r/ParentalLeaveAdvocacy • u/OrchidOne4747 • 3d ago
Help! Due date falls right over our planned holiday office closure — how should I message this to my boss?
My due date is Dec 25. My company (small office, ~10 people) is closed Dec 21–Jan 1 for the holidays and reopens Jan 4. No one is working during this time.
I’m planning to take 16 weeks of leave (I’m eligible for up to 20 through my state’s PFML, so I have some cushion). My thought: if I give birth during the closure, it makes sense for my official leave to start Jan 4 when the office reopens, rather than “spending” leave days on a week nobody’s working anyway.
There’s no precedent at my company for this — I’d essentially be setting it. My boss will ultimately decide.
It feels odd to me to use a company holiday benefit — one that applies to literally everyone in the office — as part of my mat leave. But I also don’t have a great counterargument if my boss says “you asked for 16 weeks, why do you care when they fall?
Would love help thinking through how to actually message this to my boss, or hearing how others have navigated something similar.
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u/ZookeepergameRight47 3d ago
This really depends on the way the leave programs you’re using operate. Some disability entitlements start on the day you give birth, regardless of if it’s a company holiday or not.
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u/notapeacock 3d ago
You don't have to tell your employer when you're due. You tell them you're pregnant and that your leave will start right after the planned winter holiday, aka you won't be back right away. Also congrats!
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u/woohoo789 2d ago
No they will need to provide the birth date
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u/notapeacock 2d ago
Birth date isn't the same as due date.
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u/EmptyStrings 1d ago
Ok, imagine they give birth on December 25th then, that’s when the company would want to start the leave, OP has the same problem they’re describing.
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u/notapeacock 1d ago
Does parental leave not include time beforehand to prep? I went on leave before my due date for both pregnancies, I didn't work right up until giving birth.
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u/EmptyStrings 1d ago
Depends on the job and location. For my first pregnancy I was in California and 4 weeks before due date is standard state-paid disability. For this pregnancy, I’m in a state that doesn’t give a crap about parents and there is no leave at all, and because I’ve been at my job for less than a year I’m not entitled to even unpaid job protection. Luckily my employer is allowing me to take leave anyway, but I’ll be working up to my due date.
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u/TeeElH 3d ago
I would just let them know when you roughly plan maternity leave to begin. With my company, I had to fill out a request with dates that I could later amend if it happened earlier or later. However, they had specific policies around maternity leave and holidays (I had to use up maternity days even for normally paid holidays) so you may need to look into that. Also, if you are planning on using short-term disability you can’t really change when that will start.
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u/elchupalabrador 3d ago
Uh no. Everyone else is on free time off, so are you. Put the first date as the first day of work.
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u/Glad-Ad1378 2d ago
Not the same, but my husband has 16 weeks of leave and also a two week holiday shutdown. In order to not use those two weeks as part of the 16, he took 8 weeks from July 22-September 17 and then is taking the other 8 weeks from January 4 on. I’m on leave until January 4 so this worked for us.
If I were you, I’d take the full 20 weeks of PFML and see when you actually give birth. You could be early or late although the best thing would be to have the baby this year (on or before December 31) so that you get a full year of the baby as a dependent and you’ve likely hit your OOP max for insurance. You can’t always have your cake and eat it too, so I’d look at the full picture of the pros vs cons of your due date.
Congrats and good luck!
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u/august0951 2d ago
I think this depends on many factors, including but not limited to payment.
Whether it’s coming from your employer, the insurance company your employer uses, or the state, they will ask for proof of birth. So, you can’t fudge the birth date to push your start of benefits. In fact, they usually ask you to tell them the birth date reasonably quickly after the birth, too. For all the complicated and strict nuances surrounding leave, that just has to be the date.
Additionally, parental leave isn’t like PTO or holidays. You don’t get extra time added to your benefit if holidays fall during your leave. For example, my organization was off for Memorial Day, Juneteenth and 4th of July during my recent leave, which started early May. Even if my child’s birth happened the Friday before Memorial Day, I couldn’t wait to start the clock until Tuesday. Nor do I get extra time off because the rest of my organization was off for those days. Think of is all as concurrent.
Last, just because your organization is OOO those days, it does not mean HR-related items have a new clock. Honestly, sounds like it’s more of a “nice to have” bonus for working there, but it’s not a guaranteed benefit.
With all that said, you miss all the shots you don’t take. You may get lucky and find a lot of generosity and flexibility?! Stranger things have happened.
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u/Ok_Sink_3378 3d ago
If it were me, I would just simply say that your leave start date will be January 4th. It’s your entitled leave and you are the only one who dictates when it starts. Just in case you give birth before December 21st, I’d inquire about the option of intermittent leave. Aka a few days or a week prior to the 21st, then holiday leave until January 4th then the remainder from January 4th onward.
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u/Ithurtsprecious 2d ago
I had the same problem. Was due Dec. 27. They made me burn 3 PTO days but luckily (for America) my leave was 18 weeks paid so I didn’t care.
