Parental Leave In America Sucks. I'm Just Putting My Stank On It

The United States of America is the only developed nation that does not offer paid time to new parents, and to combat that, we parents have had to use any combination of FMLA or paid time off (PTO) from our jobs – if we have enough of the latter. As I learned firsthand last year, FMLA is only a placeholder for our jobs for the six to twelve weeks our employers allow; the income continues if you have enough PTO built up over time to use for that purpose.

But what if we didn’t have the safety net in place?

That didn’t matter in my case, as our daughter was born nearly four months premature. Those six weeks gifted by my wife’s employer certainly were not enough time off to bond with the baby nor was it enough time to let her body heal from emergency labor – and I won’t go into the tepid responses from my job. [Sidebar:  Caeli’s birth is the only time I have called in the four years employed by the company I have missed work. It’s not an indictment of the company, but more of a common refrain many employers share regarding profitability:  more people have to shoulder the load if one individual is away for an extended period of time]. In other words, the same people who are likely pro-life at all costs are the same greedy ones who push for new parents to return quickly to work as if a childbirth were a minor procedure and are more than mildly annoyed with us having to schedule doctor’s appointments, visits with specialists and therapists, and what if childcare falls through that particular day?.

Returning back to work after the addition of a baby mere days after birth should not be a badge of honor.

What was my reward for having a newborn daughter?

I got the weekend off when Caeli was born.

That’s it.

It’s funny I say that because that was the same weekend I had submitted my PTO request a few months prior since I was finally going to put up the storage building my wife keeps griping about and watch the NBA All-Star Game in peace. Fifteen months later, I could not tell you anything about that game, and the building materials are still leaning on the carport walls as a result. I ended up taking leave at various points:  the first week of August (our wedding anniversary week), and eleven days in late November that encompassed Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and my early December birthday. I still feel like it wasn’t enough especially in the beginning – Chastity was recovering from the emergency C-section and dealing with postpartum depression without medication, yet the twelve hour nights at my job and writing the Dad Chronicles were how I managed to cope for those first five months. My coworkers, all of whom have children, encouraged me to keep pushing and some nights were a reliable source of humor!

Just because I wasn’t recovering does not mean my wife didn’t need me.

I was stressed out, Chastity damn near lost it more than once, and we both have been perpetually tired. Many days it felt like we were substitute parents visiting the NICU for 143 of the 146 days Caeli was at UAMS and Arkansas Children’s Hospital fighting for her life:  one or both of us would spend hours with baby bear reading, holding, praying, giving a bath, or talking to her establishing a rapport. For the times we were at home particularly the three days we missed around her, AngelEye [the video cameras set up over each NICU baby’s incubator, and later, crib] allowed us to see what she was doing and which nurses were working with her. When we finally came home whole July 20, we had to figure out how to manage taking care of Caeli – I had only changed a handful of diapers prior to her, and certainly not a girl! Feeding her mounted a larger challenge due to the need to thicken each bottle of milk to honey consistency. There were nights when she would cry for hours at a time or wake up babbling just as she had done at ACH during Emily’s rounds or looking over at Freeman when he glanced toward her.

Coming back to work wasn’t really that big of a burden for me since I had worked all the way through. Bills had to be paid somehow and on-time, meaning I didn’t have the option of using all of my PTO in one felled swoop. In a strange way, it was a blessing to find a sense of normalcy within the office because I didn’t have to answer emails about how she was doing every single day. In addition, I also got to know my wife better when the three of us were at home; hopefully, she rediscovered I was more than just the “nigga payin’ bills ‘round here” and am deeply invested in her. The value in bonding with my wife – and daughter – is greater than this workaholic ever anticipated. At one point I even considered becoming a stay-at-home dad solely to be around the house!

As envious as I get hearing about paternity leave in Scandinavia and throughout Europe lasting for up to two years, I could only imagine being away from the control room a fraction of the time. Give me a guaranteed twelve weeks away from work WITH PAY and the ability to keep my sick leave separate, and I’m good. The current six weeks combined before and after birth are a double edged prescription for serious depression and not enough time to set our logistics plan of action in motion.

Thank our leaders in Congress and the Clinton White House for passing the legislation that did give us FMLA; we are fortunate enough to have employers who offer the benefit without seeing us fall into poverty resulting from the lack of a paycheck for several weeks.