Hopes miscarriage leave will break ‘taboo’
Bleeding and in pain, Becca was in hospital miscarrying her eight-week pregnancy but was still expected to take work calls.
It was Christmas Eve 2019, and the 25-year-old from Taranaki was on call and expected to work through the busy holiday season. She was back at work the next day.
‘‘There were a couple of times when I would just go into the bathroom at work and cry because that was my way of letting it go,’’ she said.
New Zealand’s Parliament made waves around the world last month when it voted unanimously to give mothers and their partners three days of bereavement leave after a miscarriage or stillbirth, including in surrogacy and adoption.
New Zealand is now one of few countries to legalise paid leave for miscarriages.
A miscarriage occurs in about two out of 10 pregnancies, according to the Ministry of Health, while the College of Midwives says miscarriage affects about one in every four women. Thousands of New Zealand parents experience the loss of a baby before birth each year.
The law would have made a difference to Becca. She wasn’t able to take any time off until three weeks after her miscarriage, when her manager was back from holiday. She took two annual leave days.
The Dominion Post is not using her last name because she still works for the same company.
‘‘I wish it was a week,’’ she said of the law change. ‘‘Three days is still great to have because you can grieve as if you have lost an actual human being. With my work, I just don’t think they saw it like that.’’
Her manager had a ‘‘she will be right’’ attitude, she said. ‘‘His [her manager’s] way of dealing with things was just carrying on, and he thought that is what I needed to do.
It was really hard. I just had to keep going and I was in pain.’’
Part of the issue was the ‘‘taboo’’ that still surrounds miscarriages, said Kathryn van Beek, the woman who set the wheels in motion for the law change.
The Dunedin writer approached her local MP after suffering her own loss and being shocked to find miscarriage wasn’t included in bereavement leave.
‘‘I got some advice on that which was that you would have to have a conversation with your employer and come to an agreement whether it was a bereavement,’’ she said.
‘‘I just didn’t think anyone who was going through what can be quite a traumatic experience would be wanting to have that conversation.’’
She started a petition that quickly garnered 7000 signatures. She collected personal stories, which she sent through to her MP.
While most employers wanted to ‘‘do the right thing’’ there were some outliers. ‘‘Some people did face some pretty harsh attitudes,’’ she said.
Now she hopes the law change will ‘‘lead to some more empathy’’.
‘‘I think it [miscarriage] is not normalised even though it’s really normal. You can feel a strange sense of shame which really comes out of nowhere and doesn’t make a lot of sense,’’ she said.
Labour MP Ginny Andersen, who initiated the bill, said it would give people three days to start to grieve. ‘‘Typically people take sick leave, but it’s not sickness – it’s loss.’’
But more needed to be done to break down the taboo. ‘‘It’s the idea that we want to make it more open and talk about it more.’’
Becca, who had a weeks ago, struggled baby eight to come to terms with her loss. She had to go to the hospital twice with miscarriage symptoms before she was told she was miscarrying, and didn’t feel supported.
She used up the five free counselling sessions available through her employer and couldn’t afford more on her own.
The hospital has since apologised. ‘‘Between that and the ordeal at the hospital, it was all quite a lot. I did end up having a mental breakdown,’’ she said.
The new law would’ve made a difference to her wellbeing in the months following her miscarriage.
‘‘I just wish it was there when I had mine.’’