True family values

Last night I was working late, feverishly typing away in my cubicle with my baby belly grazing the keyboard when a coworker came up to talk to me.

"How many months?" he asked, pointing to my nonexistent waistline.
"Six," I said.
"Really?" his eyes grew wide. "When are you going to stop working?"
"We don't get much maternity time off so probably right up to the moment I go into labor."
"What?"
"Yeah, we only get three months maternity leave."
"Three months?"

To any average American, this seems entirely normal. But to Michal, who grew up in Prague, it was unconscionable.

"But at three months, the baby is only this big," he said, holding his hands about a foot from each other.

"I know," I said. "That's the American way."

He shook his head in astonishment. I went on to tell him the worst part of the story. Sure, I get three months off with my job held for me, but I only get 60% of my pay for the first six weeks of my leave, then nothing for the last six weeks. The Family Medical Leave Act, signed into law by President Clinton in 1993, requires employers to give you up to three months off for medical reasons like pregnancy, but your employer doesn't have to pay you. Anything you do get is out of the generosity of the company. So basically, whatever they can get away with on the open market.

"What?" he said again.

"Yeah, It's awful," I said. "Our firm also takes all of your PTO and applies it to your leave to supplement the percentage they aren't paying you. So when you get back after three months, you have no vacation or sick days left."

"What?" he repeated. "In the Czech Republic, women get three years off."

"It's okay," I said. "After three months, a baby is pretty self sufficient. You just leave them some food in the refrigerator and tell them not to put anything sharp into the light sockets."

Michal smiled at my obvious sarcasm. He shook his head.

"I've got to finish this," I said, and returned to my typing.

Later that night riding home on the bus I started thinking about the Presidential elections. Despite all the problems we have in America -- the economy, jobs, crime, drug addiction, foreign relations -- the conversation has shifted to focus on women's health. Virginia's proposed law to require women to undergo a vaginal ultrasound before getting an abortion. The Catholic Church's refusal to pay for contraception for its workers. Rick Santorum attacking the Affordable Health Care Act for providing free prenatal testing because he says it leads to more abortions.

Normally I try to tune this stuff out and hope it goes away if I stick my fingers in my ears, close my eyes and sing "la la la la la la" at the top of my lungs. Listening to it for any length of time turns me into a frothing-at-the-mouth feminist. When are we women going to stop allowing men to tell us what to do with our bodies? Priests. Ministers. Stupid senators from Pennsylvania.

I underwent a vaginal ultrasound at six weeks. Know why they do it vaginally? Because the fetus is so small they wouldn't be able to find it by squeezing a bunch of gel on your belly and putting the wand on your lower abdomen. In fact, at this stage, it's not even called a fetus. The embryo doesn't become a fetus until at least the ninth week of pregnancy, when all the organs have begun forming.

From experience I can tell you, it looks nothing like a baby. More like a fragment of the Milky Way Galaxy. The technician has to put little white dots on the printout so you can tell which gray fuzzy part is the baby and which is your uterus. The kicker, though, is that she turns on the sound and you can hear the heartbeat. The first time I heard it, tears sprung to my eyes and Dave instinctively put his hand on my shoulder. We were going to have a baby.

And that's precisely why Virginia legislators want women to go through this. In hopes that she will hear the heartbeat, squint at the fuzzy gray mass and change her mind about wanting to have an abortion. To guilt her into realizing this is a potential human. As if most women make the decision lightly, like deciding to get their teeth cleaned or remove an ingrown toenail. Don't insult our intelligence. Women who do make the decision lightly aren't fit for motherhood anyway.

I also underwent prenatal testing. When I was three months pregnant, Dave and I trudged over to Northwestern Hospital, where the doctor stuck a long needle into my belly and guided by what he could see on the ultrasound, took a sample of the placenta while steering clear of the baby. I didn't know this until undergoing this procedure, but the placenta has the exact genetic makeup as the baby. So by performing a CVS (chorionic villus sampling) they can look at the chromosomes to see whether the baby has Down syndrome or Trisomy 18 or 13 -- all major birth defects with varying degrees of mental retardation and health problems.

Why did we do this? Because I'm 39 years old and at my "advanced maternal age" have a 1 in 83 chance of having a child with a chromosomal abnormality. Dave and I sat on the couch and had a long talk about what we would do if the CVS came back positive for defects. We agreed that we weren't up for raising a child with physical and mental abnormalities. Does that make us weak? Immoral? Ungodly? Rick Santorum would think so.

Bedtime: Arya, Helix, Dave

Luckily the test results came back negative and we didn't have to make a heartbreaking decision. But you know what? It was our decision to make. Not our priest's or our minister's or our senator's or the lady down the street. Ours.

So as I think about these men running around trying to save the fetuses of America, proclaiming family values, I wonder, What are they doing to help the babies once they're here? What are they doing to help the working moms and dads who want to be at home caring for their children but can't afford to?

Are they introducing bills to extend FMLA to at least six months and requiring that employers pay us? Or offering government subsidies for mothers and fathers on leave so they can care for their babies without worrying about the mortgage? Are they offering tax breaks for child care costs? Or low-cost medical care for families with newborns and toddlers?

No. All they seem to care about is the fetus. Once the kid is here, parents are expected to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. This is capitalism, people. Every man, woman and child for themselves. If we have any type of universal health care system or government-subsidized maternity and paternity leave we are in grave danger of turning into socialists. And you know what that means...we're one step away from becoming a bunch of communists who may have free health care but have to stand in line for bread and buy Levis on the black market.

I'm so tired of the scare tactics. If these men really cared about what was going on inside my uterus, they would help me take care of my baby once it's here. They would pass laws enabling me and my husband to stay home with the baby longer and do things like breastfeed, sleep train and take mommy, daddy and me classes. They would never think of sending me back to work after three months, forcing me to run off to the office bathroom every few hours to pump, so that we didn't lose our medical benefits. 

Anyone who truly values their children knows it means spending time with them. Wiping noses, drying tears, changing diapers, playing peek-a-boo. With all our talk of family values, why wouldn't we, as a civilized society, do everything in our power to help parents do that?

The first person who steps forward to propose anything that truly helps families has my vote. And it better happen by early June. Otherwise we're going to have to move to the Czech Republic.