Increasing demand for additional paid parental leave for parents of premature babies

When single mum Nicole Mahoney’s twin baby boys arrived 12 weeks early, all her carefully laid maternity leave plans were thrown into disarray.

The twins, Angus and Hugh, were both born weighing just 1.1 kilograms and were not much bigger than a 500ml bottle of chocolate milk.

They had to spend an extended period in a neonatal intensive care unit following their birth in March 2020, with one remaining hospitalized for three months and the other for five months.

This was an extremely challenging period, Mahoney informed 9news.com.au, as a large portion of her time was spent waiting at the hospital to be able to hold her infants.

The initiative comes after the Miracle Babies Foundation submitted a parliamentary petition on the same issue in 2023, which garnered over 10,000 signatures.

Following the petition, the Australian Public Service Commission enterprise agreement was updated to include additional leave for parents of premature babies, but this only applies to government employees. 

Miracle Babies Foundation co-founder and CEO Kylie Pussell said the current conditions of the parental leave scheme meant some parents of premature babies were coming home from hospital with no leave left.

“We believe that all babies should be going home from hospital with that same amount of parental leave,” she said.

Pussell said parents and carers of premature babies were already under huge financial strain, with many having paid for months of travel costs to and from the hospital, as well as eating out and accommodation expenses.

“It’s such a difficult time, and then when you get to baby’s discharge and you’ve got no pay parental leave left, we’re putting women in such a difficult position of perhaps having to leave the workforce because they have nothing left,” she said.

Pussell said the lack of extra support for parents of premature babies also meant some could be forced to put vulnerable babies into childcare before they were ready. 

“It’s putting parents in a really difficult spot,” she said.

Social Services minister Amanda Rishworth said she understood the unique challenges faced by families who had experienced the birth of a premature or sick newborn.

“Over the past three years, the Albanese Labor Government has delivered the biggest expansion to Paid Parental Leave since Labor first introduced the scheme in 2011,” Rishworth said.

“Our changes are providing families, including those with a premature or sick baby, with the support they need to manage care of their child in the way that best suits their circumstances.

“This includes arrangements to enable parents to take time off work together for longer and to provide the additional flexibility that helps families who have a child in hospital.”

Mahoney, whose twin sons are now aged five, said she hoped the government would reconsider their stance and increase the support for parents of premature babies.

“You’d be providing parents with the opportunity to actually spend that time with their kids that everyone else gets. It’s being taken away from them,” she said.

“These kids are very vulnerable, so being forced to send them back into childcare early, when they’re still very susceptible to getting sick and having serious sicknesses as a result of it, it just puts them at risk. 

“It’s stressful to the families, and it also means that women will probably stay out of the workforce longer because you don’t feel safe to put your kid into childcare when they’ve been that sick.”