Maternity leave was designed to give expecting mothers time off from work to prepare for their new addition to the family. There are many advantages to maternity leave and any mother to be that works should find out what their company offers during this time. Unfortunately, in the United States there are few companies that offer paid maternity leave, but whether you get paid or not it is still nice to have the time off. Usually the mother will go out on maternity leave just before the baby is due because the average time off from work is six weeks. The closer to your due date that you take the leave, the more time you will have with your newborn.

In the event that you need more time you may want to look into other options such as vacation time, disability leaves, sick leaves and any other choice you may have. Normally six weeks is not enough time to prepare the home and make the adjustment of caring for a newborn baby so if you have other options this is a good time to use them. Aside from the advantage of having time to get prepared for your newborn there are other advantages to taking a maternity leave. For one thing, it helps to reduce the amount of stress that you may be going through at this time. It takes a lot to adjust to having an infant in the home and you need to take advantage of all the time you can get.