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Daphne: Thank you. I'm an attorney, but I like to think of myself as a lawyer for Babies.

So I'm just like America's love lawyer, because there's a lot of attorneys that are out there to they don't have good intentions. But my goal as an attorney is to help mothers understand their rights in the first place, and then also have the confidence to ask for what they need at work with the goal of preventing separation between mother and baby.

Which is very valid, of course, cause we're going against the people paying us. And I do this in a way that is very holistic in a sense that I don't teach anyone to be antagonistic, to be demanding. There's a way to educate your employer on what your rights are. That they can really appreciate because most employers, and I'm an employer, but most employers do not keep track of all of these rules.

Like it is very confusing. It is very overwhelming. So what we see a lot in the workplace is when mothers ask for something like maternity leave, the employers don't always know, like they're not always aware of what the rules are, what their obligations are. So when a mother can go in and actually educate her employer, the employer can really appreciate that because it keeps them also within the bounds of the law.

Using from my clients and really harnessing those towards. my own life and creating a blueprint for other women to protect their careers while protecting their babies as well. So I started sharing some of this content on social media and immediate just got a ton of responses because there was a sense of we don't know where to go.

Like we can't always trust our HR. Usually HR folks are. Great professionals, but they're not always legally trained. And they don't always know what the rules are. Or sometimes they're not providing full education. Because again, it's confusing and and then women were googling and going on government websites and it's all very confusing and overwhelming.

And I'm just basically your neighborhood legal geek that loves to read all of this stuff so that you don't have to worry about it. Cause as moms, most moms don't want to read regulations. So if you can just have someone tell you what to do and what to say during these really tricky situations, What do you want?

What are you going to do when you have morning sickness and you're about to be late for work, but you're still throwing up? What are you going to do when you have a high risk pregnancy? What are you going to do when you have to pump, but you have a deadline? There's all of these, there's a lot of friction between workplace demands and then our motherhood demands.

Trish: meet you. I love that so much. And I. guarantee that this is such a huge gap. And as you were talking, I was just thinking about, like you said, like these employers probably don't even really know all that they're supposed to be doing.

Maybe they haven't updated their policies or don't understand. And then you're right. You've got a mom who's navigating so many hormonal and bodily changes. And having to figure all that out on your own with pregnancy brain going on and exhaustion and all that I'm sure is so difficult. So I want to go back to a couple things that you said and I know that it's different everywhere but give me some examples for the mom who is Mor has morning sickness and is gonna be late to work.

So

So let's say you have to be at work at 9 a. m., but you're still. In the bathroom and it's 8 30 and your commute is 40 minutes. You can go to your employer and say, I'm gonna need to be excused from this policy because it's really hard for me to get there on time in light of the nausea that I'm having in the morning.

You and I both know that I'm getting all of my work done. I just really cannot get here by nine. It is not possible for me right now. And there is a law that protects that conversation and also the woman's right to be accommodated and. Essentially for her job to be made a little bit easier for her.

And the law recognizes that we have to protect those women and we have to protect those babies. And we do that by. Telling the employers, letting the employers know and putting them on notice that they have to do whatever they can to help these women and help these pregnant women stay employed because what the law doesn't want is for all of these women to either be pushed out of their jobs because they can't keep up with all the expectations and all the policies or for the women to feel like they have to quit.

So the law is designed to keep women employed and on their health care plan. It's,

Daphne: No one knows this. And also, like we were saying, employers. don't know this. What's even more important here is that we're not we shouldn't expect employers to know employers provide a specific service.

I'm staying on top of employment law is usually not that service. That's my service. It's my skill. So expecting your employer to know all of this stuff, it is not reasonable. And what a lot of people do is that they expect Their employers to tell them these things, which they won't like, not only cause they don't know, but it's not really in their best interest.

And I find what's really important here in this context is that, and I love the conversations we're having on social media when it comes to motherhood at work, because it is very hard. And I will also say that there's a ton of misleading content. There's a ton of outrage content that is actually searing women away from the options that they have.

