When a member stays at the same level (you were Silver on your previous TP year, even if it overlapped) the systems don't update the status expiry dates until the end of the TP collection year.

If you move up a level during your year, the expiry date for the new status is updated at the time of the upgrade (i.e. it then shows all of your remaining current year + full next year + 1 month)

I'm sure there is some arcane reason lost to the depths of time why they handle these two scenarios differently, but it's been like that for some time. During the COVID extensions, this fact caused a bit of unhappiness amongst many members (yours truly included) as they just slapped an extension onto whatever expiry was showing at the time. This meant people who had just stepped up could end up with longer extensions than those who had been at the same Silver, Gold etc for several years.

I've never personally used the maternity leave benefit, so I'll ask others to chip in here - it might make sense to wait until your expiry data has updated in early April 2025 before applying, for that same reasoning. If they just make a manual adjustment, you want to have your expiry already sitting at 30 Apr 2026