I'm not on drugs or am I?
My embroiderer is drying onions in her house so everything I take to her comes back smelling like, well, onions. So I've been laundering everything which is an extra step in the process for me and makes me want to buy an embroidery machine asap (which I won't but I like to pretend I will take out a loan and get one). That isn't even the strangest thing that's going on, I walked into the bathroom today at work and there was a lizard in there with a message "I'm here to save you" now what strange person puts that in the bathroom, hanging out over the toilet paper dispenser and furthermore, what other strange person takes a photo of it and posts it on their blog? That would be me. But I didn't put it there!Oh man sooooo I was supposed to take a break from fertility drugs which I did but lo and behold my body ovulated on its own so I had to call the Dr and she put me back on drugs in case I got pregnant. I'm pretty sure I'm not, like 95% sure, but I can't stop taking them until we're 100% sure. Not quite the break I was looking for, I woke up last night with hot flashes and the sleep I was getting is starting to slip away again.
The good news in all this is I made it to open enrollment for insurance at my work and now I get to sign up for short term disability insurance which I didn't have before. For those who might be unaware, the United States of America is one of a small hand full of countries in the world that provides ZERO benefits to families for maternity leave (unless you count FMLA which gives you time off but it's unpaid). I am lucky in that I can get short term disability insurance from my job that will cover 60% of my salary for 13 weeks but the coverage doesn't kick in until I've exhausted all of my vacation and sick leave and then I have to wait an additional week (with no pay) before the coverage kicks in. (sarcasm on) It makes a lot of sense to force a working mom to exhaust all of her leave after she gives birth to a baby. Because babies don't need special care or have to go to appointments if their moms work. (sarcasm off)
Presently, I am the sole provider of income for my family so if do get pregnant it will be our loss financially if I take time off. This is another reason to delay starting a family, Bill is looking for a job in a competitive field and we have no idea when his career will resume. If I were to have a difficult pregnancy we would be in trouble before the baby even got here. It upsets me that I have a stable job with good benefits and I feel like I'm left out in the cold when it comes to this subject.
Here are some stats on parental leave world wide:
- From the top of the list: Algeria has 14 weeks at 100% paid maternity leave with 3 days paid paternity leave
- At the bottom of the list: Zimbabwe has 90 days maternity leave at 60%/75% pay
- To be clear: the USA has 0 paid days paternity and 0 paid days maternity
- The majority of American women are working moms (personal note: all of my local friends who are new moms work and most of them work full time)
- Compare our country to this, "In the UK, all female employees are entitled to 52 weeks of maternity leave, 39 weeks of which is paid, with the first six weeks paid at 90% of full pay and the remainder at a fixed rate."
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