Dear Madame HR, I recently found out I’m pregnant and I’m terrified to tell my boss. Last year my co-worker had a baby and when she came back they transferred her to a crappy job where she files all day. I heard a rumor that they fired someone else when she was on maternity leave. I can’t afford to lose my job, what do I do? –Knocked up Dear Knocked Up, Well, first of all, congratulations on your forthcoming bundle of joy. I’m sure you are feeling enough stress, and probably a little nausea right now, and that’s before you even start to think about the quagmire that is leave law in this state/country. Leave laws are one of those things that most HR professionals still have to research every time they come up because they are an alphabet soup of confusion. I feel like it took me years to really understand, not only what all the acronyms stand for, but what they actually mean. And I feel like that’s happened because the females at my current company are a fertile lot. I have between four and eleven women on maternity leave at any given time so I feel like I can recite the laws in my sleep. Leave laws are one of those funny things that exist purely to force employers to be compassionate. Employers hate shit like that. From the employer perspective, I get it, it’s hard to keep positions open while someone is gone for 1-3 months. On the other side though, why should you lose out just because you get sick/have a baby/need to care for a sick relative, etc. So I get it, really I do. Leave laws are important, okay. That being said they are also a big...