Welcome to Parenthood

I am really, really mad! I started paying for voluntary short-term disability a few years ago. It didn't cost a lot and thought it would be wise. In August, someone from the insurance company came and presented to us for an hour about this ST disability benefit. It covers a 13 week period at 60% of your salary and kicks in after you have taken 2 weeks of vacation or sick leave. A great deal! After leaving the meeting, we were all talking about how we can take 15 weeks of maternity leave!! On the take home sheet, it lists pregnancy as one of the covered "illnesses". Later, it actually has a big section about pregnancy that states "we see pregnancy as an illness". The representative of the company answered all sorts of questions from pregnant women in the room about this and assured us that pregnancy is covered. I was thrilled. I could take off three months after the baby is born and still get paid enough to cover our bills.
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Well, come to find out yesterday, "pregnancy" doesn't mean "maternity leave". Apparently, there is an exception for maternity leave and the insurance company thinks that you are back to normal after 6 weeks and so, you take 2 weeks vacation and then they pay you for 4 more. Here I thought that we had such a great plan - I was thrilled! And now, someone has decided that after 6 weeks, mommy's and babies don't need more time and she can go back to work.
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I'm not mad that the coverage isn't better (though I wish it were), I'm mad because the representative deliberately withheld this information from us. He kept saying "pregnancy is covered" and I think he knew all the time that he didn't mean maternity leave even though that is what we were asking about. I looked through all the information from this company about ST disability and nowhere does it say that maternity leave has an exception attached to it! I have no patience for deliberately withholding information and misleading people when you know otherwise!!! I had this discussion yesterday with 4 or 5 ladies at work who all were mislead like me and are very disappointed to learn that they have to take time off without pay in order to stay home a little longer. I suppose I'm lucky because I know early on and can save up some money but some of these ladies are delivering in a few weeks and are just now learning that they can't take as much time off as they thought. And, they are going to have to talk all the vacation they have for the entire year and use it, so they hope that the baby doesn't get sick any time after being born, or that they don't want to go on a summer vacation!
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I complained greatly to my HR department yesterday about it. I told them that it's not their fault (they didn't know about it either) but that they need to be very sure in November at open enrollment to tell everyone that maternity leave is limited. It's not fair to let us believe we are getting one thing only to have it be taken away! And if they ever invite that representative back, I want to be there to call him on the carpet!
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So, that was my crappy news yesterday that got me all riled up. Well, that and then the discussion led to how insurance is going from 90/10 coverage to 80/20 as well as adding a high deductible (they were throwing around $2,000). I suppose I have to wait until November to know for sure. If only I could have had this baby in December where there was no deductible and it was 90/10. Crappy, crappy, crappy!!! Welcome to parenthood right? I think I'll ask my doctor to prescribe bed rest for me in January so that I can get that short-term disability benefit that I've been paying for! If I can't get paid to take time off afterwards, maybe I should take it off before!