in a field dominated by women it astounds me that schools far and wide have very little offered to teachers for maternity/parental leave.  If I want to be paid during my allotted six weeks, I need to use all of my sick time to do so.  I have a short-term disability plan that I purchased for this purpose but it doesn't pay the full amount of my salary.  

Luckily, New York is one of the states that offers paid family leave.  Unfortunately, it doesn't apply to public workers, so I can't take advantage of it.  My husband will be able to take advantage of it, and his company also offers parental leave.  We're in an okay spot financially, but we will definitely both need to return to work to be able to support our family.  We'd like more kids eventually, but we haven't figured out how we would be able to juggle the cost of multiple children in daycare.  

Uggg..... my daughter is a teacher in California and ran into the exact same thing with her maternity leave. She had far less paid time off than  she would of had working anywhere else. 

@louisa05 I don’t know about other areas - but in California, if it is for a non-Personally medical / health condition ( like pregnancy and childbirth ) - any family leave would be offered to based on relationship, not on the sex of the parent. So a mother or father ( or second mother, or second father ) would receive the same benefits. Unless the company wanted to violate anti-discrimination laws. Where it gets tricky is that gestating and delivering a baby is ALSO a short-term medical disability, so there will be additional time added for that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, louisa05 said:

Just curious, does your school offer paid paternity leave? My last school offered three days paid to new fathers. I did a long term sub for a new mom for seven weeks to end this school year. She got nothing but whatever sick leave she had left while her husband, who worked in another nearby public school, got five days paid paternity leave. And she told me that her district offers five days paid leave to new fathers, too. 

That whole trend just makes me want to scratch the eyes out of the ridiculous boards who approve it. If they are giving paid time to the fathers, they need to give equal paid time to the mothers. And "but she can just use her sick leave if she has it" (which is the answer we were given at my last school) doesn't cut it. So can dad if that's the policy we're going with. 

My contract specifies "maternity, child-rearing, and adoption" leave.  There is a provision for male teachers to take child-rearing leave.  Our contract does not specify pay for any of these leave types (basically meaning we have to take our sick time or take leave without pay).  I only know this off the top of my head because I have been combing my contract in preparation to talk with my HR and union reps come September. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I feel very, VERY lucky, for US standards. For parental leave* , my employer gives 12 weeks at 100% pay, of which 6 weeks short-term disability and 6 weeks paid leave. After that, one can use 100% paid personal time off - of which we have 20 to 30 business days, depending on level in the firm, and we can go negative up to a max of 10 extra business days - to tag on. After that, there are flexible work arrangements if one so wishes. 

I realize this is absolutely NOT the norm in the USA, and it is very sad. This country is great in many ways, but for some reason, in the areas of access to healthcare and maternity leave, it is severely lacking. I mean, there are the white elephants like my employer, but they are few and far between, with the vast majority of cases being very different. Including for government employees!!! I have several friends in government jobs who had to go back very shortly after becoming parents, as they just could not afford being out of work without pay. I most certainly COULD NOT afford to be out of work without pay for weeks on end, even with a working spouse, even with savings, if only just for the high costs of healthcare when not backed by a employer-sponsored plan (another area which is lacking in the USA IMO). 

Going back to my employer, recently I was talking to someone in the firm leadership who has 4 children (now in their teens to adults), and she was commenting that these very generous personal time and maternity leave policies are not out of the blue. In the past, the firm used to be much less generous and more in line with the typical US company/government/etc. but what happened is they were losing hundreds of experienced employees in key positions (say from experienced staff to senior management) because of that. Someone high up ran the numbers, and figured out that it was much less costly in the long run to pay more personal time and more generous maternity leave benefits to employees rather than have to hire, train, and replace huge chunks of the experienced workforce. 

Look, best case scenario would be if there were legal requirements to paid maternity leave, but as second best, I wish more employers ran this math and realized that at the end, by skimping on their employees well-being, they end up losing a lot. 

*moms or dads, natural birth or adoption, the only requirement being that the leave taker is the primary caregiver during the leave. If not the primary caregiver, I think it is less. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Shouldabeenacowboy , couldn’t agree more about the importance of having family friendly workplace policies to keep good staff. Once upon a time I was an employer in a small non-profit. The pay is pretty crappy, and the work is draining and -often- just awful. But people stay forever. If you are having a baby , take the time off you need. If that is intermittent, fine. If you want to bring your baby to the office, fine. If your childcare falls through bring your older kid. If working from home when possible works - do it. If YOU are sick - or stressed -or going through a hard time -  take time off. If your dad, aunt, best friend, pet needs care - do it! As long as your work gets done, no one wants or needs to micromanage your time. There were a few employees this was a bad system for - but  the risk of an occasional person taking advantage is worth the benefits.

