When Galway woman Emma McGuinness was pregnant with her second child in 2021, she discovered an unusual swelling in the side of her neck.
“I assumed it was a thyroid issue or something,” she tells Kathy Sheridan on the latest episode of The Irish Times Women’s Podcast. “It never occurred to me that it would be something like cancer”.
Not long after the discovery, the young mother’s worst nightmare was confirmed. The lump in her neck was Hodgkin’s lymphoma and treatment needed to begin as soon as possible.
On the advice of her doctors, Emma’s son Ruarí was born at 36 weeks. He spent the first 14 days of his life in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit. Meanwhile, his mother, who was at the start of her maternity leave, was preparing to undergo her first round of chemotherapy treatment.
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“We only had one week with Ruarí at home, one week of normality, I suppose before we were launched into the cancer world,” she recalls. “Ruarí came home on Thursday and I was starting my treatment the following Tuesday”.
Under Irish law, Emma did not have the option to defer her maternity leave while receiving cancer treatment. That is despite the option being available to men to defer their paternity leave if faced with a cancer diagnosis.
It’s a loophole in the law that Emma is highlighting with the help of The Irish Cancer Society’s ‘Leave Our Leave’ campaign. They are urging the Government to bring in legislation which would allow women to delay their maternity leave, until after their cancer treatment concludes.
“My maternity leave ended four days before my last chemo session,” she explains. “And I suppose that’s what is so important about this campaign and that [the law] is changed … at the time, I was so extremely vulnerable. It never occurred to me that I was using my maternity leave”.
Reflecting on those first few months with her newborn, Emma says finding the strength to do even the basic things was extremely difficult: “My arms were so sore, I couldn’t hold my baby…I remember my mom coming in, that was one of the hardest days, she brought him in for a cuddle. He was only maybe seven or eight weeks old and she handed him to me and I was like, I can’t physically hold him”.
“So, in what way is that maternity leave? It was just horrific, you know”.
In this episode, we also hear from CEO of the Irish Cancer Society Averil Power, who is hoping this important campaign to protect maternity leave for cancer patients doesn’t fall off the political agenda.
“It’s so important that as a mom, that you have time when you’re just focusing on your baby…that you have that time to bond with your little one, you’ll never get that again,” she says.
“And to have those precious, few months robbed by cancer is bad enough, but to add to that, the government effectively robbing you of your maternity leave and never giving you that time, even if it is a few months later, I just think is incredibly cruel and it just can’t be justified”.
You can listen back to the episode in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Irish Cancer Society’s Daffodil Day takes place this Friday 22nd March.
