How long can you REALLY take for maternity leave?🤷🏽‍♀️

Question

In California after you exhaust your Pregnancy Disability Leave, how long can you REALLY be out on leave? 
From my understanding, according to the California Dept. of Fair Employment & Housing; *PDL-up to 4 months, *CFRA-12 weeks, and *FMLA- 12 weeks. 
So am I able to request CFRA for 12 weeks, then request FMLA for an additional 12 weeks? Have any of you California ladies ever take the CFRA AND FMLA concurrently?
Below is the States fact sheet and my HR hand out...

Answer

No, FMLA just protects your job when you’re out on disability. So you can get up to 4 months of disability total, but you only get 6 weeks paid through the state for recovery (that comes out of your 4 months) and you can use more of that 4 months prior to the birth for pregnancy disability. So technically you get 6 weeks disability, 12 weeks bonding time (you only get paid for 6 of those though through the state) plus any time you take off prior to the birth. So max 18 weeks after birth. Unless you have a c section, then you get two extra weeks

Answer

I took 12 weeks paid off through EDD but where I work I was given the option to take a year off and still be guaranteed my job.

Answer

I was taken off of work 9/23/15 because I had a high risk pregnancy. My son was born 10/29/15. I had a vertical c section which gave me 8 weeks recovery that I then transferred into bonding time. I would have gone back to work on 2/5/16 (which covered the 4 month span if keeping my job without Fmla because I worked for a small company) but decided to be a sahm instead. 
I was paid the entire time except for 1 week between the two types of leave. My paperwork indicated you had to take 1 week no pay before going into bonding time.
The leave prior to bonding time wasn’t taxed but the bonding time was. So because it wasn’t taxed I was only missing $50 every paycheck (biweekly) had I been at work which was awesome.
This whole thing was so confusing.

Answer

You can get the 2 with 12 weeks out. But do you have a disability.

How long can you REALLY take for maternity leave?🤷🏽‍♀️

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