No new parent is ever fully ready for the challenges of bringing up a baby. But parents of premature babies face overwhelming stress and pressure from an underfunded neonatal care service and outdated employment laws that do not recognise their real needs.
There is a shortage of nurses in two-thirds of neonatal units, while seven in 10 care for more babies than is considered safe. Nearly half have no trained mental health worker on site and hundreds of babies are relocated elsewhere because the unit they were born in was over capacity.
The Conservative government is not doing enough to correct this, and Jeremy Hunt does not even appear to know how serious the crisis in neonatal care is: on his watch, only five out of 24 intensive care units meet minimum standards.
This challenge can only be met by reversing the underfunding of the National Health Service. But a more immediate change would make coping with premature birth much easier.
Current employment laws give mothers 52 weeks of maternity leave and fathers two weeks. Shared leave has made it easier for parents to balance demands on their time, but leave is the same whether your child is born healthy or prematurely.
Last month I introduced the maternity leave (premature birth) bill in the House of Commons. It aims to extend leave for parents of premature babies.
Over 100,000 people have now backed a petition calling for the change, launched as part of the Smallest Things campaign founded by Catriona Ogilvy. Catriona’s two sons were born prematurely, and her experience is shared by thousands of mothers every year.
The experience can be overwhelming. Added financial costs – travel to hospital, accommodation, extra childcare – leaves families spending on average £2,200 while their newborn baby is in hospital. And the toll on mental health is huge: two in five mothers of premature babies will suffer from post-natal depression after the trauma of watching their new-born baby struggle to survive, far higher than for mums with healthy babies.
And premature babies have vastly different development needs, meaning mothers may return to work after six months knowing that their baby has only reached the development stage of a three month old rather than being given the same time to bond as a baby born at full term. That is not fair on the baby or its parents.
Parents are pushed into debt, others take high levels of sick leave to care for their child, while some lose their jobs. Extending leave for parents of premature babies is an important step in giving premature babies the support they need. It is time for the government to listen to families and back this change.
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Steve Reed is member of parliament for Croydon North and shadow minister for civil society. He tweets at @SteveReedMP
Catriona’s petition calling for extended leave for parents of premature babies can be signed online: https://thesmallestthings.org/
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