In 2021, a peculiar swelling was detected in the neck of Emma McGuinness, a Galway native, while she was expecting her second child. Initially thinking it might be a thyroid problem, she was shocked to learn it was something considerably more serious: it was Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The news of this malignancy was a grim turning point.
Promptly following this harrowing revelation, doctors advised that her son, Ruarí, ought to be delivered, despite being only 36 weeks into the pregnancy. The newborn spent his initial two weeks in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, while his mother, at the commencement of her maternity absence, was bracing herself to commence her first chemotherapy session.
Emma reminisces about the fleeting, ‘normal’ week they spent together at home before her treatment began. “Ruarí came back home on a Thursday and by the following Tuesday, I was embarking on my treatment journey”, she recounts.
However, under the current Irish legislation, Emma did not enjoy the privilege to postpone her maternity leave whilst undergoing her cancer treatment – a right which is, paradoxically, afforded to men dealing with a cancer diagnosis, who can defer their paternity leave. This is a legal ambiguity that Emma, collaborating with The Irish Cancer Society’s ‘Leave Our Leave’ campaign, aims to expose. The campaign pushes for modifications in the law that would allow women to defer their maternity leave until their cancer treatment concludes.
“Only four days before my final chemo session did my maternity leave cease”, she notes. This is why this legal change is so crucial; Emma spent her maternity leave in a state of heightened vulnerability, battling the cancer, a fact that she hadn’t fully realised at the time.
Emma’s initial months with her newborn were incredibly challenging, as she recounts the severe difficulty in doing the most basic tasks. She recollects a particularly difficult day when her weakened body made it nearly impossible to cradle her baby in her arms, a particularly tragic scene when the baby was barely eight weeks old, “I physically couldn’t hold him,” she sadly remembers.
She found it unbearable and far from what she envisioned her maternity leave to be. “It was simply terrible,” she confesses. In the podcast episode, Averil Power, the CEO of the Irish Cancer Society, shares her hopes that the campaign backing the safeguard of maternity leave for cancer patients doesn’t get sidelined in political discussions.
Power elaborates on the precious value of maternity leave, “It is crucial for a mother to have those moments centred solely on her baby, to establish a bond that is irreplaceable.” She emphasises the cruelty of a mother losing the invaluable early months of motherhood to cancer, and the additional blow when the government deprives you of your maternity leave, “To not provide that time, even if it is postponed by a few months, I staunchly believe is extremely harsh and utterly indefensible”, she states.
You can replay the podcast episode using the audio player provided or any podcast platform of your choice. Look out for the Irish Cancer Society’s Daffodil Day, scheduled for this Friday, 22nd March.