After being stitched up after my C-section, I felt relief. Relief that my daughter had landed and relief that the painful bit was over.
But it was only just beginning. You’re prepared for the sleepless nights and the early rises. But you’re not prepared for the torn stitches, blocked milk ducts and defeatedly sobbing into the early hours.
The fact that women are expected to go through all of this (and so much more) only to return to work pretty much immediately in the US is borderline inhumane. To expect women - in a timeframe more suited to an all-inclusive holiday in Tenerife - to simply head back to the office is unthinkable.
And it’s something Meghan Markle is tackling head-on. When you remove the glitz and glamour of Meghan’s title as the Duchess of Sussex, there’s a mum of two kids who is hollering that it’s not OK. She might be making people feel uncomfortable - but that’s exactly what we need.
In the UK, we have six weeks of full pay, and then up to 39 weeks paid at £151 or 90% of your earnings (whichever is lower). This means that women who do not have an increased package through work - and do not have the income to survive on the weekly payment - have no choice but to return to work after just six weeks.
What message are we giving mums when we tell them to get back to work before their bodies have stopped bleeding?
With President Biden in power in the US, there was a glimmer of hope for women across the pond, of an increase to twelve weeks in his proposal for paid family and medical leave, which was then quickly reduced to four weeks. ‘I can’t get twelve weeks’ he said. This is the problem. With the gender imbalance that exists in government, it means that people without lived experience are deciding the future of women, for women. If there were more mums at the governmental table - women who had themselves experienced the physical recovery of birth, along with the emotional lows, and the sheer exhaustion - then this would no doubt be a very different discussion. This is something MP Stella Creasy is trying to change in the Uk with her ‘vote mama’ campaign. A campaign to get more women through the doors of Parliament so that the needs of mothers start to be taken seriously.
Right now mothers everywhere need support, they need to heal, they need to bond with their babies and this shouldn’t come at the cost of being paid.
Raising the next generation is one of Mother Nature’s toughest roles. Why aren’t we raising those who raised us? Keep making people feel uncomfortable, Meghan. It can’t be more uncomfortable than sitting at your desk bleeding with breasts leaking.