It is well established that the US has some of the worst maternity leave policies in the world.  While most countries offer paid leave to new mothers, the US and Papua New Guinea are the only two countries that don’t.  Contrary to popular belief, employers, in large part, have not stepped in to provide this benefit.  Only 12% of workers get access to paid leave through their employers.  To make matters worse, the institutions involved in regulating and implementing maternity leave generally determine their policies around the erroneous assumption that most births occur without significant complications and with an expectation that the baby will be born full-term.  In reality, approximately 11% of births in the US are premature births, and up to 9 out of 10 births experience some sort of complication.  Despite these figures, maternity leave policies even at the most generous companies typically leave little room for exceptional cases that don’t fit neatly into the problem-free birth story.

When my son was born 16 weeks early in 2013, I anticipated my son having a long hospital stay, so I decided to return to work three weeks after his birth so that I could save my maternity leave for when he came home.  While my son was in the hospital fighting for his life, I went to work each day, left promptly at 5pm to spend the evening at my son’s crib side, and maintained a schedule of pumping every three hours, even in the middle of the night, to provide breast milk for my son so that he could receive the health benefits of my milk.  Needless to say, this was an extremely stressful time in my life.

My employer at the time had a policy that provided new mothers with up to 12 weeks of partially paid leave as long as the employee had been with the company for at least a year by the time the leave commenced.  Their policy also stated that in order to receive the cash benefit, the leave must be taken continuously within 12 weeks of the baby’s birth.

My son stayed in the hospital for 140 days – or four and a half months – before coming home.  Despite the fact that I had by then achieved the requirement of 12 months of employment with the company, I was not eligible for paid leave when my son came home because he was older than 12 weeks old by then.  In order to receive any compensation during my time off, I was required to use my remaining vacation days, which inevitably meant that I would have limited flexibility to take my son to his numerous doctor’s appointments once I returned to work.  Like many other preemies born as early as he was, my son came home on oxygen, an apnea monitor and a list of ten specialists that he was required to see for regular follow-up.  On top of that, ongoing co-pays for doctor visits, extra equipment fees and the standard costs of caring for a baby meant that I needed my pay then more than ever.

Just as most pregnant women do, I fully expected to have a “normal” pregnancy and birth.  My son’s prematurity was unexpected and due to no fault of my own.  The truth is, women can experience a number of complications during birth that may lead to an extended hospital stay for either the mother or baby.  In any of these cases, the mother would be forced to accept a reduced cash benefit or no benefit during their maternity leave, according to my former employer’s policy, even if they had met the one year of employment requirement.  Surprisingly, I later found that many companies have similar clauses in their maternity leave policies.

Presumably, the reason that my former employer included the clause in their policy that required the baby to be less than 12 weeks old for paid leave eligibility is to prevent new mothers from delaying their leave to get around the prerequisite of 12 months of employment with the company.  Anyone who has ever had a baby or cared for a newborn knows how unnecessary such a policy is.  Unless the new mother has substantial financial resources or a set of ready caregivers at her disposal – in which case, paid maternity leave would arguably be less urgent anyway – a newborn coming home necessitates one or both parents taking leave.   Delaying leave would mean diminished bonding with the newborn after having just gone through hours of labor or abdominal surgery to give birth, no time for physical or emotional recovery, and would make breastfeeding nearly impossible.  The only reasonable situation in which such a delay in taking leave would make sense is an extended hospital stay for either the mother or baby.  By not adequately accounting for plausible exceptions to a normal birth, the 12 week old cutoff, then, only serves to penalize those who need the benefit of paid maternity leave most.

Maternity leave policies are intended to provide safeguards for new parents, allowing them to take time off to care for a newborn without fear of losing their job, and for those working for employers that offer paid maternity benefits, to take that leave without significant financial disruption.  Isn’t it only fair, then, that companies be obligated to provide families that not uncommonly experience birth complications the same benefits that families which experience uncomplicated births receive?