Pregnancy 2011 - March

LittleSpy

<snip>
Matenity leave varies state by state, here in California we typically get 4 weeks before and 6 weeks after at 55% of your ordinary gross wages. They look back at the previous 4 quarters and pay you based on your highest earning quarter. In addition to that you can also take another 6 weeks of paid family leave. Most jobs do collect for you and give your money to California State Disability, I have way more money in there than they will EVER pay me and I have had extended maternity leaves with all of my babies.
<snip>

According to the article Mel posted a week or so ago, only California and New Jersey offer any type of paid maternity leave, so it doesn't *really* vary state to state since the 48 other states have the same policy (FMLA - 12 weeks unpaid leave for the birth of a child or for a serious illness). Some companies have different maternity leave policies which could vary within each state but my understanding is that the majority of companies don't offer anything outside of what they're required to offer by law. I'm very thankful mine is as generous as it is (allowing me to accumulate so much paid time off & then use it during my maternity leave).

ckmama

Well I'm hoping to hear back about my HCG levels this morning. If I don't hear anything by noon I will be "that patient" that calls. Oh well....I'm not a patient at that office to make friends. When did you ladies start getting morning/all day sickness? I read that it usually starts on the 6th week. I also read that women that experience strong morning sickness symptoms are less likely to miscarry. So how sad is it that I'm hoping and praying my morning sickness comes with a vengeance?! lol!

Hope you ladies have a wonderful day!

I was one of those in the beginning too, because of my ectopic, they track those with hormone levels as well. Don't worry about it. You are better than I am I called as soon as they opened so they would know I was waiting.

My morning sickness didn't start until around 6 weeks. and steadily got worse until 10/11 weeks then just went away.

ckmama

I had an awesome shower. The guests were so thoughtful and caring. One of my mom's friends got me our $90 jumpperoo from Target, and then made a large quilt by hand with the material and animals matching the animals and colors from the jumperoo. Our entire SUV was packed on the way home. We did get some doubles of things, so I have some returning to do, but overall it was great. Once we got home and got everything on the floor in the babies room, I got very overwhelemed though. I now have to figure out where to put all this!!!

My sister-in-law who had a baby 2 months ago, gave me 4 boxes filled with baby clothes. She gave me over 200 pieces of clothes!!! There is no way we will use all of them, but now I have some major sorting and putting away to do.

I'm glad you had such a great shower and a maple syrup farm sounds like fun.

My SIL's baby is due this friday and mine is due 14 days later, mine will probably be bigger than hers when he is born than her's will be at 2 weeks old. I thought they were going to be about 4 weeks apart, but I figure she has tiny babies anyway so i'll be passing stuff to her instead of the other way around.:laugh:

ckmama

Joonz- My hubby freaked just because I painted two samples so it looks like he doesn't want help

Lucky you! I would love painting help, but dh is not good at painting.

My husband pulled the you don't need to paint with me with our first baby and tried to do it this time, but I was like I'm not an invalid, I know how to be careful and take break's, air out a room. While my husband did probably 60% of the painting this time, he was a big freak about climbing 2 steps on the ladder. I love that he loves me and our baby, but it really started becoming irritating:laugh:

LynnW52

Sherri - Congratulations on hitting the 35 week mark! Your family traditions sound really fun, I can't wait to start traditions like that as a family.

Carina - Sorry AF showed her ugly face.....hoping that next cycle is the one! Enjoy your time practicing with hubby

Katrina - 24 days until your C-Section?? :noway: It seems like the time is really flying by!! How are you feeling?

Amanda - I'm so glad that your shower went well, and you, hubby and baby made it back home safely. I know what you mean about everything getting a little overwhelming - I'm getting overwhelmed with the things people have given us, it's crazy! I can't imagine what it's gonna be like after a shower - and I'm having 4... AH!!!

As far as maternity leave, I plan on working as long as possible, right up until my water breaks if I can. Like a few others have said, I want to spend as much time as I can with baby, and not use any of it before he arrives. Under FMLA I can take up to 12 weeks and be guaranteed to get my job back, but I would only get paid for what time I have saved up. My company gives you 1 hour of paid time for every 10 hours you work. So in a 40 hour week, I bank 4 hours of paid time. We use this for sick time, vacation time, and personal days. I've never really sat down and figured out how much time off this is, but I know by the time I have baby I'll be able to take 4 weeks off paid.

ron2282

Amanda – I’m glad you had a great shower!

Heather – my morning sickness hit me with a vengeance around the 6 weeks mark. It was really bad for 3 weeks and started to level out as soon as I reached 9 weeks. Now I feel a little queasy/dizzy for the first hour that I’m awake then I’m usually good for the rest of the day.

Katrina – my husband has been in psycho overprotective mode since we found out I was pregnant. I thought it was really sweet at first but he’s starting to annoy me now. I swear he’d put me in a bubble if he could.

I did not do well with the exercise challenge this week. I walked for a little over 30 minutes on Saturday and that was it. We did get a lot of rain over the past few days but I know I could have squeezed in more exercise if I had tried harder. My goal this week is to do something active 4 times and to get back into logging my food, I need to take it easy on the sodium for a while.

