Keep your job, or care for your baby in the NICU? Some states are attempting to guarantee parents both.
“My days were built around survival.”
Britany Robinson was 36 when she got pregnant. She’d been trying for eight months, and at the time, she and her husband were living in Portland, where she was a full-time freelance writer, and he had a salaried job.
The pregnancy was going well, but there were signs, doctors warned, that the baby could arrive early. Those worries came to fruition when Robinson’s daughter was born at 33 weeks, or one month early. She was a preemie, to be sure, but in pretty good shape: She was four pounds, and breathing on her own.
“She was small, but she wasn’t one of the super preemies where they fit in your hand,” Robinson says. “She was like a cantaloupe in size.”
Her daughter ended up being in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for 99 days, or a bit over three months. Throughout that time, Robinson and her husband each spent six days a week, nine hours a day by her side. Even though there was a lot of downtime, Robinson couldn’t even think of work. She was too wired, and riddled with anxiety.
“A lot of it was sitting there feeling kind of helpless,” she says.
Robinson’s family eventually received a medical bill for $3,000 out of the $1.5 million balance for the NICU stay, so insurance coverage averted significant financial stress. But money couldn’t replace time itself: When Robinson’s daughter was born early, her husband only had four weeks of paid family leave before he had to return to work. The final two weeks in the NICU, Robinson had to go back to work herself. By the time the family was home together, there was no time off left. The couple was thrust straight into the deep end of managing a medically complex baby alongside their full-time jobs.
But depending where one lives, the status quo is changing. In January 2026, Colorado became the first state in the nation to implement 12 additional weeks of paid time off (PTO) for parents while their baby is in the NICU, which allows parents, in theory, to spread other paid or unpaid time off towards the transition back home once they’re out of the hospital. In April, Virginia followed suit with similar legislation that will go into effect in 2028.