Obviously this doesn’t work for all sorts o jobs, and there is a big chunk of work that needed to be done at certain times, without children, but overall I think employers actually caring that their employees are human beings, with lives, leads to a much easier, more productive workplace. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The other problem here in the US is the cost of daycare. It's astronomical ($700-900 a month under age 2 at many places) and getting increasingly difficult to qualify for government assistance vouchers or find providers who will accept them. Then there's waiting lists 6 months to a year out for most infant rooms. If they don't have family/friends to help out, many parents have to stay home because they can't afford to work. It's a nasty Catch 22.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And I think by respecting people DO have lives outside of work and being compassionate when things happen (kid get sick, child care fell through - have to bring him to work that afternoon) - you are much more likely to get employees who WANT to do more for the company. Who will go the extra mile. 

 

5 minutes ago, Shadoewolf said:

The other problem here in the US is the cost of daycare. It's astronomical ($700-900 a month under age 2 at many places) and getting increasingly difficult to qualify for government assistance vouchers or find providers who will accept them. Then there's waiting lists 6 months to a year out for most infant rooms. If they don't have family/friends to help out, many parents have to stay home because they can't afford to work. It's a nasty Catch 22.

WHOA. That's insane!! All of that - insane!! 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Mama Mia said:

@Shouldabeenacowboy , couldn’t agree more about the importance of having family friendly workplace policies to keep good staff. Once upon a time I was an employer in a small non-profit. The pay is pretty crappy, and the work is draining and -often- just awful. But people stay forever. If you are having a baby , take the time off you need. If that is intermittent, fine. If you want to bring your baby to the office, fine. If your childcare falls through bring your older kid. If working from home when possible works - do it. If YOU are sick - or stressed -or going through a hard time -  take time off. If your dad, aunt, best friend, pet needs care - do it! As long as your work gets done, no one wants or needs to micromanage your time. There were a few employees this was a bad system for - but  the risk of an occasional person taking advantage is worth the benefits.

Obviously this doesn’t work for all sorts o jobs, and there is a big chunk of work that needed to be done at certain times, without children, but overall I think employers actually caring that their employees are human beings, with lives, leads to a much easier, more productive workplace. 

 

The craziest thing about my situation is that our workplace is usually like this. As long as you're getting your work done, things are flexible and you can work from home, take days off, take the afternoon off if you need it, whatever. But, when it comes to having kids there seems to be some sort of disconnect and the people (3 men) in charge seem to lose all notions of flexibility and become rigid in the you get 1-4 weeks off paid and whatever short term disability gives you, and other than that, any other time is unpaid with no benefits. 

I do hope my employer eventually realizes that they'll lose talented people (and not attract any more female attorneys) if this policy stays in place. I certainly wouldn't have accepted their offer when I was in law school if I'd known what the policy was going to be. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

58 minutes ago, Shadoewolf said:

The other problem here in the US is the cost of daycare. It's astronomical ($700-900 a month under age 2 at many places) and getting increasingly difficult to qualify for government assistance vouchers or find providers who will accept them. Then there's waiting lists 6 months to a year out for most infant rooms. If they don't have family/friends to help out, many parents have to stay home because they can't afford to work. It's a nasty Catch 22.

You are absolutely correct, it is INSANE!!! The figures you quote...make that 2000+ dollars for full time care for infants under 2 in most daycare facilities in the Washington DC area. And with several months of wait-list. A lot of people do nanny share and in-home daycare to keep these costs down AT LEAST SOME, but even in those cases, waitlists and lack of available spots are still insane. Also, some church-based daycares are cheaper. I was joking (but not really) with my mom that instead of paying for childcare costs I could pay for her to fly at least twice a month back and forth from Europe to take care of the little lion and still be ahead of the budget. Sigh. 

53 minutes ago, Meggo said:

WHOA. That's insane!! All of that - insane!! 

Yup.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm going to be paying $1100 a month and that's with a slight discount. Most places around here have loooong waiting lists for the infant room. Half the time they encourage you to get on it (because everyone will be on multiple waitlists) and the other half of the time, they told me they won't be accepting any new infants until two years from now! The average price for full-time is around $1400, with my favorite place being $1700...and of course they all try really hard not to tell you anything about pricing until you do a tour! 

I love my workplace, but my 'maternity leave' is sick leave, vacation time, then go without pay if longer is needed up to FMLA max. Older people in my family are SHOCKED to learn that not only do I not really have a true maternity leave, but in fact, that is standard for the majority of people in the US! And I am actually on the LUCKY side of things in this conversation!

