I was looking at our insurance plan and for a women giving birth without complications they get two weeks of disability pay. Isn’t this a long time to recover from a birth? The job doesn’t require any physical labor.
How long does a birth take to recover from?
It takes a long time, IMHO. IANAW but I have seen several of my friends give birth. Their is sorness in moving and in a lot of their other actions. Two weeks, IMHO is a little on the short side.
It can take days, weeks, or months. My sister was in the hospital for just over 24 hours with my neice. Then again she had zero complications. Call your insurance company and ask…never hurts to do that.
Is a congratulations in order?
Used to be that sex was a no-no for six weeks. If you think it is so damn easy, think what it’d be like to pass a cantalope. Talk about tearing you a new one! :eek:
No congrats are in order.
I have to admit I have never really been around a women recovering from birth, but I don’t think it takes two weeks before she would be physically able to sit at a desk and work at a computer. I just don’t understand why this is covered as a disability.
I was born over 22 years ago and I STILL haven’t recovered! 
First the disclaimer: I have never given birth. I also have no cites, and I hope someone will be along to correct me shortly if I am wrong.
The “disability” terminology may just be what is used by that particular insurance company. Even with an uncomplicated birth, the recovery involves more than just the muscles. My understanding is that it can take a while, because of the physical aspect and the hormonal aspect. Then too, you now have an infant in your car and you are not getting anywhere near the sleep needed to recover from a birth (again, just my understanding), unless you have someone there to take care of the baby all the time - and very few people have that.
Again, I don’t think they mean it’s a disabililty - it’s certainly not something you’d get a handicapped placard from your doctor for, but that it’s a period of time in which the body is recovering from something that can be very stressful. Different women have different experiences and recovery times.
Labor and Delivery/ Postpartum RN Cyn here to say that women are still expressing lochia 4 to 6 weeks after childbirth, some are still getting the hang of breastfeeding and those who had episiotomies and/or vaginal/perineal/labial tears are still not too happy about sitting in office chairs.
Yeah! Why can’t they do like our ancestors - just go squat in the corner, pop it out, and get right back to work?!
It is very, very hard work even with an uncomplicated birth. I’m amazed that anyone could seriously say that birthing a baby is ‘not physical labour’. I’ve done it 3 times and it was very physical.
I’ve had uncomplicated births without tearing or the need for episiotomy. Straightforward recoveries as well but I have to say that 2 weeks is the bare minimum for most women to recover. It’s not just the labour – it’s the 9 months beforehand of pregnancy which can be exhausting in itself.
Having given birth twice, I have some first hand experience in the matter. In additiont to what previous posters have mentioned, stop and consider the size of the average baby. Then consider the size of the hole they’re coming through. Now, different women are different, and babies come in different sizes. But my first was 9lbs, and that was pretty physically traumatic. It was awhile before I could walk at even a normally slow pace, and as Cyn has mentioned, sitting in office chairs just wouldn’t have been possible. And as Primaflora points out, pregnancy itself is pretty exhausting on top of all that.
Now, the second time around, the baby was much smaller, and things went much more easily. But I was lucky–he could easily have been just as big as his sister. And some women go into labor a day or more before they actually give birth–and that’s painful and exhausting, believe me. You can’t sleep, or eat, or anything but wait and hurt. Giving birth can really take it out of you. Frankly, two weeks seems short to me, or at least on the short side of acceptable.
I really hope BZ00000 is being cynical…!
I thought most women left the hospital the next, why are they going home if it takes two more weeks to be ready for work?
Because there is nothing the hospital can do for them. They need some rest and to spend some bonding time with their new child. They can do this at home, but they shouldn’t be working.
It is also something of a social responsibility to provide some kind of assistance after childbirth to relieve the pressure to get back to work immediately. Ideally a new mother or the father wouldn’t go back to work for many months, but some people don’t have the luxury of being able to have Mum stay at home all the time.
