Entering the great maternity leave debate...

Having just given birth to my second child two months ago, maternity leave has been on my mind a lot lately. With my first baby I was able to take off the full 12 weeks granted me by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Between my vacation and sick hours and short term disability insurance, I was paid at some level for about half of that time. The last six weeks or so, we relied on our savings to make up the difference.

Me on maternity leave with my second child

With my second baby, I did intend to again take the full 12 weeks. This time, I had enough sick and vacation hours that, combined with my short term disability insurance, I was able to be paid 100 percent of my salary for the first eight weeks. After that it would have been unpaid leave.

About five weeks in, my husband had some legal trouble and was put on unpaid administrative leave from his job. I quickly realized that we both could not be on unpaid leave and still pay the bills. I made the difficult decision to come back to work early.

While my coworkers have made every effort to make my transition back to work as easy as possible, I have to admit I felt a bit frustrated and angry that I was being cheated out of this precious time with my newborn daughter, both at my husband and at the maternity leave policies in this country in general. Never before have I wished so much to live in, say, the United Kingdom where they get 52 weeks of paid maternity leave (at least partial pay), or even one of many countries in South America that get 12 weeks or more of maternity leave at 100 percent pay (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, to name a few).

Upon doing a little research (okay, I just went to Wikipedia, but still!), I learned that the United States is the only industrialized country that doesn’t provide paid leave for new mothers nationally, though there are exceptions in some U.S. states. How messed up is that? Mothers in Botswana get paid leave, but moms in the most powerful country in the world are forced to pull together a combination of sick and vacation hours, disability insurance and savings or be unpaid altogether (if they can afford it).

So my question is this, if you are a mother, how much leave did you take and how much of it was paid? Did you feel ready to go back to work when you did?