We do not have federal paid maternity leave, but a ton of states more and more. Every year have state benefit programs that mothers can use to get paid, get paid by their state so that they can take time off work.

Trish: Whether or not the employer offers it,

Daphne: the state. Yes. Okay. So there's a lot of states that have paid leave programs.

that you can rely on so that you do not have to go unpaid. And women just don't know this, so they're not looking into it because we're all assuming that we have no paid maternity leave. In addition, we do not actually use the concept maternity leave. In the legal, when we talk about these leave rights, we talk about medical leave.

by non experts that are actually misinforming women.

Trish: I, I'm thinking back to any content that we've done and I'm like, gosh, I hope I haven't done that. Obviously. Yeah. Okay. Good. Cause I don't think so. I would have told you what moms really want. And I wrote paid maternity leave,

Daphne: yeah, no. And it's great.

And we all do and I work with the chamber of mothers and organization I co founded to advocate for. paid leave for all mothers, and we shouldn't discount or minimize the importance of that. But when I speak about these issues, I always make sure to mention at the very least that there are state programs, state benefit programs that about half of the women in America have access to.

Trish: That's amazing. I had a neighbor, I, it just blows my mind. I had a neighbor at my last house and she was getting ready to deliver and I don't remember exactly where she worked.

It was somewhere here in Nashville. She had, she got two weeks off. Yeah. Two weeks. And I was like, can't even fathom that.

Daphne: So when I would sit down with a woman like that, I would ask her like, have you looked into your accommodation rights? Because often what women ask for is their leave, maternity leave.

It's still pretty barren, but there are some things we can do. And I think my job is to educate women that. Who assume they have no options. That, that may not be true. The options are not great, but there usually are some things you can try, but they're not going to be based on what your employer is telling you.

They're going to be things that you're going to figure out on your own.

Trish: Wow. So tell me as well, we were talking about NICU moms and I remember a big up rise happening maybe last fall about a NICU mom and some stuff.

Daphne: Yeah. The kites, the kite termination. Yeah, that's another example of social media misrepresenting something in the legal context.

Instead of asking for time to be with a baby, and this is a very small nuance, but when you ask for time for stress, it is actually illegally protected, and the employer has to do their ultimate best to grant it. But when you ask for time to be with your baby, or because you don't have child care, or because the daycare is closed, that is an immediate, fast track to termination.

So it's just these like small little nuances, but our moms get accommodated every day just for their own stress, because that is actually illegal, right? And then I saw a lot of discussion around like the paid leave would have solved this problem, but she was actually asking for an accommodation, right?

And as a legal expert, often it is I under, I get it cause I'm a mom in America and I know it's hard, so I think it's really easy really swept up in these conversations without actually pausing and saying, is this actually true? And what is that? What does the law actually say? How do we apply this to the situation?

What can we learn from this? So that's the work that I do. It's letting everyone take a breath. Yeah. And instead

Trish: of canceling, cancel a whole employer and company when they were actually doing, the right yeah, nothing illegal.

Daphne: But that Yeah, and it was wrong. It was unethical, of course, especially for a baby company.

Trish: job. How you say things is I, we've been navigating the family court system for the last couple years through a nightmare of a situation. And It is so true.

The way you say it makes all the difference in the world.

Daphne: Yeah. And that's what legal education is. It's Using a word can make the difference between you keeping your job or losing your job or having more time with your baby or not having more time with your baby. It is so specific.

It is so technical. I don't love this for moms because they're tired. And why are they supposed to deal with that? But it is what it is. And how are they supposed to know the right words without someone like you? How

Trish: do they,

Daphne: and I only know these, know the language because I have lived in these conflicts between employers and employees and where all of these conflicts could have been prevented by using the right language.

So we try to everything that we create for our moms is from the gentle, kindest, most professional place that possible.

Trish: I, I love that because it's right in alignment with what I teach my students. My birth classes were born from the same kind of thing. A frustration of seeing women told, when we admit them, we read, we tell them their rights and then we strip them of them.

