Maternity leave question

[emogey]

In need of some advice - I am due to give birth on 8th April and have been waiting on my midwife to give me a MATB1 form so I can apply for maternity leave.

At my 20 week appointment in November she didn't mention anything about the form and just made another routine appointment for 20th January (29+6). I've since been told I need the form to be filled out before then as my employer needs enough notice to get everything sorted in time. This is my first pregnancy (can you tell?!) and no one had told me anything about the various bits of paperwork and the deadlines that go with them!

I have since made an appointment to go and get the form tomorrow afternoon. I would have gone sooner but the midwife is only available on Tuesday afternoons at my GP surgery which is in a different town to my place of work, which makes things really difficult to get to - it's a 40 minute bus ride each way and by the time I get back to work I have about 20 minutes before I finish for the day. Getting to appointments is exhausting! But I digress.

I was looking at the Gov.uk site earlier today and found that they have a calculator that tells you when all of the paperwork needs to be in by - according to the site I should have had all of my forms sent back by December 27th! Does this mean I won't get my maternity pay on time, if at all?

The other thing I am worried about is that I am on a temporary contract at work which ends on March 31st (9 days before my due date). I have only worked here since August - I found out I was pregnant at the end of my first week of working here, and have been told that I will not qualify for Statutory Maternity Pay, only Maternity Allowance. This means that I'm going to be going from around £285 a week to £138 a week. I can't apply for benefits until I stop working and if my maternity allowance doesn't come through when it should do because of the forms not being in on time then I am worried about having literally no income in April.

Is there anything I can do?! I'm so sorry for the rambling post and wall of text, I hope it all makes sense. I'm sure there is a very simple solution to all of this but at the moment I'm in a state of blind panic which REALLY isn't helping me think rationally about anything!

[GlitzAndGigglesx]

Regarding booking off mat leave I thought you had to give 28 days notice for when you plan to leave? And benefits can be claimed up to 12 weeks after birth where they'll be backdated

[Zahrah5]

I went to get my MATB from outside of the midwife appts. They have to issue it to you before 25w, because that is when you are obligated to give it to employer. I had 20 weeks scan appt and stopped by the midwives on the way and they gave it to me in couple of min after I showed them the report from 20w scan.

I dont think anyone will mention anything to you, I think it is you who is expected to find out and pursue your benefits if you want them, just like with anything else. I have read our employee maternity policy long time ago and that is how I found out.

You need to officially let you employer know about your pregnancy, my company has online form which I filled out at about 18w. The MATB can be supplied later.

I would let your HR know and say you dont have MATB yet, they might be a bit lax. DI you at least tell your manager> That way you can claim you told them on time.

[emogey]

I told my employer at about 13 weeks because I was worried about mat leave with the temporary contract so they're definitely aware which is good!
I know about benefits being backdated but I'm just worried how long it will take. I'm sure I'm making a lot of fuss over nothing - I should have checked all of this ages ago!

[helloworld19]

I also used the calculator on gov.uk but was confused and eventually called them, they were super helpful and clarified everything for me so worth a try I think.