Maternity leave, sickness and premature still birth

[Tigger85]

Hi, just wondering if anyone can help me out. I went on pregnancy related sick after the 20 week scan due to fetal abnormalities being found, my baby was then stillborn at 26+3. I rang my work asking how to fill in the may leave application form after looking at the gov webpage and they told me to fill it in differently to how the gov says. I was planing my babies funeral at this point and massively distressed and just did what they said. They told me to put the due date as the day he was actually born 13/07/20 not when he was due which was 17/10/20 they said they needed no evidence of his premature still birth even though I asked if they were sure as that's not what it says on the gov page. Due to this I think they dtaetrdy mat leave 5 weeks before he was born as I was on pregnancy related sick. I have since spoken to them again and have been asked to provide his stillbirth certificate and the mat b1 which they already have. Will this change the date mat leave starts or will it still start 5 weeks before his stillbirth due to being on preg related sick? I can't find an answer online, I don't trust my work to actually know what they are doing as they said they haven't had to deal with a stillbirth before. Online it says mat leave can be triggered early if you are on preg related sick 6 weeks before estimated due date but he was born before long before his due date? It also says for premature and stillbirth it starts the day after the baby is born but has nothing mentioned about if you were on pregnancy related sick prior to the premature or still birth. I just need to know when I will reach the SMP only and unpaid parts as we can't afford to live on that and I will need to give notice and hopefully work will find some sort of alternative duties for me as I often work with pregnant women and babies and will frequently go to the hospital where it all happened. My mental health is in tatters with nightmares, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, suicidal thoughts and I can't even look at babies or pregnant women atm, I don't see it magically getting better in a month or two.

Sorry that you’ve had such an awful time. I found this link that might help .
www.acas.org.uk/your-maternity-leave-pay-and-other-rights/taking-maternity-leave

I’m so sorry for the loss of your baby.

Your due date was the October date and your sick pay pre birth should be sick pay not maternity leave in these circumstances.

I would ask your management chain to sort it out for you. Emphasise you’ve been given wrong information, you’re extremely distressed and this is making a dreadful time worse and are losing out financially as a result.

@UpperLowercaseSymbolNumber

I’m so sorry for the loss of your baby.

Your due date was the October date and your sick pay pre birth should be sick pay not maternity leave in these circumstances.

I would ask your management chain to sort it out for you. Emphasise you’ve been given wrong information, you’re extremely distressed and this is making a dreadful time worse and are losing out financially as a result.

I spoke to management and they said legally the sick leave has to be taken as maternity leave as it was within 6 weeks of his premature still birth. They said it doesn't matter that his due date was October and there's no way around it so I have now had 3 months of maternity even though my baby has only been gone 6 weeks as of yesterday. I wish I didn't go sick when I found out there were abnormalities now, I should have struggled on through. I have retained placenta too, abit came out but there might still be more so I might still be physically recovering by the time I have to go back. Gp said it could take weeks or months until they do a scan to check due to covid.

Op What they’ve said doesn’t align with the government site

www.gov.uk/maternity-pay-leave/leave

I would speak to:
maternityaction.org.uk/advice-line/
As I really think they are giving you wrong info and this should give you confidence to deal with it.

Oh, I'm so sorry for your loss. I hope you are receiving lots of support and love.

Have you contacted ACAS to help you resolve this? If possible, get them to advise in writing so that you can forward this to your employer. They should be falling over backwards to make sure you are not inconvenienced or worrying about money.

Hi @Tigger85 I’m so sorry for your loss. I don’t know about the mat leave (but seems pps have given good advice) - however, if you are now needing to return to work sooner than you expected/ feel able to, can you get signed off sick (with stress)? I was signed off for 3 months with stress when my daughter died. I’m sorry you are having to deal with this work stress when you have much more important things going on right now.

I want to say thank you to everyone for your condolences for the loss of my baby boy and also thank you for the advice. I have called maternity action who have confirmed the earliest I can be put into mat leave is 14th July not the 2nd of June due to rules for premature and still birth being mat leave starts the day after the baby is born. Also they can't say being preg related sick before he was born triggers mat leave in this case because you can't have mat leave before a baby is 24 weeks gestation and he was born at 26+3. They are going to send me this in writing and by email, then I will approach my union rep and arrange a meeting with managment and HR and a union rep. Hopefully I can prevent them from ever doing this and causing unnecessary stress and financial hardship to any other women who have had a still birth or premature birth in the future.

I'm sorry your work have treated you so appallingly and I'm glad you have had the correct advice. I would as much leave as possible and ask for an occ health assessment about reasonable adjustments before even thinking about returning. Your workplace may not have dealt with your circumstances before but surely anyone knows that you deserve all the kindness and sympathy in the world.

I don't have any advice that hasn't already been said.

I'm so so sorry for your loss. And I'm so shocked that your work is treating you in such an appalling way. It's disgusting.

My work is an NHS trust and I am a frontline hcpc. The one good thing they have done is an occy health refferal who have arranged councelling for me. I am thinking I should probably ring ACAS and possibly citizens advice as well so that I have multiple sources saying they have wrongly put me on maternity leave as I'm sure they will argue that I am still wrong. My next fight with them is going to be with my annual leave I can just see it now. I was going to take it all in September do that I would have the last month off before my son was due to be born, because he was premature I haven't used any of my entitlement and they will probably say I can't carry it over. I don't blame my direct manager, they said they didn't know what to do and asked HR who told them the wrong thing. That manager asked them again when I asked when has my mat leave started as my pay looks wrong and again they were told the wrong thing by HR.