And it really is how you communicate and navigate that. And like when I'm at bedside, I can't refuse things for her even though the doctor's ordering. I'm like, this is BS. She doesn't need this. I can't confuse, refuse it. She can. And one of the really big reasons why my birth classes are radically different than anyone else's.

And so we help them navigate that, and it sounds very similar. the same type of thing. And we do the same thing. And we're not, we don't teach our students to say, I am a patient. I have a right. This is my birth. And I don't care what you think. We teach them how to navigate it with grace and, stillness, take time, step away, let, wait for the emotions to die down.

And I love what you're saying because I just did an interview with an attorney who works with hospitals on baby cases like trauma. And she was talking about, that we were, we had a similar conversation in how these cases are approached from the parent's side on whether they win or not. And it all goes down to the right wording and the right and it's just crazy how that infiltrates through all these different things when when we're at our most vulnerable.

It's

My baby's not taking the bottle. What do I do? I need my healthcare. They're expecting me back at work tomorrow. Those are situations we want to think through before they happen. And leave planning, for example, is another issue where we want to get on that like when we're pregnant, right when we got pregnant instead of waiting too long to start prepping for our leaves, because then you can end up suddenly with a complication.

You have to go to the hospital. Your boss is waiting for a project. And so we're very mindful of the prevention that we can do. And I definitely think within birthing as well. We just prepared with the chamber of mothers, like a mom's bill of rights with all of the rights in the healthcare contexts that you can attach to your birth plan so that you actually think about it before you go into the emergency situation, because when you're vulnerable, you cannot advocate for yourself.

Trish: I love that so much. For my birth program, we have a three part framework. And the first part of course is knowledge, education, understanding what's happening inside of you, around you.

The other part is the mental aspect, which you're a mom, you know that birth is like 90 percent mental. But that third part is the support and boldness And you can't do that without the other two, you can't do any of them without all three. But we say the same thing, it has to happen before you step foot in the labor room.

But I love that you're saying the same thing, like you, you don't know if you're going to be that one who has, extreme Nausea and vomiting and all those things like being prepared with that knowledge is just so powerful. I love that so much. I have a couple other, I have a couple other questions for you and I'll put some links in the show notes in the captions for you guys so you can find Daphne's content and we'll talk about that in just a second.

What about dads?

Daphne: Yeah. Let's talk about dads. I have a few cases cause I have a law firm as well. And we have, we represent moms and we represent dads. Dads come to me usually when they are demoted after parental leave. So when they go on paternity leave and they come back and then there's this assumption that dad is not committed anymore.

And then you figure out what is our joint leave plan. What I like to do with couples when I work with them is have them stagger their leaves. A little bit of time together in the beginning and then mom stays home and then dad stays home when mom returns to work because that allows mom to have peace of mind to return to work with the other parent with the baby instead of a stranger often or a daycare center.

And that's the issue we're seeing is that it's not really the norm, right? Like it's still expected that women take the time off and dads take maybe a few days and go back to work. And that's something that we're trying to educate. That's on as well as making sure that they don't know their rights.

Those are two separate things and then really coming up with a joint grant to leave plan. And again, you want to do that early. You want to do that when you just found out you're pregnant because sometimes you can run into a situation where you realize one or both of the parents do not have any benefits options or paid leave policy.

And then you have to save, you have to save up. I tell a lot of parents that are in that situation instead of having a baby list with all of the expensive stuff. You can ask for your community to fund your parental leave. And but you want to know that early. You don't, too many dads are like, Oh, I'm having a, my wife's having a baby.

And then they don't actually have that conversation at work of what am I entitled to? Often they just go back to work after a few days. So it's important that dads know and feel empowered to take the time. They're worried about retaliation, which absolutely happens. There's data on that.

Trish: This is just so brilliant. I love it. I, so what about with, the same situation?