I have been told/warned to expect to be able to do not much for about six weeks. (only exercise allowed - walking) The sheer work your body has to do is incredible. I don’t think you are aware that the baby doesn’t “pop” out on it’s own. That is the womans uterus *working[/I it out. Your abdominal muscles literally separate to make room for the uterus, everything is affected, and that’s not even considering complications/episiotomy.
If you don’t believe it, you should do some research into what exactly happens to a body when it’s pregnant. I am now at 8 months and still can’t believe the changes. Elite atheletes have compared it to running a marathon, this is not a “sit back and relax” kind of experience.
Do you even think before you post? Hospitals are for men and women alike that need acute care or rehabilitation. It does not mean that you can skip up and down the primrose path like Pollyana as soon as you pass through the hospital discharge doors.
Listen to this scenario:
A professional football player gets his leg broken and is out of the hospital in less than 2 days. Why isn’t he back in the game the following Sunday? I expect an answer because it will make you think about the (nonsense) statement that you just made.
Is there a bigger :rolleyes: available?
[smiley salesman]
Get yer smiley’s here! A size for every comment! Smiley’s for sale!
[/smiley salesman]
The part in The Good Earth where the heroine gives birth, silently, and then goes back to work in the fields 20 minutes later? That’s fiction.
And she does it twice. That’s science fiction.
BZ, after you give birth, you have the following things to deal with:
First and foremost, your body goes through a raging hormonal storm, which in only a few weeks basically restores your default hormone levels to their pre-pregnancy state. Bear in mind that these hormones had nine slow months to get fully rigged for “pregnancy”, and breaking them down to “not pregnant” is not easy on you. It usually takes a brief, hectic four to six weeks. For some women, it’s like an attack of the PMS That Ate Cleveland, the PMS Godzilla, the PMS Thing From Beyond Space. It’s familiarly known as the “baby blues”.
You cry for no reason, bursting into tears standing there in the middle of the kitchen floor because you only have one box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese to cook for supper and you wanted to cook two boxes.
If your bottom is sore from the episiotomy (the small incision that’s sometimes made to facilitate the passage of the baby through the vulva), or from hemorrhoids that you got from pushing during late-stage labor, you cry even harder.
You haven’t had normal sex with your husband in about four months–for the entire last trimester, your belly (and its inhabitant) has been a huge, silent participant in your awkward couplings. You wonder if when you do resume normal sex, your vagina will be too stretched out for him to feel anything. You’re still 30 pounds overweight. The only pre-pregnancy clothes you have that fit are your workout sweats and your collection of extra-large “U.S. Olympic Beer-Drinking Team” t-shirts that you used to wear for painting the garage and digging up the flowerbeds. Your breasts are huge, and not in a good way. You cry even harder.
Then the baby starts to cry, and nothing you can do seems to make him happy. If you’re a first-time mother, caring for a newborn can be overwhelming. In earlier eras, most girls got some experience with babies by caring for infant siblings and cousins and neighbors’ kids, but not anymore. And there’s a limit to how much help a “So Now You’re A Mom!” baby manual can give you. He’s not wet, he’s not hungry, he’s not cold, he’s not being stuck with a pin. What on earth is the matter with him? You don’t have any idea.
You stand there in the middle of the kitchen floor, holding your new baby, both of you crying.
You wonder why the hell you ever got pregnant in the first place.
It’s probably just as well that you aren’t trying to close that important deal with Amalgamated Industries while you’re going through this.
Two weeks is not long enough.
Note to Poysyn: YMMV, dear, okay?
I think what the original poster meant by “The job doesn’t require any physical labor” was that the position at his workplace (that’s offering the two weeks’ maternity leave) doesn’t require any physical labor, just sitting in a computer chair. Obviously, the act of birthing is hard physical labor indeed!. Our poster just phrased things ambiguously.
Ohh, get that, would you, Deirdre?