Ali’s Story

I am a local pediatrician and lactation counselor.  I count myself extremely lucky to have two children. My story starts when I was pregnant with my daughter, my first born. 

It was difficult, I threw up multiple times a day throughout the pregnancy.  My employer told me that I could take as much time off as I wanted, but there would be no pay and I would have to make up for all missed overnight and weekend on-call shifts.  I had determined that I could support eight weeks without pay, so I had to do eight extra weekdays and two extra weekends of on-call during my pregnancy.  I was typically called multiple times a night, so between work, vomiting, and not sleeping, I was exhausted. 

I was the primary breadwinner, and the one holding our health insurance for our family.  So, I felt this pressure to minimize my time off.  I had no time to respect the needs of my own pregnancy.

My daughter’s birth was easy, but everything that followed was not.  My daughter was extremely colicky. She remains, to this date,  the most colicky baby I have ever met, and I'm not saying that lightly. Her routine for the first 3 months was to feed for 45 minutes, cry for 45 minutes, and sleep for 45 min. Repeat the cycle 8 times a day.  As a doctor, I am used to sleep deprivation and stress, but this was the most sleep deprived, most stressed and most anxious I have ever been in my life.   I became increasingly anxious about returning to work, and wondered without sleeping more than four interrupted hours a day how I could return to work and to the on-call schedule.

I also wondered if I didn’t return to work, how our family would manage.

I went back to work after eight weeks, but our home reality worsened. At 12 weeks postpartum, my husband was hospitalized.  I can not describe my level of stress at that point.  I still had to work. I still had to pay the bills. I was still the one with the health insurance.  We were lucky, he got help and his parents helped us immensely, but in retrospect, we simply survived each day.  

After this, I re-prioritized my life, and eventually started a new job.  The promise of paid leave was a factor in this decision.  Despite swearing we would never have another child, two years later, I became pregnant. I continued to work full time and I was paying the bills and doing calls, though not as often as before. I knew that I would have 12 weeks of paid leave.  However, I went on bedrest during my pregnancy, which started to eat away at those 12 weeks.  

When I was 30 weeks and went in for an ultrasound, I had an awful moment where we were told that our son may have a cleft lip and palate.  As a doctor, my mind went to every single syndrome involving cleft lips and palates, and the long term implications. At the very least, we knew our son would need surgery after he was born, which would entail taking more time off.  This was a new consideration weighing against my now 11 weeks of postpartum leave.

When my son was born I felt like I had won the lottery!  He only had a cleft lip and would only need one surgery. My son’s surgery was in the following calendar year, which meant my paid-time off was reset and with the support of our village, we made it work. Unfortunately, the stress around this led to me and my husband getting divorced and my becoming a single parent. 

Again, I was lucky and had a village of people helping my family. 

Fast forward about a decade, and life is much better.  My son has been able to receive the services he needs.  My daughter is a teenager who is sweet, thoughtful, kind and helpful.  I am remarried, and lean into my husband on a daily basis.

I truly believe, with my first child, if I had the security of paid leave, a significant amount of stress could have been alleviated. I think there might have been a greater degree of sanity with the security of paid leave. I could not have had my son without paid leave, needing time to recover postpartum, to take time off for his surgery and care. The blessing of having paid leave at that point was a godsend.

I am very grateful for the ability to have had paid leave after my son was born, for the security of having a paycheck, even if reduced.  I knew that I had the option to return to work, that I would continue to have health insurance and this security was priceless during that time.

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