I also paid for my own short term disability policy a few years back knowing that my employer doesn't offer a true maternity benefit. I bought a policy that would pay out for 3 months, specifically asking the representative who came to our work if and how it covers childbirth. I was reassured that it qualifies and would be able to get a payout. Now that I'm pregnant, I'm disappointed that the policy treats childbirth and any related pregnancy issues as a special exception to the 3-month benefit period I paid for. Despite saying in the policy that it is payable the same as any other sickness, the fine print says they will only pay 5 weeks (vaginal) or 7 weeks (c-section) and pretty much excludes any reason you'd have to be off work related to pregnancy complications. In fact, I'm not exactly sure what they consider 'pregnancy related complication' since the list excludes all the complications I could think of.

Anyway it could be worse, I shouldn't complain. But I really loved the post that explained the Canadian way of thinking! It makes so much more sense than our US approach. You know, the one where all women are supposed to have a litter of children, never use birth control, never ever need an abortion, also be self-sufficient and be able to easily afford everything needed for those babies...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I live in belgium, we have summer childcare that is very good and costs a whopping 3 dollars a day ( granted we pay 53 percent of our wages to the state ) average people make between 2000/3000 dollars a month . Rent is anything between 700 to 1200 dollars. A lot is being cared for by the governement ( as u probably know) here comes my main question , is it not wiser to stop working all together until the kids are big enough to at least be able to stay home alone for some time and being in fulltime school? If i see the average american wage my jaw droppes to the floor, collectively you should be able to do so much more with all that money .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, bertnee said:

I love my workplace, but my 'maternity leave' is sick leave, vacation time, then go without pay if longer is needed up to FMLA max. Older people in my family are SHOCKED to learn that not only do I not really have a true maternity leave, but in fact, that is standard for the majority of people in the US! And I am actually on the LUCKY side of things in this conversation!

I was just reading an article about people "donating" their vacation days to people about to go on maternity leave (or "maternity leave") which pointed out that the US is the only developed country that doesn't promise mandatory maternity leave and I made the mistake of venturing into the comments section...the number of people on there with "me first!" attitudes ("but why should the BREEDERS get time off while I cover their slack, can those of us who choose not to have children just take several months off because we feel like it?" "you want SIX MONTHS OFF? pop it out and be back in two weeks, you don't need any more to heal") made me want to punch myself in the face.  This is (one of the many reasons) why the US can't have nice things.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Federal government employees do not get paid parental leave. You can use unpaid FEMLA leave when you have a new child (through birth or adoption). Mothers can also take (their regular) sick leave to recover from birth. Supposedly both Barack Obama and Ivanka Trump disapprove of this, but neither of them did a damn thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Shadoewolf said:

The other problem here in the US is the cost of daycare. It's astronomical ($700-900 a month under age 2 at many places) and getting increasingly difficult to qualify for government assistance vouchers or find providers who will accept them. Then there's waiting lists 6 months to a year out for most infant rooms. If they don't have family/friends to help out, many parents have to stay home because they can't afford to work. It's a nasty Catch 22.

I was just reading the other day how many laws are being passed to make it so that you can't even watch one unrelated child without having a licence so no having your BFF watching your child well you work. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So - my European company has 6 months at 100% pay, and then 3 months at partial pay (which can be taken by mom or dad) and 3 months unpaid, for a total of 12 months. Dads get at minimum two weeks at partial pay. You can add on your holiday allowance, for an extra 5 weeks each. Then you can “buy” another week. Meaning if you really want to according to my calculations (this is not from HR so don’t quote me on this), as a mom you can a maximum of 7.5 months of full pay, plus three months of partial pay, plus 3 months of unpaid leave. As a dad you get 6 weeks of full pay and 3.5 months of partial pay as a maximum. 

And that’s why despite all that I love about it, I am leaving the US again for the family formation phase of my life.

You all are the real superheroes in the international parenting game, and it is so unfair that many of you will be stuck between a really hard rock and a really rocky hard place. It’s not fair ❤️ Signed, a woman who wants to be both an excellent parent and an ambitious professional and thinks both should be possible, even in the US. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

First post! And I didn't see it on this thread yet . . . Jinger had her baby! (Unless I'm hallucinating about whatever is in this article.)

https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-moms/news/jinger-duggar-gives-birth-welcomes-first-child-with-jeremy-vuolo/

Quote

“God is so kind. Jinger gave birth to Felicity Nicole Vuolo this morning at 4:37 a.m.,” Vuolo tells Us. “Felicity weighs 8 lbs and 3 oz, and is 19.5 inches long. Both mom and baby are healthy, doing great, and resting well. We are very thankful for her safe arrival and look forward to life as parents!”

Edit: Oops I didn't refresh . . . sorry for posting it again! :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Felicity is an interesting choice.  Also I know it's hard to tell from that angle but she's making a Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabe face. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That’s a pretty name, but I can’t  help but think of Kerri Russell. Too bad she won’t go to college  in nyc or cut her hair curls short.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Georgiana locked this topic

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.



×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.