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I'm currently pregnant with my first baby...only about 2 months at this point but I went ahead and told my work because we don't actually have a maternity leave policy. We're a small company and I'm currently the only employee that could possibly need maternity leave (17 males, 1 other female that is past menopause, and me). Now granted some of the males could take leave if they were to have any more babies, but they'd probably need to make up that policy on the fly too.

Anyways, since they are now going to start developing a maternity leave policy; let's hope it's a good one. I know the guy in charge of developing it has 4 kids so hopefully that will help him realize the need of the mom to be able to stay home for a while with the baby without worrying about not getting paid at all. And maybe, since I'm the guinea pig that gets to test out the policy they will allow some feedback if I think the policy is not acceptable.

I love living in America, but its sometimes hard to view it as the "best" or "the leader" when you read about the woeful way its workers are treated. So many other countries have PAID leave of up to a year for mothers. Further other countries have longer vacation times etc. I suppose the fact that Americans work so much is why its so productive, but I do know that many workers would take pay cuts to have a little free time or less work stress.

BTW...when my second child was born, I worked for the state which allowed me to use donated leave from other state workers. The result is that I only had 2 weeks unpaid leave... so I can't complain too much.