Full history for background!
I'm just about 12 weeks pregnant and my line manager is going to tell my CEO/COO on Friday. I told my line manager when I was 7 weeks - she's a good friend and as I live away from the city I work in, it made sense to tell someone here in case things went awry/I had issues etc.
A few months ago, before I was pregnant, I had a conversation with my manager about my plans - ie, that I'd got engaged, but wasn't planning on getting married yet, as we were going to try for children first. I mentioned at that point that there was no parental leave policy mentioned in my contract (at all).
She brought this up at the time with the COO (a woman, although that makes little difference I think) and the COO was a bit shocked/disappointed that they hadn't thought of it/have a policy in place. For clarity, there are only 7 of us in the business and no one working here has been pregnant before, so they haven't had to think about it. The outcome of that conversation was that they would put something in writing but it would likely not be more than statutory pay obligations as we're a small business. Aside from that, it's a generous company when it comes to salary and benefits (I currently work from home two days per week for example).
As far as I'm aware, they still haven't written the policy.
I'm planning on asking them to give more than statutory. I'm the main earner (double what my fiance earns) and to drop to £140 or so a week for almost a year (after the initial 6 weeks) really isn't feasible, but by the same token, my partner works away from home a lot, the city I live in is about 2 hours away from workplace, and so I don't want to have to go back earlier than I really have to.
My question is - has anyone else had this experience and managed to have it increased? What arguments/information did you give to help your cause? I'm not asking for it to be changed for me specifically, but more before they write it, to consider the options.