...to think this extended maternity leave bollocks just needs to stop.

[ScreamedAtTheMichaelangelo]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-54089754

I can't be the only one to think the campaign has run its course and just needs to stop?

Labouring women are still not allowed to be with their partners in anything but an hour of the actual birth....the phrase 'bigger fish to fry' can't help but spring to mind.....

Just plain greedy.
This does nothing to promote women in the workplace, or women just generally.

YANBU.
It's unfortunate, but we've all had to accept that 2020 has been shit for everything. It's just bad luck if you give birth during a pandemic, just like it's just bad luck that people had to cancel holidays, couldn't sit exams, haven't seen family, have had to adjust to all kinds of things...

I agree

YANBU it’s grabby and unreasonable. Makes me think of an acquaintance of mine who took a full year off of maternity and then phoned in sick for 3 months. Then did the same with her 2nd child as she didn’t want to go back to work . Fair enough if you want to be a SAHP but should your employer pay for it

YANBU

Everyone has suffered in their own way 2020. Everyone has missed out. Maternity leave is for baby bonding and mother’s recovery. This has not been affected by Covid.

I take it you haven't had a baby in lockdown then? I did. It was really difficult. A bit different to having a holiday cancelled I think.
I'm undecided, but I completely understand why some people would want to campaign for it.

Yanbu. I can sympathise with new mothers during lockdown, but it’s been a crap time for many, many people. And this woman blaming lockdown for her son’s separation anxiety is vvv unreasonable too.

Where does it end though? Should women who have to take maternity leave early due to sickness get extra added on after the baby is born because women who work to their due date get longer with baby? Should I have got longer because my dd was in hospital for the first 3 months of her life? Or women who suffer PND and dont leave the house for months?

100% with you @SouthernComforts. It's all too much of a mess...who would get what?

Yes....I can understand and sympathise with the difficulties of not having the same support network a mum outside of lockdown might have had. But can anyone hand on their heart say that another three months of maternity leave would rectify this?

My daughter had severe separation anxiety. Outside of lockdown. Shit happens - some babies get it and I don't think Covid can be blamed for everything.

@RunningFromInsanity

Just plain greedy. This does nothing to promote women in the workplace, or women just generally.

Absolutely. Women are bearing the brunt of this epidemic in far more damaging ways than this.

@Rae5647....okay - but would three months of extra paid leave help this?

I was asked to sign this petition. I chuckled and politely refused.

I spent half of my baby’s first year in lockdown. It is what it is. He had to start nursery last with no settling in sessions and having not really been left alone with anyone except myself and DH. Wasn’t the best but I had to go back to work so we had to deal with it.

If there wasn’t a lockdown, would the women campaigning for this really have left their children with others to the extent that their child wouldn’t have had separation anxiety? I highly doubt it. Separation anxiety is a completely normal developmental phase.

And as for those who have said they have been ‘robbed’ of their maternity leave and the chance to make Mum friends... I have no words. What about those women whose babies are born prem and spend a lot of their maternity leave in the NICU? We don’t hear them complaining.

Like PPs have said, plenty have lost out this year. Need to chalk it up to experience and move on.

I'm not saying I don't sympathise, or that it's been easy having a baby this year and not being able to see family etc for so long with the newborn. It's not. It's shit.
But it's been shit for everybody.

There are loads of reasons maternity leave won't go as planned. This time, for a lot of women, it was a pandemic. Yes it sucks. But your employer cant be expected to struggle even more due to the pandemic by paying further maternity leave. Yes, it sucks, but this pandemic has sucked for a lot of people.

I had a lockdown baby (as my posting history will confirm). It’s brutal but I just don’t think the economy can cope with extended maternity leave.

I’ve just returned to work after having my baby three weeks before lockdown started. I had an appalling maternity leave, it was a very isolating, lonely, miserable experience. I ended up developing PND which I believe was partly caused or at least exacerbated by the CV situation. I feel like I have missed out on the special experience maternity leave is supposed to be but for my own mental health I was happy that maternity leave ended. I think many women feel that they have not had the experience that they were expecting and hoping for and that is time they will never get back. Many haven’t been able to meet other Mams and enjoy the range of experiences usually available for them and their baby. In the big scheme of how much many has been spent relating to CV I think investing to supporting women to extend maternity leave would not be wasted.

I wouldn’t necessarily support it but equally people who had lovely mat leaves seeing friends and attending baby groups can be so bloody horrible to other (mainly first time) mums. I’m due my second and tbh all the restrictions on partners at scans and nct groups hasn’t affected me- but I can recognise that if it was my first I’d be gutted. Think outside your own bloody box!

Fuck off! Months of my maternity leave was spent sitting beside my DD’s incubator.
(I know it’s a bit different now and some companies offer EML for preemie families)

It’s the biggest load of bollocks I’ve ever heard. They’ve had their maternity leave. It hasn’t been cut. It’s just bloody pathetic.

People have lost their jobs etc and they’re moaning about missing baby group and baby massage etc! Get a bloody grip!!

She only missed a few months anyway! FGS. I came back from mat leave just before lockdown, when DD was 10 mths old. Got her settled into nursery, had nursery shut down, so I was WFH in an industry that required a LOT of extra work die to CV plus baby to look after. My friend went back to work in April from mat leave - ICU nurse straight in the deep end. Not being able to go to a few baby groups to socialise would have been comparative bliss.

@lineandsinker i mean....that's a whole different kettle of fish too. A parent of a preemie doesn't get an extension if they spend 80% of their maternity leave in the hospital. And these jokers want three months because they weren't able to go to baby massage?

I had a baby during lockdown. It’s been utterly shit and we have lost out on so much but then so have most people in their own way.

I am against extended Mat leave. Mainly because it wouldn’t do us any good in the workplace. I’d rather have been a new mum during the pandemic than my family member who is a doctor and can barely even talk about what she saw.

Hugs to all new mums x

YANBU