Because when you were talking about the mom who is going to be late because she's so sick, what if she has other children that have to go to daycare and all of that? Does dad have rights? If this is all going on, that he can be late to work or no? Would that not apply? Dad

Daphne: does not have rights to be late to work because it wouldn't be based on his own condition.

But dad would have a right if he has anxiety. So if he's experiencing anxiety from managing the family and the pressure of providing and all of the things. He can ask for accommodations based on stress or leave of absence. If that's the case, none of us are ever going to work

Daphne: I know.

But people don't know that you don't need to have a physical condition to ask for accommodation rights or leave rights. You can actually have a mental condition. experience as well. And. And can they penalize you for that? Legally, no. They do, obviously. Otherwise, I wouldn't have a job. But legally employers are not allowed to retaliate or discriminate for an employee asserting physical or mental limitations.

Trish: What about if it's affecting the quality of their work? Like they can't.

Daphne: Yeah, that's a little different, like through all of these scenarios, you still have to do your job unless you're on leave, of course, when you're on leave, you're not even allowed to do your job. But when you're just still working, you still have to do your job.

That's good to know,

Trish: because I was wondering that, because I know when you were saying about the mom who's sick and you mentioned in that. that her work was being performed well and completed. I knew that had to be an important. Anything else, because, I, we talked when we first started that we like to keep these, shorter and sweet, because we know you mamas are exhausted.

You might be chasing toddlers or just tired, but tell anything else that you feel is really important. To know and tell everyone where they can find you. And I'm going to put links to your resources in the show notes.

Daphne: I think the most important thing to know is to not wait too long to announce your pregnancy.

That usually has the opposite effect. So that can really backfire because it's only when you give notice of your pregnancy that you can use the protections and are also actually protected from discrimination. So I see a lot of, there's this assumption.

Trish: That's so contrary to everyone else saying, don't announce just in case.

Daphne: Yeah it's really a risky move because eventually you're going to have to announce it. Bring this to the employer. No, but to the employer, like right away, I have my mom's announced it in writing.

Because then you can use accommodation rights. And then if something adverse happens to your job, You can take recourse, but a lot of moms do is they will wait. And then the employer actually notices that the work quality is going down. And then the mom ends up on a performance improvement plan and then sometimes out of a job.

And then they call me and they're, and then I'm like did you even tell him you're pregnant? It's no, I was fired. I was worried I would get fired. And I'm like you ended up fired and now you can't do anything. So When you assert your right, when you assert your pregnancy and something bad happens, you can tie that to your pregnancy and you can take recourse.

And I don't think that's fair to an employer. When you're pregnant and you give an employer a lot of time to find someone else to train someone else to reshuffle your work, you're actually going to reduce the chance of being discriminated against. Because if you're not helping your employer and you give them really short windows to prepare they're gonna distrust you.

And we see that a lot in our cases is that when women hide their pregnancies, bosses Feel like the woman lacks transparency and that can really cut against you in the long run

Daphne: idea Yeah, and then when you if you're late, they can fire you on the spot And then if you're like I'm pregnant it doesn't work that way, like you cannot suddenly Assert your pregnancy after the fact You don't have rights just because you're pregnant you only have rights when your employer knows you're pregnant.

That is a

Trish: huge golden nugget, you guys. Huge golden nugget. I am, I really, I am just so blown away and thinking I really want to chat with you about how we can work together because I, this just isn't common knowledge. And I've, we have our mama membership, which is part of our program.

Daphne: and we have a program as well, the liberated mother society.

I'd love to see you in there as well, where we have all of this information.

Trish: And I'm going to link to all of that in the show notes. And thank you so much for what you're doing. And thank you so much for coming on today. Of course. And thank you. I really enjoyed talking to you as well.

Hey, Mamas. I hope you enjoyed this episode with the Mama Attorney, and I hope you learned as much as I did. It was invaluable. Take a moment, click the links in the show notes and check her out. She's, it's just incredible. You need to know these things. Knowledge is power. As always, hit subscribe, leave a review, and I'll see you again next Friday.

Bye for now.