On May 7, after an induction and 15 hours of intense labor, Andres gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. The baby weighed 8 pounds and 13 ounces.
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Andres was told that maternity leave does not apply to people in her situation, but instead is used for people who "give birth and care for a healthy newborn baby."
It says she ended up taking many weeks off through short term disability, which is honestly how most employers in the US handle time off after the birth of a child anyway. That COA offers maternity leave at all is pretty good for a municipal employer in Texas. Not to be rude about it, but the purpose of parental leave is definitely to give parents time to be with their newborn. FMLA and short term disability are the avenues for anyone experiencing grief/loss/mental health issues, whether it’s due to the death of a newborn, an older child, a partner isn’t particularly relevant to the organization granting leave
That’s exactly what I thought when I read the article. She shouldn’t get maternity leave, she should get bereavement leave. They are not the same thing.
Part of the point maternity leave is to allow time to physically recover from having your body ripped open. The baby being stillborn doesn’t make the birthing process any less horrifically damaging to the body.
Part of the point maternity leave is to allow time to physically recover from having your body ripped open
Maternity and paternity leave both exist to allow new parents protected time to bond with and attend to their newborn. That time can certainly be used to recover physically, but there are many other medical situations that involve people’s bodies being ripped open in much worse ways, there are medical leave and disability leave for that
FMLA is unpaid typically. Short term disability also isn’t full pay I think it’s 50-60%. From what I’ve seen, family leave is fully paid time off. So… You get fucked. Bereavement exists but most employers don’t offer it nor is it required federally. Apart from that the time you get away isn’t much compared to family leave. Not enough to have your fucking body recover from still born birth.
People’s bodies need to recover from all sorts of things all the time, it doesn’t make sense how this would be treated much differently from a or other surgery or medical or mental health issues from a leave standpoint. COA pays out 70% of salary for short-term disability
And yet people still move to this state and Florida in droves. Liberal people from California. I don't understand why people keep moving to Texas with it's terrible social pact and power issues. The businesses only move there because the workers are there too.
It’s cheap and usually a great place to live with negatives that will only affect some of the poorer people, and certainly not the rich liberals that are moving here. Source: live in Texas
sadly, I don’t think it’s liberals moving to the state. Cali has a lot of republicans that are looking for a place to be where they can feel superior and literally control women. They get off to this story the folks moving to TX.
HR person here, you don’t lead with that. You lead with “Hey we heard what happened, we’re here to offer you FMLA, take your time in filling it out and we’ll just assume you’re taking the full 12 weeks”. If they didn’t offer it, they super fucked up.
My favorite part is the implication that if you give birth to an UNhealthy baby, you just naturally be good to go back to work right away, and not like, sitting outside the NICU 24/7.
Being the details aren’t known, it’s hard to know if the mother knew it was a non viable pregnancy, if she received prenatal care, etc.
Per the article:
Andres’ pregnancy was relatively uneventful — every ultrasound was normal.
Then, shortly after her 37 week doctor’s appointment, Andres and her husband got sick.
Doctors monitored the baby while Andres was treated for dehydration. Assured her baby was OK, Andres was sent home. The next day, Andres felt better but could no longer feel her baby move. She called her doctor again, who told her to return to the emergency room.
Finally:
“And that was that,” she adds. “It was just out of the blue.”
What a horribly callous response from someone who obviously didn’t read the article. What was the purpose of your comment and speculation?
This is what the majority votes for, unfortunately…which includes many women.
This is such a cold editorial just further isolating someone who probably already feels lost and possibly alone in her situation.
Also from the article:
Andres works for the City of Austin in the Austin Public Health Department
As long as we’re gonna jump to conclusions, I’d venture a guess that as a young person working in public health in the most liberal city in this backwards state, she’s probably not one of those women. Either way, pro-abortion or pro-life, I don’t think “random infant death” was on the ballot. Yes, women’s health was delivered a huge blow, but it’s not the opinion of the majority.
Very well said, thank you. Too many people see this and think "Tough, but them's the rules" without consideration to the damage this family suffered, and that others in this state will also suffer unless things change.
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