I spent my maternity leave in a chemo chair. Then I got a letter telling me to go back to work

I got diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer when I was 30 weeks pregnant in November 2019. Can you imagine how horrific it is to swap the sheer joy of welcoming your first child with the cold dread of wondering if you’ll be around to see her grow? Then try to imagine the trauma of spending your six months of maternity leave in and out of hospital for surgeries, radiation and chemotherapy and not being able to care for her fully.

Trading holding her for sitting alone in a chemo chair. Getting daily radiation as she murmurs her first word. Being in too much pain some days to hold her. That was not maternity leave. I should have been on sick leave and I should have been able to take my maternity leave when my treatment ended. However, due to outdated legislation the period of my treatment counted as my maternity leave.

If my child was sick or premature I could have extended my maternity leave. Crushingly, if my husband was sick he could postpone his paternity leave. But I could not defer my maternity leave. I finished active treatment on April 30th, 2020, and I got a letter from the Department of Social Protection a week later saying my maternity leave was up.

All politicians have agreed that it needs to be fixed and that it’s probably a legislative anomaly as the Maternity Act was last changed almost 20 years ago while the Paternity Act was amended more recently

I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, “surely they do not expect this extremely sick, bald lady to be capable of returning to work now? Surely the Government doesn’t think I had the maternity leave every other mother and child experiences; a time of bonding and being able to care for their baby?” It was harrowing.

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I first got in contact with the Irish Cancer Society in 2020 to begin talking about how we can fix this issue so that mothers with cancer can simply postpone their maternity leave. It’s a relatively straightforward legislation amendment that needs to occur; and yet we’ve been working tirelessly together on it since then and so far, nothing has changed. We launched the “Leave our Leave” campaign in earnest outside Leinster House in June 2022, asking for legislation that allows women to defer their maternity leave during pregnancy or immediately post-partum to be passed.

Since then, there has only been what I can consider Government inaction. My little girl is now 4½. Sixty expectant mothers are diagnosed with cancer during pregnancy in Ireland every year. That means approximately 270 women and their families have faced this horrific injustice since the day she was born.

In October last year, the Green Party had their annual meeting and I was again diagnosed. In listing the recent achievements of the Green Party, Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman shared on RTÉ news that they were committing to amending the legislation by the end of 2023. He announced it like it was as good as done, and we, maybe naively, toasted and celebrated. Tears rolled down my face as I thought at least we have this success with the leave our leave campaign.

Since that announcement, zero action has been taken. The Minister did say he is looking to include the amendment as part of a broader omnibus Bill incorporating other family and equality amendments.

Protecting maternity leave for cancer patients: ‘My arms were so sore, I couldn’t hold my baby’

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We fear that including this legislative change within a wider Bill slows down what is essentially a simple amendment of the current legislation — that is, to replace the right to request a termination of maternity leave due to illness with the right to postpone. It is a simple “repeal and replace” mechanism. If it doesn’t happen soon, it won’t happen in the lifetime of this Government. My very real fear is when an election is called this will be guillotined and we will be starting from scratch again with new ministers and TDs. Three years of hard work down the drain: that prospect is too hard to grasp.

In the time we’ve been speaking about this issue, there has never been a single individual who said: “I disagree with what you’re trying to achieve”, or “these are the reasons it can’t and shouldn’t be fixed”. Frankly, there are no counterarguments to changing the legislation. All politicians have agreed that it needs to be fixed and that it’s probably a legislative anomaly as the Maternity Act was last changed almost 20 years ago while the Paternity Act was amended more recently. Given all these nodding heads of agreement and promises of action, I am flummoxed by the inaction we face in reality.

Today, I am writing this article directly from the chemo chair with three types of chemo coursing through my veins via the port in my chest. I am so tired of having to talk about this issue. Especially since we were given that supposed solid commitment last October.

Erica Tierney is an activist and mother campaigning for equal maternity leave for parents, as she undergoes cancer treatment for the second time