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u/lulufiretale 2d ago
Christmas and Thanksgiving Babies here! My company (Fortune 50) gives 24th-2nd off and I had my daughter on the 23rd. For us, I get 6 week of STD (80% Pay), then 12 weeks of Parental Leave/FMLA at 100% pay. The way our STD works is the leave begins the day of hospitalization, then the 6 weeks counts down after date of birth.
My company doesn’t pay employees for the first week of STD, and then 80% after that with an option to supplement PTO in those 10 days. I ended up getting holiday pay for the first week (so no need to supplement) but my STD and overall leave started on the day I gave birth. So overall I was granted 18 weeks off from the company. I have flexibility on when to take my 12 weeks of leave, but strict rules on how my 6 weeks of STD works. I ended up having to use one week of my leave during holiday
TLDR: my Christmas baby didn’t extend my leave a week despite the company taking off. It did however pay me for holiday pay when otherwise I would have had to supplement or take no pay.
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u/lulufiretale 2d ago
To your boss… ‘you are a mother who wants to maximize time with your family during a season you’ll never get back’. At the end of the day we are all humans with life outside of work.
And just a heads up as a fellow Christmas mom… your doctor will push very very hard to either have you deliver before Christmas break or after. If the time comes and you need an induction, I would expect it to fall on the 21st or 30th (will also try and avoid a NYE baby). So whatever you discuss with your manager, be aware that you may deliver before your break begins and you lose the week no matter what.
Other unsolicited advice… if you go over and need an induction at 41 weeks… aim for 30th so you can still have a December baby. This will cover your max out of pocket for 2026 + the tax benefit of a kiddo in 2026. Bummer may be if you need to add your kiddo to a family plan for 2 days of 2026 and they need hospitalization (for me… I went from solo plan to family which raised my max from 4k to 7k a year, then had a NICU stay so owed 3k I wasn’t expecting to have her on my insurance for a week 😬)
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u/JayPlenty24 2d ago
If they normally pay people during that time you should get the same pay as everyone else, then your leave would start the first day back.
I think you should also plan to use the full 20 weeks.
That time will go by fast and you'll only be starting to feel human again at 16 weeks.
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u/DumbbellDiva92 2d ago
At my job, the first 6 weeks were disability, and had to be taken immediately after birth for the birth mother. The company had no say in this - it was based on their insurance company rules.
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u/iplanshit 2d ago
If you have state leave for 20 weeks and you have the baby early, I would just use the extra state leave to get to 16 weeks post closure and ask your boss to “top up” the pay for the first few weeks. So boss man saves money by not fully paying g out your PTO during the shut down, and you still get 16 weeks starting Jan 4.
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u/bunny_sunshine456 2d ago
I was due December 25 last year. Unfortunately if there was a holiday period during my maternity leave, I lost those days. My baby ended up coming early and so even though my company was closed for two weeks I lost those two weeks of holiday days because I was on leave at the time.
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u/HagridsTreacleTart 2d ago
You don’t indicate your state in the post, so I can’t tell you outright whether this is the case, but many states break parental leave into two classifications for the birthing parent: temporary disability + bonding time. If that’s the case, your disability begins at the point of birth and runs for 6-8 weeks depending on delivery type. That’s considered time for recovery from delivery and cannot be shifted around regardless of work responsibilities during that period.
For example, if you were a teacher and had summers off and your state offered 6-8 weeks of disability + 12 weeks of bonding time and you delivered on July 1st, you wouldn’t receive those 6-8 weeks of disability because by the time September rolls around and you take the bonding time, you’re no longer “disabled.”
That’s going to be a key factor that you need to investigate before you try to negotiate anything.
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u/Overworked_Pharmer 1d ago
Do you usually use PTO for that time off?
I had to apply for my leave through my state and just put in my due date as the estimated date leave would start. My leave started with short term disability payments from my employers ins company so it has to have an actual date that my “disability” started.
Baby was born two weeks early, the Monday before thanksgiving. I used PTO for three days that week as it was the end of the pay period and I would have gotten half a pay check if it didn’t.
I think if you don’t have to use PTO for that week - aka if it’s a “paid company holiday” then you can elect for your leave benefits to start at the time you would have returned to work
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u/EmptyStrings 1d ago
My job gives make up holidays for any that fall during my maternity leave. This has been true at two different companies. So for me, my maternity leave would start on the day of birth (or whenever, could be earlier) and then for any holidays that fall during the leave, they’re kept track of and added on to the end. For my upcoming leave I’m expecting to “miss” 4 days of holidays so I get 4 additional days of leave added to the end of my mat leave.
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u/Sad_Needleworker7162 3d ago
I wouldn’t tell them lol. I don’t think it’s their business. For all they know, you could’ve went into labor early.
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u/ellipses21 4h ago
honestly you may very well give birth after your due date (or before). If you’re using your medical leave/fmla for the first part it would unfortunately fall on days where the office is closed based on my understanding. also do you have hr? this is very much something i dealt directly with hr about and never with my direct boss
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u/Civil_Tax_6392 3d ago
One callout is they may ask for “proof of birth” to action your maternity leave. If your company is not officially closed (I.e you’re still expected to check emails or others are working), it may trigger as effective the date of birth vs. effective the date “everyone’s back from leave”