Kelly’s Story:
I live in Portland in a household of 4, with my husband and our 2 kids. Milo is 4yrs old and Quillan is 15 months old.
I have been worked with pregnant and nursing moms for 2.5yrs, as an on-call employee with no benefits.
My husband works part-time as a barista and has been for the past 2 years. We both work part-time because we can’t afford the high cost of childcare. We have opposite work schedules so that we are able to care for our children and not incur childcare cost.
Working without benefits meant that when I had my second child in October 2014, I had no paid leave at all. The time I had to take off to have my baby and care for him was strictly dictated by what we could afford. With great stress and difficulty, we were able to save enough for me to be off work for close to 8 weeks.Our whole family was impacted by the loss of my income. We had to take my older son out of pre-school for six months because we could not afford it. We applied for food stamps, something we had never done before. When we exhausted our savings and ran out of things to cut out of our budget, I had to return to work and leave my newborn.
We very consciously decided to make the financial sacrifice to have that time with our baby. I needed to recover and I am well aware of the importance of bonding with my baby for both of our health and wellbeing.
However, we have never recovered from that financial sacrifice. My family lives from paycheck to paycheck. My husband and I have little time together because we have to work opposite schedules. If I had had paid family leave, we would have been able to get off to a stronger start, and would have been able to bond with our baby without so much incredible stress and worry.