To think moms of premature babies should get extended maternity leave?

[Neverbroken]

Just wanted to know what the view on this is.
I’m absolutely dreading the thought of going back to work when baby is still so small, I feel cheated of the time I should have had being able to bond with her because I was back & forth to the hospital. The whole experience was draining, really frustrating. Sometimes I would just feel in the way or like I was a disruption. I know I’ll never get those weeks back and it feels like going back to work is just around the corner.

Currently India and Pakistan offer better maternity leave than the USA.

@Expressedways wow that just seems cruel!

I really think that babies born too early or very poorly, their parents should be given extra maternity leave. It could a new initiative that could be campaigned for and eventually won. This is not about a race to the bottom but an opportunity to do a hell of lot better than the current system. No one option will fit all and there could exceptions drawn up to help this matter.
Families need support in these situations, really require alot of help. Just even the basics of life kind of goes out of the window, when dealing with a sick child in hospital. It feels like a whole other world and people just try to concentrate their way through a maze.
My family member had an extremely premature baby, who was in hospital for just over 4months, life took on a very pathway.
Everyday was about whether the baby would make it to the next day-so very different and all consuming.
This was many years ago but the family member had to give up her job, which was a real shame because financially it was crippling for them.
I saw all of their situation and always thought why can't we do better?
There is so much money wasted each day by Government-(even just the recent Brexit getting ready campaign). There should better statutory provisions put in place, which could alleviate a lot of worry for families at times of real need.

I think compassion is sometimes lacking in these discussions as the louder message always seems to be that- parents are costing the taxpayer/employer money by not going straight back to work.

The problem with this is the question of 'how poorly' and how to qualify that.

My ds was born 4 days early but was poorly. How do you quantify it? You are asking someone to make a judgment call 'sarah gets and extra 2 months because hee baby was x amount of poorly. But Michelle's baby wasnt ill enough so she gets and extra week's

You can get more than 12 months. You accrue annual leave on mat leave so add that into the end. Plus anything you didnt use before you went off.

YANBU. We should all be allowed three years off, as per the German model. Prevents all the arguments about how sick a baby needs to be to qualify for extended leave and means everyone is happy. Employers don't pay beyond the first year but your job is kept open for you for three years.

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/maternity-leave-worldwide-2017-8

@Anotherlongdrive I didn’t know that! Thank you!!!

neverbroken sending you

I’ve been there. My son was 28 weeks but severely growth restricted so the size of a 24 week baby. We were in for 100 days.

For the benefit of those saying life is not fair....
I’ve found over the years it is just impossible to explain to people. It’s not just that your child is sick and you are living hour by hour, expecting them to die at any minute, surrounded by people who are in the same situation, witnessing ours and eachother’s children going through barbaric procedures, which are necessary to keep them alive (neonates cannot always have anaesthetic, as that in itself can kill them).

But that you then get in a car and leave them to drive for an hour or so to get home and resume your 2-3 hourly pumping schedule throughout the night, call the hospital to check they’re still alive and then get up and start again.

It is extremely common for ex premature babies to have additional hospital time /operations through early childhood.

Indeed, I took unpaid parental leave and unpaid annual leave for that. There is a mechanism in place for that.

It is also vastly more common for ex premature children to have developmental delay and learning disabilities.

But within all of that, the OP is asking about additional UNPAID mat leave.

YANBU

This is doable, it is a defined period. It is unpaid.

Yes, I agree that additional mat leave should be given to parents whose children were in NICU and HDU during the period of mat leave. Covering those parents whose children were born at term but were extremely sick.

By the way, I can assure you this was nobody’s “life choice “ as one poster so considerately put it.

Agreed, Mat leave and Pat leave should not start until the day a baby comes home. My DD2 was in hospital for 9 days meaning hubby only had 5 days with her before he had to go back to work!

Tbh, I think all parents should be entitled to leave if their DC is in hospital whatever their age. So if that happened while on maternity, it would simply stop the clock on maternity while the child was hospitalised.

But any improvement on the current situation would be great.

anotherlongdrive in my place of work, a large multinational with excellent maternity benefits, the company policy was that you couldn’t accrue annual leave.

But I agree it is worth the OP looking into it.

