Unpaid leave was without a doubt the most stressful part of being a new parent—and neither of my kids slept through the night in the first 1.5 years. Life had completely changed for all 3 of us, and we needed to get used to the changes and each other. But we also had increased expenses and decreased pay. I knew every day I wasn’t getting paid was going to make it harder for longer.
I managed to save about 4 weeks PTO in the 6 years I was at my company before I got pregnant, but ended up having to use 2 of those weeks during pregnancy. And I did have short term disability that paid 60% of my pay. I figured it would be workable, but I didn’t find out until a month before that there was a 30 day waiting period for the short term disability and it only paid for up to the end of the 6th week, so depending on what day of the week I gave birth, I would end up getting that 60% for 1 or 1 and a half week’s pay.
My short term disability paid just under $900. Two weeks after I went back to work, I got appendicitis and had to have emergency surgery. The week I had to be out for that (while caring for a newborn baby that I nursed the whole time I was in the hospital) was completely unpaid, because I went back with 0 PTO (we don’t have separate vacation or sick time, it’s all 1 bucket of time off).
That surgery was in December, and we signed a contract on a new house shortly after that since we’d been looking for a while. Then in January we got news of my grandfather in AZ going on hospice, so we had to take a rushed trip there if we wanted to spend any time with him. This was also unpaid and overlapped our move and my son’s first week in daycare. (We weren’t expecting to need daycare for a lot longer but our family arrangement fell through for medical reasons).
Then the whole family was sick constantly from Jan-May from daycare germs. I was earning PTO, but using more than I had earned. (Also, I was made to clock out to pump which further decreased my pay).
I had my daughter just over 3 years later, and hadn’t been able to save more than 2 weeks PTO. Luckily, my job was moved to a remote position and when I came back from leave I was able to keep her home for a year and a half (with some help from family) to avoid another daycare bill. But when she was 6 months old, my husband was diagnosed with colon cancer and needed chemo and multiple surgeries. He is doing well now, but that year he had to take a lot of time off. Each round of chemo took about a week to feel somewhat okay. And chemo was every two weeks. On top of the very normal reaction to chemo, he had several severe reactions which landed us in the ER 3 times.
He was admitted for a few days each time. Again, expenses were increasing and our pay was decreasing. He had some short term disability but it only paid 40%. I had to take unpaid time off to be in the hospital with him, and then again for his surgeries.
Then the following year I had to have surgery for severe endometriosis which was another 2 weeks mostly unpaid. My company requires we take 9 days out of the office every year. This year was the first time my 9 days out has been planned outside of caring for myself or someone in my family. Besides those times and one anniversary trip, I’ve only taken time off a day or too at a time. I haven’t been able to save more than 40hours of PTO at one time since my son was born 7 years ago. So this lack of paid leave is still impacting our family while we are still trying to catch up on bills from years ago. I honestly am not confident that we will be able to do that and bankruptcy is not completely out of the question for us. We are hoping to avoid that, but we’ve still got a year and a half of daycare fees for my daughter a ton of credit card debt (which we didn’t have any when my son was born).
Mel Pinick
Olathe, Kansas