Five years ago, when I was pregnant with my first child, a client of mine hoisted in a big gift bag one day.
It was filled with hand-knit and hand-sewn baby blankets and embroidered hoodie towels and washcloths.
It was such a touching gift, especially considering she was a mother herself and an active-duty sailor.
Throughout my pregnancy, she told me about delivering and caring for her first child, all while she served her country.
In an extremely male-dominated field, she had a hard time. She didn’t have a support network, and when she had to return to work – and sometimes various periods of longer-than-normal separation from her son at just six weeks post-partum - it was heart-wrenching and logistically difficult.
She had to navigate breastfeeding and pumping and all the emotions that came with leaving him with her a caregiver that wasn’t her or her husband, who is also active-duty and was deployed at the time.
While I’ve heard the maternity-leave situation described as less than ideal by many working mothers, including military mothers, I realized soon that six weeks maternity leave was often a gross injustice to women who serve and families who sacrifice.
Which is why, when the U.S. Navy announced last week that they tripled maternity leave offered to active-duty sailors and Marines – making maternity leave 18 weeks long instead of six – I fist-pumped like it affected me personally.
I’m really proud of who my husband works for; I’m happy for the women he serves with.
You can complain about the Old Boy’s Club all you want; a lot of it can be true when it comes to the military. But currently, the U.S. Navy is quite a bit more progressive when it comes maternity leave than most of the country and a lot of major corporations.
I am so happy for my generous former client, who is pregnant with her second child. She now has triple the amount of time to recover from her C-section and establish a connection with her second-born.
This labor and delivery won’t be as heart-wrenching. She’ll have more support. She has more post-partum recovery time; she has time she’s owed for her service.
That’s patriotic progress to be proud of.
