Maternity Leave?

You may be wondering why there's a question mark in the title. Mainly because I would like to know why it doesn't exist here. Yes we have FMLA and some companies have maternity leave but it isn't much. And it doesn't compare to other countries. The ideal would be to be able to stay at home with your child if you so choose. However, that's not an option for many of us. I also feel it's cruel to place a child of 6 or 12 weeks into day care. That's my personal opinion but I think babies need to be with their parents. At least until they're one. We should be given the opportunity to stay at home after giving birth and to be paid for it. If you work, you should have that promise. That you can leave your job for more than 12 weeks and get money so you can care for your child and not worry about the bills. Not only that but breastfeeding is awfully hard to maintain if you have to go back to work at one month or even three months. If we speak of how important family is and all the benefits of breastfeeding, why not do something to show that? It's so hard knowing I go back to my job at the end of October. We're already struggling with nursing and I feel so much stress knowing my time to nurse and not pump is so limited. I've been pumping since the day after Monkey was born and it's exhausting.

There has to be a way to allow women to stay home and care for their children and not feel guilty about it. It seems ridiculous to me that this has to happen. I think it's incredibly difficult to establish a good nursing relationship when you know you'll have to go back to work and be pumping soon. It just isn't fair. Yeah I'm whining a little but it seems sad to me that our country can't help out women and children. It's not about handing out welfare or something to people. It's about giving children a good start in life. We need to start practicing what we preach. I'm not going to lie. I'm scare to death to go back to work with the amount of sleep I've gotten. That would be next to nothing. Having a newborn is an adjustment. We can't all afford nannies or people to help us care for our babies at night. So we do the best we can. But I have to say the best this country is doing just isn't good enough.