I Need Advice on State Disability Insurance in California

Dear Y.,
Typically, state disability covers approximately the 6 weeks following a birth, but can be longer if it's found to be medically necessary due to complications mom experienced. The rate of pay is based on your income during your "eligibility" period, as another mom suggested. You can get more information about that at the www.edd.ca.gov website.
You may qualify for more time off under the Family Medical Leave Act since you need time to care for your premie baby. The downside is, not all employers have to grant it if there are less than x amount of employees and you don't receive pay during that time. The upside is that you get the time you need and you can still remain employed. Things may have changed, but that's the way it was when I looked into it. Information regarding the FMLA should be on the EDD site as well.
Hopefully, your employer will be understanding and work with you to give you the time you need.

Take care of yourself and your precious baby.
Best of luck to you!

I hope you and baby are doing well. I administer benefits and leaves of absence for my company. Were you working before Sept 2009? EDD looks back over the last 3 qtrs to average your eligibility and rate. You do qualify for disability since you just had a baby, but your rate may be low if you were not working prior to this. 6 weeks is standard for birth 8 weeks for c-section. After disability is over they will send you information regarding Paid Family Leave. Which is up to 6 weeks paid at the same rate as disability.
Another person referrenced Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), however since you have not completed 1 year of service or 1250 hours you are not eligble for this or CA version California Family Rights Act. These are not paid leaves, rather job protection for up to 12 weeks in a year. And it depends on the size of your company, etc.
You most likely have some job protection under the Pregnancy Disability Leave, which does not have a eligibility period and does cover situations like this. The best thing to do is work with your HR person, but if you do not have once you should call the Dept of Labor (DOL) and they can tell you what you qualify for. And http://www.edd.ca.gov is great to do some research.
Good luck, feel free to message me if you need assistance. Take care of you too!

If you worked at all in the year before (2008) or at all before September 2009, then u should qualify for some type of state disability. you see, the state determines your eligibility based on how much between a set amount of time, usuall ending about 5 to 6 months before the actual disability began. (just an example) So if you gave birth in Dec 2009, they would use from July 2008 to June 2009 as your calender. so if you worked in that time at all, divide that by 4(3 months each and whatever period you earned the most, they would use that to determine how much pay you would get... It sounds a lot more confusing that it is.... so if you havent worked at in that time frame, then I don't think you would qualify for state disability. I'm not 100% sure on that, but that is how I understood it to be when I had went through my maternity leave. You can always call the EDD office or go onto their website for more info.

I have been looking into this for my new baby coming in June, you should be eligible, but check out this site it will give you the info you need:

http://www.edd.ca.gov/

you should also be eligible for Paid Family Leave, but you can piggy back that on the end of your SDI (state disability insurance), I would apply asap. Hope that helps!! (though I am not sure how long you needed to be working or if there is a cut off there, the site should help you answer those questions.