Hellobee Boards

@oliviaoblivia: kinda?? Aren't you in your third tri???? (just teasing, obviously!) It is what it is, you're right. But I hope that all goes well with her. So how much time will you get off with DD3?

I also want to add that for me, I don't know that a ton of leave would help with the childcare costs. LO needs a lot of structure, and I am not good at giving it to her. She thrives in school, and I wouldn't want to take that away from her for an entire year, just so I could stay home. So, while I would like more leave for my own health, and it is a contributing factor for when we have more kids, it won't be the deciding factor.

Nope! After realizing how hard it is - paid leave or not - you still have to deal with tantrums, lack of sleep and the overall expense.

@oliviaoblivia: fair enough! If you're going to be SAH, G and I will have to come visit you and those three beautiful girls!

And I can't even imagine daycare for 3...thinking of it for two makes my head spin as it is!

I live in the U.S. and have a great leave policy for being here (4 weeks before delivery, and 6-8 post birth at 50% pay, then whatever PTO you have accrued with the option of taking it at 50% for twice as long, and the right to take a total of 1 year off (the remaining time being unpaid). I took the full year with my son, will probably take 7-8 months with my second.

All this to say, no, it did not and will not affect our decision to have more kids. Pregnancy is and my son's infant days were, absolutely miserable for me and we are done (biologically anyway) at 2. Had I not had the option to take as long of maternity leaves I still would have had 2 but I would have quit my job and looked for something later.

No, it hasn't affected our decision about how many children we would like to have. It has affected our decisions about childcare - we've kept on our nanny longer than planned because we would like to have her for LO2.

Nope, wouldn’t impact my plans at all. Even if I got a year off at full pay and didn’t start LO in daycare at all until they were 1 years old, that’s still an additional $50,000+ in daycare expenses before Kindergarten for each kid I have. Maternity leave is such a small drop in the bucket in overall child costs it isn’t something I would take into consideration. I didn’t find that I saved money either while on mat leave because I am not able to stay home for days at a time – I need to be out A LOT (like, every day), which meant lunches out, trips to Target for essentials but ended up picking up other stuff we didn’t need, museums memberships, gas costs driving all over the place, $100 here, $100 there adds up quick, etc. etc. So for me, it wouldn’t be like extra leave pay without daycare expenses would be a huge bankable amount.

I didn't realize there was a cap in Canada. Honestly - makes me feel better bc the max wouldn't make a difference compared to my current take home pay. We just saved and my company allows up to two years off unpaid. So I'm taking 6 months. So no - if we had a Canadian type policy it wouldn't change my plans since the cap is low. We'd still have to save up significantly like we are this time around. If there was a "top up," that might change things (maybe TTC sooner than anticipated)

For us no, but I really would have liked it with the first!

No. I even had no paid leave for a few weeks and still had another. We have a number of kids in mind that will work for us and I refuse to let work get in the way of that.

Nope. im more concerned about the larger costs like saving for an additional college education, another wedding...Those are the expenses I'm worried about.