> A need to spend some of the precious and disgustingly short
>maternity leave time trying to get the baby...
I just had a radical thought! When I read "disgustingly short maternity
leave," I thought, "and even *that* is only by the employer's good graces.
It's not as if it's US policy." Then I thought, "and what if all the
mothers going back explained sweetly that they wouldn't be able to come back
for 7 weeks, not 6?" They wouldn't get fired, most of them (and we'll let
those who *would* get fired out of this); their employers would grouse,
threaten, stomp their feet... and be forced to wait out the extra week.
It's only 5 days, after all, but it's another precious 7 to the mom.
Is it possible that we women could just take the bull by the horns and start
lengthening these ridiculous "leaves" ourselves? And after we've done 7
weeks for a while, we start explaining that we just can't come back before
8. At that point, we'd have added *33%* to our leaves pretty painlessly,
and could round it utterly painlessly from "8 weeks" to "2 months". The
rest of the world would laugh at a leave as short as 2 months. But my
goodness! How very much better than 6 weeks!
Do we really need to wait for legislation to protect us? What if we just
start creeping into longer leaves simply by explaining that we can't come
back *quite* as early as our employers expect? Can we organize??
Ah! I just finished Susan's post, and see that she's flirting with the same
idea. Let's start suggesting it!!
--
Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC, LLLL Ithaca, NY
www.wiessinger.baka.com
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