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That seems absurd to me. Yes, part of maternity leave is about healing after the birth, but part of it is about bonding with your new baby!! At my company you get the exact same maternity leave whether you deliver the child yourself, use a surrougate, or adopt.

You are still eligible for FMLA benefits. This will give you up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave. My company and many others don't even have paid leave for when you deliver your own children, I'd be happy with even 2 weeks. I'll have 8 weeks of vacation time saved up that I will use when the baby is born. Any time I take after that will be unpaid.

I don't get any paid maternity leave, and neither did my SIL who has a fantastic job. Her position was guaranteed for 3 months via FMLA, but she had to use a combo of vacation and sick time to get any $ while on mat leave.

I would ask what leave options you have, unpaid, and ask both HR and your immediate supervisor. My SIL found that her boss was willing to approve an extra month beyond what FMLA covered.

wow. so exciting!! keep us posted on how many sticky babies you have

good luck @akire!!!! sorry you aren't able to go through the pregnancy yourself, but so glad you're able to utilize other options! i really hope you get twins! (so you don't have to go through this again haha) *crossing fingers*

just curious, is it as expensive to do surrogacy as it is to do ivf? i imagine it'll be more expensive.

My old company only gave 2 weeks paid leave for any new parent. Mother, father, delivered baby, surrogacy, adoption, etc. The people I knew who had babies took vacation time and unpaid time to amount to about 3 months off.

Yes, makes you wanna live in Canada!!!

Two weeks paid leave sounds great to me- all I got was my FMLA unpaid leave!
How much leave would you get if you were to deliver a baby yourself? That's the part that I find weird- if you are acquiring a baby, I don't think leave policies should be any different whether you're birthing one, adopting, going through surrogacy, etc.!

Yeah, that's crappy. I did not need 8 weeks to recover physically from a vaginal delivery. (I mean, it's not like I was going to go run a marathon or pose for Victoria's Secret or anything, but you get my point). The reason I needed leave was because I was up every two hours feeding a baby, and spent the time in between those feedings cleaning a baby and rocking a baby and dressing a baby and obsessing over whether said baby was still breathing and at an acceptable temperature. (Don't go crazy with that last part like I did)
That would seriously tick me off.
Do you have an understanding supervisor and/or HR department? They may not be able to give you the full benefits you deserve (the same ones as ladies expelling a baby from their nether or middle regions), but maybe you could at least get some additional flexibility in your hours, or ability to work from home, or something like that?

My work covers a regular maternity leave for adoption... Is this not similar? Perhaps your situation is just unusual and they don't know how to handle it?