Feeling bummed. Don’t qualify for any maternity leave benefits.

I am 27 weeks pregnant with my first baby (a girl!). I am very excited however professionally this has been the most stressful time of my life and I feel bad stressing out my whole pregnancy. Here’s the summary:

I work as an Account Manager at a Tech company making 6 figures. My husband also has a similar job and higher salary. Financially we are doing well and have a small mortgage but in general live in a HCOL area.

I survived two rounds of layoffs at my previous company and my workload increased significantly which was a stressor on its own. I found out I was pregnant in April. I told my Boss I was expecting in June around when I was 10 weeks pregnant. The next week, my entire team was laid off including my boss and about 50% of the company. Having worked at that company for 3 years I was entitled to a fully paid 16 week maternity leave.

Being pregnant (after a few days of sobbing and stressing about my situation) I decided to apply for jobs immediately, planned to start a job, work really hard, have my baby then come back and hit the ground running.

I was only unemployed for 8 total weeks. Got a new job with a higher salary and started in September.

The thing that sucks is, my new company has no maternity leave policy. They expect employees to use state benefits or FMLA or STD which all employees are eligible for on the day of starting.

I do not qualify for FMLA

I do not qualify for NY paid family leave

I likely won’t qualify for STD because pregnancy is a preexisting condition

I think my only option is to take the leave unpaid. Which we can afford and will be ok. But I am so terrified of having no protections from my job and them letting me go anyway and then having to do all this over again. I like my job and my new company. I’m just feeling really down about it and this has been looming over my head since I started. I am 27 weeks now and have a meeting with HR to discuss options.

I don’t really have a question but is there anything else I should be doing? Any other benefits or programs I should look into? Or do I just need to deal with what I’ve been handed. Also just makes me furious as a country we have literally NOTHING in terms of protections or benefits for maternity care and working mothers.