LynnW52

Hope everyone had a good weekend! Mine was pretty uneventful, which was nice!!

Here is my exercise for last week:

Thursday - 30 mins stationary bike

Saturday - 25 mins walking dogs

Sunday - 30 mins aerobics?? :laugh:

So for this week I only got 3 days in. The reason I say aerobics with a ?? is that I'm not really sure what to call what I did :laugh: I sorta just walked in place, stepped from side to side and front to back, and did some sort of ridiculous looking movements with my arms....my main goal was to keep moving!! Whatever it was that I did, I did it for 30 mins so I'm proud of myself :bigsmile:

The seat on my stationary bike seriously hurts my @ss....after about 10 mins it goes numb. The bike is from like 1975 (garage sale $5!) and we can't get the seat off to put a new one on. I started the bike on Sunday and I just wasn't feelin it, so I decided to do some "aerobics" lol.

This week my goal is to do 4 days of at least 30 mins, and to try the prenatal Yoga that I saw on Netflix. I've only had one pop since Thursday - which for me is pretty darn good :happy:

ckmama

Ron--wait till the baby is born. You might want to go ahead and buy the bubble now on sale:laugh:

I have 22 days left of being pregnant and while I've had a fairly easy pregnancy for sure...I'm ready to see my baby and get finished with this whole surgery thing. Then start working on losing some of this weight.

My swelling has gone down significantly this weekend. And I think I'm having a couple of "real" contractions here and there. OF course those squeeze the poop out of you BH's are still happening and seem to be getting stronger.

I"m super nervous about the epidural and surgery itself, but I survived the first time and will be fine this time. I have faith.

Really it just feels like a waiting game right now. I'm sure he won't come earlier than the 29th. well I hope:happy:

LittleSpy

:laugh: :laugh:
I'll be like Ron --working right through the beginning stages of labor. :laugh: That's the plan, at least. I get 12 weeks under the FMLA & I want to spend all of it with baby. Of course the 12 weeks of FMLA is unpaid but I almost never use any sick leave so I'll have 11 weeks of sick leave built up and I'll use 1 week of my vacation leave so that I'll receive my full salary for the entire 12 weeks. That will leave me with about 6 weeks of vacation time but absolutely no sick leave which makes me sad. But going back to work before 12 weeks would make me a lot more sad than not having any sick leave.

I work for State gov't so our jobs are very well protected but the only way I could stay out longer than 12 weeks and get my job back would be for me to have some type of major illness or disability so I'd definitely rather that not happen.

That's a lot of accrued sick leave! How many do you get each year? I get 3, and they expire. Usually I just end up taking 2 days off "sick" each October before they expire. I wonder if my boss has noticed that 5 yrs in a row I have gotten "sick" in October! :laugh: I've already used all 3 this year because I took 3 days for my back surgery so I'm totally out of sick days. I do have my 5 vacation days that I will use. But the other week (or 2 if we can stretch the budget) will be unpaid. Even if I had been able to save up all my sick days since starting there 5 yrs ago I would still only have 3 weeks accrued!

And we don't get any sort of personal days. If so (like Friday to go pick up my son in AZ, or if I am late because of a Dr apt) we have to make up the hours by putting in long days on other days or staying late - which usually always works out to be putting in MORE hours than if I just worked that day "off". I work thorough lunch to make up some of those hours, but my boss actually told me once that I could not count those as make up hours since everyone's busy and "We all work through lunch". I was so mad. I told her she cannot legally tell me I cannot be expected to not take a lunch break (though I hardly ever do) and that those definitely count as "extra" work hours, and she hasn't mentioned it again. Though I don't point out to here anymore where I put in my make up hours! <snip>

Since salaries suck working for the State of SC (the last time I got a raise was when I accepted this job & transferred to this agency nearly 3 years ago -- and I just received the highest performance evaluation score you can get so it's not because my supervisor thinks my performance sucks :laugh:), we have a super nice leave package. I can't believe how much our employees complain about it -- I want to smack the crap out of them (and you will, too, after you read this).

As a new employee, you start accruing leave as soon as you work half the working days in a month at 1.25 days/month which comes out to 15 days of sick leave AND 15 days of vacation per year. Totally awesome. Then after you've been here for 10 years, you start accruing more and more vacation time, all the way up to 30 days/year along with your 15 days of sick leave (one of my coworkers accrues at 30 days/year and he almost never works 5 days/week because he has so much leave to take in order not to lose it at the end of the year).

Since I've only been out "sick" about 6 days in the last 4 years (mostly for "mental health" days and because we can use our "sick leave" for doc & dentist appts), I'll have right at 11 weeks accrued by the time July rolls around.

Not only do we accrue crazy amounts of leave, but they let us save crazy amounts of leave and roll it from year to year. 180 days of sick leave (yeah, that's about 9-10 months off with full pay depending on how you hit the paid holidays while you're out) and 45 days of vacation time. We lose our sick leave when we terminate employment but we're paid for our vacation time. So if by some miracle I'm able to be a totally SAHM, I'll take my 11 weeks of sick leave & then submit my notice & they have to pay me out for about 35 days of vacation time (which is about 1.75 months' salary).

