Childcare leave question for Disneyland CM's..

[TheMightyGerbil]

Not good. Not good at all.

I'm on my maternity leave (1st child) and due on Feb 4th. I work in the foods *shudder* department but planned to transfer as soon as I come back from my leave. As most Dland cm's know we are allowed 6-8 weeks maternity leave and up to 12 additional weeks on top of that if we qualify for fmla leave. I just found out that my hours-worked for the last 12 months are not enough to meet the fmla requirement. This is only because I had two medical leave time periods in those 12 months that were occupational.

So I have to come back to work when the baby is only 6-8 weeks old. The problem with this (besides the fact that I'll be nursing exclusively and the foods department is not known for being all that accomodating for extra breaks to pump) is that my husband and I will have NO babysitting options until our son is at least 3 months old. Nothing, nada, zip. The only family we have living down here is my mom who is mentally unstable and should not be left alone with a child (regardless of her past experience with babies) In fact if we let her babysit it would be considered child endangerment and social services would probably intervene. None of our friends have any baby experience and they also work full time. Nursery daycare centers in the area will not take him until he is 3-4 months old. We are not going to leave our 6 week old son with a total stranger who is not licensed for childcare and hasn't any newborn experience - so just 'finding someone who'll look after the kid' is not an option.

We did find one professional babysitter/nanny who works with newborns under 3 months but to have her babysit him 5 days a week for 8-12 hours at a stretch (she comes to the house) would cost us much, much more than we could even hope to afford.

I cannot quit my job because I am the sole provider of medical insurance (yup I'm FT) for all three of us.

So...I can't come back to work at 6 weeks postbirth..but I can't quit my job, either. Are there ANY loopholes here? My managers are not the most flexible people and won't be easy to work with on this. (Hell they can't even get around to deleting an accidental no-show when scheduling already TOLD them it was a mistake. Castmember needs are just not a priority with them.)

Anyone? We're stressing badly over this!

[hobie16]

Have you checked with County social services?

[TheMightyGerbil]

Have you checked with County social services?

Yeah. There isn't really anything close enough to work for us. Not unless I leave the house at 6 am for a 9:30 shift to make sure I drop the baby off and get to work on time. Traffic is nuts here and considering our dependency on disney medical benefits I can't chance being late repeatedly and thus possibly being termed.

And most childcare services require them to be 3 months minimum. (At least for the places we can afford.)

[hobie16]

Bummer. It would seem Disney would have family-friendly policies for their employees but the bottom line is shareholder return on investment.

Is there a group within HR that helps out in these kind of unforseen circumstances?

[glendalais]

I'm not sure what to do, since I'm not really that familiar with the company's FT benefits. However, you could possibly cash in the vacation time you've saved up and maybe squeeze an extra week out.

Other than that, maybe go to scheduling and try to explain your situation (fat chance, I know, but it's worth a shot, IMO).

[SRT_GB]

Only thing I can think of besides what others have suggested is contact your union rep. They've been known to find loopholes in company policies and exploit them.

Good luck to you!