Preparing Financially for My Baby

FMLA allows women to take 6 weeks up to 12 weeks of maternity leave.  It is up to your employer whether or not they will pay your maternity leave or you can claim maternity under some disability insurances.  Some companies will allow you to cash in your vacation or sick time to cover some, if not all, of your maternity.  At my employer, we only acrue 2.46 hours every two weeks.  It takes a full year to obtain two weeks paid time off.  We do not get sick leave or vacation time, just paid time off.  Well, life happens and sometimes I have to cash in a day or two if I am sick or need time off.  Needless to say, it is almost impossible to save up your time for two weeks of paid time off.

I decided to look into some disability insurances.  Aflac offers a great disability plan, and will cover my maternity for 6 weeks.  Aflac will cover more of my maternity if my doctor feels as if I need more than 6 weeks maternity.  There are a few catches to the insurance however, you have to pay your premium for at least 10 months before they will cover your maternity.  My husband and I made sure we timed our pregnancy perfectly.  Also, they will not pay what you are use to making at your job, but a percentage of what you make.  Something is better than nothing. 

It is almost near impossible to prepare for a child.  There is no way of knowing if there will be any complications, last minute c-section, and so forth.  Also, there is no way of knowing what size your newborn is going to fit in to, whether it be clothes or diapers, and if the will have a skin allergy to some wipes or diapers.  Obviously, you want to stock up on some of these items as much as possible.  In my opinion, go for the sensitive wipes and diapers till you know for sure that your baby has no skin allergies.  This is what we did and it worked out perfectly for us.  Since we prepared for our baby as much as we could, my maternity is pretty much smooth sailing.  There are a few bumps in our financal plan, mainly because we had to have so many doctor visits and we did not have that in our budget.  Like I said earlier, life happens.