I would look at tagging on unpaid annual leave on the end of your mat leave.

Depending on advice from your doctors when your baby comes home, you might want to save unpaid parental leave for the first few winters.

Agree. And this is coming from someone who doesn’t want kids! I think you should get 12 months mat leave from your due date, and extra on top as needed to cover a premature birth.

I think the difficulty is that pregnasncy/ birth/ early infancy can cause a multitude of issues and problems, there are women who suffer enormously in pregnancy, ha r horrific labours, become very ill after birth, suffer with mental health, babies become very sick, others struggle to feed and so on... that’s the very point of maternity leave surely, to give women and new babies time to adjust in all these different ascaris. I find it hard to prioritise one set of issues over another in terms of who should get more paid leave to be honest.

Yes!
I went back to work and ended up having time off for work related stress/PTSD. Basically went back to work and boss turned into an asshole.

Yanbu.

There’s a Bill for this going through Parliament.

anotherlongdrivein my place of work, a large multinational with excellent maternity benefits, the company policy was that you couldn’t accrue annual leave.

Where do you live, because as far as I an aware (in england and perhaps the whole of the UK) that's illegal.

maternityaction.org.uk/advice/discrimination-during-maternity-leave-and-on-return-to-work/

So if it goes from due date, who pays the part from birth to the due date?

Or how does that work if you had already planned to take mat leave at 36 weeks.

Or what about babies born on their due or after who are also sick?

As I mentioned yesterday, it's out for consultation. Take a look here if you are interested www.gov.uk/government/consultations/good-work-plan-proposals-to-support-families

Although the neonatal leave and pay consultation is now closed, it does seem to have provided the opportunity to express opinions on all the issues raised above.

I agree and I don't. I agree you had a tough start and feel the extra time would help. But I can't agree overall, where would it end. What if your child became ill, born with needs that required stays in hospital. Who is funding all the extra time off in all these valid scenarios, it would cripple many employers. So sympathies and I hope you work things out to suit your family but being a parent isn't straightforward or normal and each of us have different challenges we have to fit in to "normal" life.

in Germany you have a "protected time" when you're pregnant - you have to stop work 6 weeks before due date and then the earliest you can go back to work is 8 weeks after the birth, or 12 weeks after the birth for preemies (defined as born 3 weeks before the due date) or multiples. If you are a working outside the home you receive your full salary for that time too. Which is nice.

This is included in your maternity leave but that is generous here.

*there are exceptions - if you are self-employed for example or if you want to work you can sign a billion release forms to allow you, but nearly no employer will accept that these days

anotherlongdrive I’m in the uk. As far as I remember, you could accrue holiday from mat leave within the calendar year you came back to work, but you couldn’t accrue leave from the year before.

Most places I know won’t let you accrue leave from one year to the next (or at least severely restrict it).

I will read your link.

Oh bless your heart . What a horrible time for you and I really hope your little lady is doing well . I do despair at the tone of some of the posts on this thread ...this is supposed to be a support network ! I definitely think a reasonable employer should consider extra unpaid leave for your situation . Lots of luck and I hope you are all home as a family Asap.X

Maternity leave is a mine field, because everyone has different circumstances, and different views.
DD1 was prem, I went straight from work to hospital and was induced a week later due to pre eclampsia. I was very ill, but DD1 was fine. Went back to work when she was 10 months old and all was fine.
DD2 was full term (37 weeks full term!). But she was very sick. Due to circumstances I was supposed to go back to work when she was 8 months old. Ended up being signed off sick with stress as DD2 was still back and forth to the hospital. Ultimately I didn’t go back to that job.
In my case, longer maternity leave with my perm baby wasn’t necessary, but was with my full term baby. A more understanding employer second time around would have been nice! My current employer is very understanding about DD2’s ongoing medical issues.
I don’t really know why to suggest, as you simply can’t please everyone.

I'm sorry it must be awful emotionally, but I don't agree with this. I don't think it's feasible and I also think it's just too subjective. What about someone who's baby becomes very ill having been born on time, or who is born on time but with some sort of illness? I think generally more support for parents (not necessarily monetarily) is a good idea, but not in this way.

everythingthelighttouches did they pay you for the annual leave in the previous year? According to acas on maternity, you carry it over.