Thank you so much awebs! We didn't know where to start and whether we had to wait until birth or not. You were extremely helpful! :)

Just one question, does he have to wait until after birth to start taking time off or is that just to file? Like can he take off starting the week or so before birth and then file once baby is born for those previous few weeks and the future ones?

My husband just did this and it was a complete pain in the a.

You do it on the EDD website after the baby is born. I would recommend doing it ASAP as it was much slower than it was for me to get my pregnancy leave.

First he signs up for an account on the EDD website. Then he needs to file a claim on the website. They walk you through it and will ask if it's for paid FMLA. You will get an temporary birth certificate from your hospital saying that the baby was born and he is the father. He will need to scan or photograph it and attach it as a file to his claim on the website. There will be a link to do this.

Then you just wait. It took a long time for my husband to get paid, but eventually it worked out. One thing to be aware of is that the first week is unpaid so he should take paid vacation time from work for that first week if he has it. There is a mandatory 7 day waiting period where they do not pay you. Good luck!

Pretty much yes. He's supposed to sleep in a hotel out of town, but he likes coming home. If he gets off closer to the 5 pm he'll come home. If it's the later time he usually stays. He has Saturdays and Sundays off.

His hours are not set ones. The majority of the time he leaves to work at about 3:30-4 where he drives to out of town 1 1/2 - 2 hours away (depending on what job site he's working). He then, depending on the weather, gets off at 3pm (not too often), around 5pm or even later (again depending on the weather and the job). He then drives home. He wastes 3-4 hrs of his time off driving so he can come home and spend time with me.

Like I said, he doesn't have set times, so everyday is different. Sometimes he'll get off even earlier if it's too hot to be working safely or if it was a small job. Just depends.

When does he sleep?!? ?

So, just to be clear, your husband works 14-16 hour days and has a two hour commute each way? He is gone from the house 18-20 hours each day?

He works out of town usually anywhere from 3 am - 5-7pm, where he then has to drive about 2 hrs home. I'm due in about 8 weeks and I thought I'd at least figure out the process to make it easier when he has to do it. He didn't ask me to, but since I'm not working I have the time and thought it'd be nice to help him.

Why is your husband not taking care of this if it's his company?

Yes EDD is the Employment Development Department. So they take care of disability, unemployment, etc.

I agree, a live person is usually best. I'll have to track down a number and see if I can get through to someone because I know the process will probably be kind of complicated, they usually are.

What is EDD? Some kind of disability program?

And the website isn't always as good as talking to a real person.

I had short term disability as part of my benefits, so for that, I had to fill out a form, my doctor had to fill out a form, and hr had to fill out a form to send to them, then when the baby was born, we had to send a vital statistics paper as well.

My HR department said I could have done it all after the baby was born, but it would have taken longer to get the money.

He tried talking to them but they didn't know anything. All they said was he gets 6 weeks a year to use however (as long as it's for pregnancy, sick family member, etc.), that it can pay up to 55% of his income, and he files it through EDD. They didn't know anymore than that. :/

He should talk to his hr department. That is who deals with that and should tell him the whole process.

We didn't get paid leave, just fmla