CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The United States congress is now considering four weeks of paid family and medical leave.
This would guarantee mothers a paid maternal leave with their newborns, but some locals are asking if this is enough?
Courtney Cotharn Lambert is a mother of two with a third on the way. She is also a doula, meaning she helps mothers take care of their babies post-partem for what she calls ‘the fourth trimester”.
“It’s a lot of very little to no sleep, constantly washing bottles if your baby is on formula, constantly attached to your breast if the baby is breastfeeding, waking when the baby wakes if you can,” she says.
The government has plans to help mothers out. Four weeks of paid maternity leave is part of the democrat’s budget proposal. This would take the United States off the list of the six countries in the world that offers no form of paid national leave.
Mothers are saying while this is a good first step, it is not enough.
“You want that bond with your newborn. You want to create that relationship with this baby you just had, and when you have all these stressors and all these other triggers and your hormones are raging, that bond can be…. limited,” Cotharn Lambert says.
Courtney says that at four weeks, some mothers have yet to fully recover from giving birth. She says about three months is an adequate time for a mother to recover and to form a bond with her newborn.
According to experts, globally the average paid maternity leave is 29 weeks.
“At least it will provide for those single moms who have no village of care, no familial help,” says Cotharn Lambert.
