Beginning today Jolene is officially on disability. Her doctor approved her to be out on maternity leave early. She is just short of 30 weeks along. Over the past few weeks she has been having sciatica, massive amounts of pain, dizziness, fainting spells, and falling. Now she finally gets to take a break before our boy is born. She has been pushing herself further into her pregnancy with the hopes of staying out longer after our baby’s birth.
In California mothers receive paid family leave. Moms receive up to 4 works off before the baby’s expected due date. Then they are given 6 weeks after pregnancy to recuperate for a vaginal delivery. 8 weeks if they’ve had a cesarean. At the conclusion of their recovery they can take another 6 weeks to bond with their child. They can take more, but any more time taken will be unpaid by the state and will depend on your jobs rules. The state will pay for 55% of Jolene’s wages.
Jolene is going out even earlier on disability than the allowed 4 weeks. However, because of her medical situation the state should still pay 55%. She has accumulated enough vacation time and sick time to make up most of the difference. So we are estimating she will be out shy of 6 months from the start of today. Roughly she will be out 23-24 weeks. We will take a pay cut, so hopefully I can make up the difference while she is out. Since I work from home, I don’t get paternity leave.
Things will be a lot different around here. Jolene has never been off work for this long. Both of us being home together for this long as well will definitely be a new experience. I’ll have a lot more messes to clean up for sure and more meals to make for everyone. The extra time she gets will go to good use to finish our nursery. That’s assuming she doesn’t go on bed rest. Our nursery is coming together and almost finished. Just a few more finishing touches.
This entire process of having another baby in the home has gotten us reminiscing. A few nights ago Jolene was in the office watching some of our old videos we took of Johanna. I forgot how many videos we took, many of which I thought we had lost on a broken hard drive. It reminded me of one of my favorite videos of Johanna. I attached the video above. I know it’s not relative to the topic, but I thought I would place a happy video on here. I was showing her a photo of herself on my phone. She loved to laugh at herself. This video represents many more videos in the future. As we countdown to the big day for our son, I’ll be adding a bunch of flashbacks of Johanna growing up.
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