to think you should find out how much maternity pay is before getting pregnant?

[signothetimes]

I have a colleague at work who got married last december and who decided in July to try for a baby. I assumed she'd sussed all the ins and outs of maternity leave/childcare/cost of babies etc. before she stopped using contraception. It took her all of 4 weeks to fall pregnant. Today, she was almost in tears on realising that you get only £128 maternity pay per week once the employer's pay stops. While trying to be sympathetic etc. all I could hear in my little brain was 'what the feck did you think you got?'. Now her 'hubby' is chucking his toys out the pram at the idea of losing his bumper Sky package for 3 fecking months.

Call me 'old fashioned' but I thought the idea of planning for a baby involved, you know, actually planning how you manage with maternity leave etc.

just not got the patience for this kinda stuff

YANBU. She is lucky that your company has any enhanced pay at all. Plenty places only have SMP, including most of the employers I have ever worked for.

Did she think she would get full pay while at home or something?

YANBU at all. She is clearly dense.

What a bloody idiot.

And YANBU. I spent bloody hours working out what we would and wouldn't be able to afford when on maternity leave, months before I even got pregnant!

Did she say what she thought she would get????
Is she very young? I really don't get it...

YANBU. Hope you get many chuckle filled hours as the realities of parenting hit home...Sky Sports will be a fond but distant memory

YOu only legally have to be off work 2 weeks - why isnt she back at work?

I have a colleague who when asked what she was thinking of doing about childcare when she came back, replied 'oh, I'm sure dh's mum will help'. I await the inevitable aibu with interest.

I've no idea what she thought she would get or how long for but to not even know? I had to really concentrate on keeping my face all sympathetic when all I wanted to do was at her, erm, oversight.

What a dimwit.

I only got standard SMP when I was on ML and you manage because you have to but I remember before I got pregnant working it out and thinking fookin hell, how will we cope. But we did.

Oh, the childcare will be interesting too. She's agreed to her dad and his wife to look after said baby who will have to be dragged out of bed every morning at about half 5 in order for her to drive an hour, drop off baby, and then head to work for half 8. She has issues about them both smoking, but hasn't actually put 2 and 2 together yet... I've avoided asking her outright if she'll be expecting them to give up smoking in their own home to watch her PFB.

That's really quite stupid. What would she have done if your employer didn't pay any enhanced pay?!

signothetimes Keep us informed, this could provide good reading in the months and years to come . . .

Sounds like she has not thought this through, at all. I'm a compulsive planner, I really don't get people like that...

I am honestly gobsmacked at her shock at maternity pay. And tbh, we do get a fab package, especially when you get the chance to enhance the pay you get by hammering overtime to bump up your pay for HR's calculations. I've told her this, and nothing I've said is 'perking' her mood up. I think parenthood will be a steep learning curve for both of them.

He sounds like an immature twat as well btw!

I am freaking about mat pay. I didn't factor DH being given redundancy notice when I was 26 weeks pregnant when we planned this.

He is a bit MrsH! He was umm'ing and ahh'ing about all the suggestions I made until she mentioned the Sky package. They are in a 2 bed-roomed flat and they have multi-room, full sky sports and full movie channels. How he thinks he's going to have the time to actually sit down and watch a movie or any kind of sports clearly hasn't crossed his mind!

Good thing she doesn't live in America..

They both sound a bit immature tbh, I am sure parenthood will be a massive shock to the system for them both!

Oh man. Unbelievable.

I think I spent 2 days calculating how we were going to cope when/if I got pregnant. And then I did and the rules and amounts had changed! So I had to recalculate, knowing it was too late as there was a baby coming.

How naive.

It was £57 a week when I had dd and 14 weeks leave :-S God knows how she'd have coped with that! I didn't even get enhanced pay.

I'm more worried about his attitude tbh, that he expects to watch all his favourite TV while she does everything.

Sounds like they both have their heads in Cloud CooCooLand to me.

That's fair enough Minus, it's impossible to planned for everything. But, my colleague hadn't even figured out what her money would go down to once her wages stop, and it's kinda important to know these things when trying to plan for maternity leave. I didn't 'plan' anything as I wasn't planning on getting pregnant. But I managed it, and so can she if she sits down and works out what's what. My ex moved in with me thinking he was going to be living off me when I was down to maternity pay! I managed to scrape through to the end of the year, not having planned for having to put down a childcare deposit with my childminder - that was the thing that nearly sunk me. I had a friend whose husband was made redundant just before she gave birth - the redundancy money he got helped them both enjoy the first couple of months with their baby, until he was able to find something else. Not easy in this climate I grant you, but hopefully things will get better for you and yours.

I had no idea mat pay was so shit until we started thinking about trying for a baby. I did know before we even tried but still it was a shock. I think the impression you get from the media et al is that mat leave is a long holiday. Had I known I might have tried to move jobs beforehand to try and get better mat pay.