Oh yeah, we also get 13 paid holidays (yet all I hear is b*tching from employees about how Easter isn't one of them :grumble:).

ckmama

Are we posting our 30 mins here? or were they starting a new thread? I need to get with my 100 lb people and come up with a thread before we have these babies.

Tues-35 mins walking
Thurs-15 mins weight training and 30 mins walking
Frid-30 mins wii active workout step
Sat-45 mins walking (really slow)

brittonymiller

Hello ladies! I'm glad everyone was busy this weekend. There wasn't as much catching up to do as I thought there would be, only three pages which we sometimes hit in one day

The beach was really nice. It was nice seeing my brother in law. We hadn't seen him since the wedding and I know my husband really missed seeing him. We went out to eat a lot, but it was really yummy and fun. My husband got to play a soccer game with his brother's rec team, which was really cool. He is a great player and hasn't touched a ball in so long. I'm hoping it gets him to join a rec team here. I enjoyed sitting in the sun with the dog and cheering him on. I could totally see myself doing that year after year with baby in tow.

So I thought it would be easy to be D.D. and let the boys all go out and have fun at the bars. I mean, it's just like bars before I was pregnant only I can't drink. WRONG! First of all the crowds in Charleston were freaking insane! Spring breakers must have been out in full force. So there I was waddling through crowds of drunken idiots worried that I was going to be elbowed. Then, the bars we go to all have bands playing. Cool right? NO! Those small bars had the speakers up full blast to where the bass was making my chest hurt. I started freaking out. If this was hurting my chest, what could it be doing to the little baby's heart?! I had to get out of there. I went outside and waded through a sea of smokers to get to a corner where I started to cry because I had turned into the biggest party pooper ever. They all understood and told me they were surprised I lasted as long as I did. We all ended up going back to the house and they had fun drinking and playing card games, so the night wasn't completely ruined. I know what I can and can't do for next time though! I'll be D.D., but we have to go to a quiet bar in a quite neighborhood. Accoustic musicians only please!

So I weighed myself this morning and am up 2.2lbs from last week. Not too bad considering the amount of crap I ate all weekend long. I think a lot of it is probably water retention. I'm going to get right on our exercise goal and be as healthy as possible this week. We're going home for my goddaughter's first birthday this weekend and I want to be reduce any and all bloat. I'd like to look like it's all belly :happy:

jenzimmer

Any of you that know what you are having or have a DS or DD did you look at the Chinese gendar chart? Was it right? It said DS and was right with my first. Now it says DS again. Just wondering!

brittonymiller

I forgot about the Chinese gender chart! It told me I was having a boy and the US tech told me I'm having a girl.

Mamatoabunch

I had an awesome shower. The guests were so thoughtful and caring. One of my mom's friends got me our $90 jumpperoo from Target, and then made a large quilt by hand with the material and animals matching the animals and colors from the jumperoo. Our entire SUV was packed on the way home. We did get some doubles of things, so I have some returning to do, but overall it was great. Once we got home and got everything on the floor in the babies room, I got very overwhelemed though. I now have to figure out where to put all this!!!

My sister-in-law who had a baby 2 months ago, gave me 4 boxes filled with baby clothes. She gave me over 200 pieces of clothes!!! There is no way we will use all of them, but now I have some major sorting and putting away to do.

AnneElise - I plan to work right up until I go into labor. Any time I take before, means less time I have after the baby is born. I am hoping that I can work until I head to the hospital, but with the pain I have been in lately, I am not sure if that will work out:ohwell: Also, on your painting question, I helped paint the room with my Hubby. Anytime the smell got strong, I would just leave the room for a bit.

While in NY, I got to help out on my families Maple Syrup Farm. I took three separate trips to the Maple House, and walked the woods with my hubby while he collected Sap. I figure I walked about 4 miles, and boy am I feeling it. It isn't easy being off balance and walking through the rough snow covered terain.

That is wonderful, how fun!

LynnW52

Any of you that know what you are having or have a DS or DD did you look at the Chinese gendar chart? Was it right? It said DS and was right with my first. Now it says DS again. Just wondering!

I did the Chinese gender chart and it said we were having a boy, and two ultrasounds have confirmed we are having a boy.

jenzimmer

I forgot about the Chinese gender chart! It told me I was having a boy and the US tech told me I'm having a girl.

Thanks for sharing!

Rachickidee

Any of you that know what you are having or have a DS or DD did you look at the Chinese gendar chart? Was it right? It said DS and was right with my first. Now it says DS again. Just wondering!

the Chinese gender chart said I was having a boy, and I am having a girl.

jamielangner

Any of you that know what you are having or have a DS or DD did you look at the Chinese gendar chart? Was it right? It said DS and was right with my first. Now it says DS again. Just wondering!

I never heard of that before but I just checked for my previous pregnancy, and it was right for DD! It says girl for this time so we will see in a couple weeks

LynnW52

Hey Rachi - any grad school news for your hubby?

Rachickidee

I wasn't super good on the exercising this week. I only got two days in. I have been sick, but this week I will pick it up.

Wednesday: 45 min water aerobics
Friday: 77 min. walking