Thanks... It looks like you helped both myself and the OP.

A previous ORD Chief Pilot used to tell pilots to bid for vacation at the due date, then use FMLA whenever they wanted within the first year of birth. He recommended using it at Christmas (this company has changed a lot). Anyway, if you can get vacation without FMLA for the first few weeks after the birth, you could then save the FMLA for when (if) the wife goes back to work, or any other time.

As far as I know I am able to use sick time as I have no vacation time available. On myenvoyair it tells you, you must use ANY paid time off available which is about 70 hours of sick time for me.

This is what I found:

"Although FMLA leave is unpaid, during any FMLA leave employees must use all accrued paid time off, including vacation leave, sick leave, any other paid time off, and earned time off, unless otherwise stated in the applicable collective bargaining agreement."

Can you give a link to that reference please. Will help very much.

Check yo pm

I went through this last year. They told me I could not use my sick time with FMLA because I wasn't the one who was sick.

I did what ORDinary suggested. I staggered 2 weeks of vacation for when the baby was due. I DTS'd that entire month so I had the entire month off. When my wife went back to work after 3 months, I took my 3 months off. It made the transition for my wife much easier. I've done this twice now and it works very nicely.

It is confusing because we are talking about two different types of FMLA. Baby bonding is a different thing than intermittent FMLA for allergies or whatever - as someone said above, if you're not sick you can't use sick time. That's the rule of thumb for this kind of thing.

I see what you're saying. What bothers me is I am able to get answers on here that these so called "reps" are unable to answer for me.

Before F&H took over there used to be a form that talked about baby bonding (When and how long you could take it and how you could code it). That seems to have vanished. I do remember you could take it anytime within a year after your kid was born and you could not use sick time. I believe the sick can only be used if you had the baby because then it’s true maternity leave. Can’t remember if you could go 60 or 90 days of leave. When I took it I used 6 PVDs of vacation from the year ahead and took the rest unpaid.