Cassandra Pratt was on her way into work when she received the notification that her most recent embryo transfer had failed. The news was the latest
"I was maybe about 100 yards from the train when I realized that I could not do it," she recalls. "I knew I needed to turn around and go home."
Thankfully, Pratt, now SVP of people at fertility benefits provider Progyny, was able to utilize
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"Miscarriages are obviously physiologically and psychologically very difficult," Pratt says. "But imagine if you were going through a fertility journey where you had also spent months and months on an adoption process, a surrogacy process, or the IVF process, only to then find out that it was unsuccessful. The same heartbreak is also there."
The prevalence of paid
But this type of time off is essential to recovering from the emotional stress of a family planning effort that did not come to fruition, Pratt says.
"It's important to recognize that loss is a response to your emotional investment in something," Pratt says. "And just because it might not have been a pregnancy terminated, there is still a process of loss, because what you were hoping and working towards happening did not happen."
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There have been strides to normalize the support for reproductive loss: Recently, California passed a bill that will require
The mandate, which will go into effect Jan. 1, 2024, is a positive step toward encouraging more flexible leave policies, Pratt says. Incorporating reproductive loss in a PTO policy — and encouraging employees to use it — will benefit everyone in the short-and long-term.
"Knowing that I didn't have to go into the office and sit with people without being able to express what I was going through was so important," she says. "I would not have brought my best self to work or been as useful to anyone around me. I needed time to understand my loss and really grasp it."
It's been three years since Pratt went through her experience. To this day, she credits Progyny's policy as the main reason she is still at the company and maintains that any woman in her same position would feel the same
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"Having an employer that supports you in really challenging personal times creates a type of loyalty that can't be reproduced by just having an interesting work product or good compensation," she says. "It humanizes all of the aspects of us at work."
Companies
"It's about looking at employees as whole people who go through a lot of different milestones throughout the course of their life," Pratt says. "And it's finding out as a company how you can support your employees through all of it."