Spouse Visa Extension general questions

Hi everyone.

First of all, I wanted to say how much I appreciate this forum. It has been super helpful for many years.

I managed to apply for my ILR a few years back, with the help of these boards and all the helpful members. Then my wife and I managed to apply for her spouse visa application and it is that time again, that I return back here for another guidance.

We are applying for her spouse visa extension and we already have quite a lot of information gathered. We also have sample applications to guide us through ours. But there are a few very specific questions we have and perhaps someone with a similar situation/experience will be able to give us an idea.

1. Her current spouse visa expires at the beginning of September, therefore we need to submit her application sometime in August. We are expecting a baby at the end of July and she will be giving birth here in London. To our understanding, the baby is not dependant on her visa application, is this correct? Also, we believe we will still need to submit the baby's birth certificate along with the application, which means that we will need to apply for the birth certificate as soon as possible after the baby is born, as the birth certificate usually takes a bit of time to be issued. We think that this might still take time, and therefore we will need to submit the application first and send the birth certificate to Home Office at a later date (once it is issued). This should not be a problem, correct?

2. In September 2020, we travelled back to our country with the original plan to return back to the UK within 3 months, however, the Covid-19 situation (lockdowns and travel restrictions) delayed many things for us and we could only return back to the UK in February 2021. Therefore we have been absent for around 5 months. We have been living with our family there and we are unsure how to correctly document this in our application. Technically, I have still been paying the UK bills and I have been working remotely with the same company here in the UK, so we are not sure whether our absence counts towards "If you and your partner lived with relatives or friends for some or all of the 2-year period, please provide a letter from the relative(s) and/or friend(s) confirming this." If it does, shall we be providing a letter confirming this from our family members back in our country?

3. Within the application, there is a question "What UK visa, entry clearance or grant of leave do you have?". Our answer to this is "SPOUSE/PARTNER LEAVE TO ENTER". Is this correct or should we just say Spouse Visa?

4. When we applied for her spouse visa application back in 2018, her visa was refused the first time due to the wrong English Test submitted (a mistake made by a consultant we hired to help us with the application). Then we submitted the application again, with the correct English Test and it went all good. So now, in the extension application, we believe we need to document this in "Have you ever been refused a visa for any country, including the UK?" as much as possible, correct?

5. Financial information - I have and will be supporting my wife financially. I am a contractor Software Engineer, working through my LTD with various clients. Since my employment is not permanent basis, I believe I will need to provide my company documents (such as me being a director and the main shareholder) and a few invoices, along with my company bank statements and my personal bank statements showing the dividend transfers to my account. Is this correct?

I know some questions might be naive, but I tried my best to have them be Yes/No questions.

I appreciate you reading through it all. Have a great day!