from January 1, women who have suffered a miscarriage will have sick leave without a waiting day

Until now, sick leave following a miscarriage was similar to classic sick leave, that is to say with waiting days. This will no longer be the case in 2024 since this deadline is eliminated in this specific case.

From January 1, women victims of miscarriage will be able to benefit from sick leave without a waiting period, that is to say they will not have three days of salary deduction, as is the case usually during sick leave. For the 200,000 women affected each year in France by a miscarriage, this change requires better consideration of the tragedy they are experiencing.

Julie suffered a miscarriage when she was almost nine weeks along. She experienced this real ordeal three weeks ago and had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night with her husband and daughter. In the emergency room, she had difficulty obtaining a day off from work. This stop was then renewed by his doctor for three weeks.

“What is quite traumatic is that we lose a lot of blood, she describes. We are exhausted. It can last up to 15 days, or even more. That’s the physical side. There is also the psychological and emotional side. There is a great sadness, a feeling of emptiness.”

“For the first time in my life, I took anxiolytics, precisely to deal with this.”

As a receptionist in a hotel-restaurant, it was unthinkable for her to return to welcoming the public as if nothing had happened. “It’s difficult for me to say to myself ‘I have to stop’. There, I had no choice. If I hadn’t done it, I would have had to do it afterwards because my body would surely have left me afterwards”, she explains.

Considered a classic sick leave, she had three days of waiting time for which she was therefore not paid. “For the number of women who experience this, it’s a bit excessive, we’re not going to lie. I don’t have any trouble feeding myself, I don’t have any trouble finding accommodation, but I think about these women who are not so lucky”, she continues.

A first step towards better consideration

Sandra Lorenzo is a journalist and co-founder of the collective “Miscarriage, true experience”, and in her company, there is no waiting period. After her miscarriage in 2020, all her days off work were therefore compensated: “It seemed normal to me. Experiencing a termination of pregnancy and on top of that, having a financial loss, that seems totally inhuman to me.” For her, this new measure is a first small step for the medical profession to take better account of the drama that is playing out for these women.

“I hope that this lifting of waiting days will also mean that doctors will, perhaps, have more in mind than a miscarriage, a natural termination of pregnancy, that leads to a stoppage of work. A woman who does not “is not arrested, she is a woman who can carry the trauma of this termination of pregnancy for a long time”, she believes. It is therefore a first step but very insufficient because, according to her, too many women find themselves isolated after a miscarriage. Sandra Lorenzo calls for better support for them and their families.