Oh dear sweet Maternity Leave!

Ah sweet maternity leave and the FMLA, how I love you! You are (scarily, or not) right around the corner!

I love that my job allows me 12 to 16 weeks off to be with our dear sweet baby! Granted it is not paid in full (can use sick/vacation days for part of it), but it is time...and when you have a baby...you can use time....to get to know them, to learn how to be a Momma (and Papa), to grow, to teach, to love (awwwww lol).

Now we are in the midst of deciding 12 or 16 weeks - fortunately yet again, my job is flexible with how long you take off - so long as you keep them posted (but of course!). So I can say I want 12 weeks and then get home and be with LC a few weeks and decide, hey, I'd like to go for the whole 16!

You know (or maybe not), that I'd LOVE more than anything to take the full 16 weeks off. But we need to work through some things before we can make an official call, but we do know we'll go with at LEAST the 12 weeks - and assuming I don't take anymore vacation days or get sick in the next 3 months, I should have about 3 weeks of accrued vacation and sick time so that's something (to be proud of) :)

As it stands now, we're thinking that if LC comes earlier in May that I'll just go back after Labor Day weekend (one last 'hurrah', if you will). And that would be about 14 weeks (I think, I don't have the calendar in front of me).

Or, if he comes later and I ended up taking the whole 16 weeks, that'd be one less month of daycare (kinda gotta figure daycare and maternity leave simultaneously when it comes to finances, we are figuring out :) )

So it's kinda up in the air right now, lots of discussions going on between us, trying to figure this whole thing out - but we're definitely getting somewhere and that feels good!