Marlon White waited in a hospital hallway while doctors stabilized his newborn after she arrived at 29 weeks and about 2 pounds, according to his account of Olivia’s birth. After the crisis, both parents returned to work while their daughter stayed in the NICU—an arrangement White and others now say highlights a problem with the U.S. patchwork of family-leave rules.
Colorado became the first state to create paid NICU leave in January, and Illinois is moving next with a shorter, unpaid benefit scheduled to start the following month. Together, the changes have helped galvanize a national campaign to create a consistent federal right for parents whose babies require extended NICU care.
In Colorado’s law, parents can receive up to 12 weeks of paid NICU leave for newborns in intensive care, in addition to the state’s 12 weeks of parental leave under Colorado’s family and medical leave program. In Illinois, the incoming policy will guarantee between 10 and 20 days of unpaid leave for NICU parents, a measure that lawmakers have framed as a first step while advocates push for more comprehensive paid options.
The push now centers on federal legislation, with Inimai Chettiar, president of A Better Balance—a nonprofit that advocates for paid leave—describing the effort as potentially achievable through bipartisan support. Chettiar said, “We think it’s promising in terms of bipartisan support, because as we’ve approached people, it seems that they intuitively understand it.”
U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen, a Colorado Democrat drafting a federal bill, said a NICU leave provision would offer up to 12 weeks on top of the 12 weeks of parental leave already available under the Family and Medical Leave Act, the 1993 law that generally provides eligible workers with unpaid leave for family and medical reasons. Pettersen said the goal is to win bipartisan support for NICU leave and place it in ongoing discussions about parental leave policy.
Officials and lawmakers cited differences between the two states’ approaches as part of the broader debate over whether the policy will travel well to Washington. Colorado’s paid leave passed mostly along party lines, while Illinois adopted a shorter unpaid program with overwhelming bipartisan support. Illinois state Rep. Laura Faver Dias, who introduced the bill and whose twin sons were born at 27 weeks in 2014 and stayed intensive care for three months, said Illinois was not integrating NICU leave into an existing paid family-leave system.
Dias said several Republican lawmakers became co-sponsors of the Illinois measure, including state Rep. Nicole La Ha, whose daughter spent 45 days in the NICU in 2017 after her water broke at almost 30 weeks. La Ha said, “Unless you have had this experience, you can’t fully understand why something like this is so meaningful,” adding, “You have an infant who is struggling to eat and breathe. The last thing you want to think about is work but unfortunately you have bills to pay.”
Colorado’s experience also offers a different model for potential federal movement. Colorado state Sen. Jeff Bridges, who introduced the bill after his son Kit was born two months early and weighing just 2 pounds, said opposition was limited. Bridges said, “it was the quietest opposition you could hear,” and added that he wanted to share stories that were compelling enough to change the dynamics in the debate, saying, “I wanted to share stories that were so moving that the lobbyists would look like monsters if they opposed it.”
Advocates also argue NICU care creates a distinct caregiving challenge for parents, rather than fitting neatly into other paid-time benefits. Nearly one out of 10 babies born in the U.S. are admitted to a NICU, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the baby’s needs can include learning to swallow, breathing on its own, and regulating body temperature. Dr. Karen Puopolo, section chief for Newborn Medicine at Pennsylvania Hospital and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Fetus and Newborns, said parental presence can help both babies and mothers, citing benefits such as skin-to-skin contact and milk production.
In recent years, some companies have taken partial steps, including Morgan Stanley, Pinterest and the organic baby formula company Bobbie, while others have extended parental leave or added caregiving leave. But Sahra Cahoon, executive director of Love for Lily, said NICU parents still face what she described as a blind spot in many workplaces. Cahoon launched Love for Lily after her daughter Lily, born at 24 weeks and five days, died after three-and-a-half months in the NICU, and she said she continued working while believing her child would survive. Cahoon said, “It’s probably one of my biggest regrets,” and added that at the time she didn’t feel able to give up her income, saying, “We did not know that our story was going to end that way.”
For parents who have already been through NICU stays, the policies can reshape how families manage both medical needs and finances. Rebeca Herrera-Moreno said learning about Colorado’s NICU leave law brought her back to her son Nico’s time in intensive care six years earlier, and she later began advocacy for a similar provision in California. When Nico was born at 32 weeks in 2020, Herrera-Moreno said she was already on disability leave and her husband, Martin Moreno, had been entitled to six weeks of paid parental leave under California law at the time, but they chose to save that time for when Nico came home.
Chris and Stevie Madden represent another early set of applicants in Colorado. Tracy Marshall, director of the Colorado’s Family and Medical Leave Insurance Division, said nearly 800 people applied for neonatal care leave since the policy took effect in January, and she cited Chris and Stevie Madden as among the first. Madden said she panicked about how to handle both the crisis and work after realizing she had planned to start maternity leave later, but a nurse told her about the NICU leave and both applied. Madden, an oil field mechanic, said she would not have been able to keep working in a risky job while her son was fighting for his life, and described the benefit as “life changing” in part because it reduced the need to worry about money and stress while she focused on being present with her baby.
Negotiating NICU caregiving also affects how parents process the transition from hospital to home, according to Moreno’s recollection after his family’s return. When Nico came home, Moreno said he felt unprepared to care for their baby and described learning feeding practices that involved helping the infant avoid choking, while he said he had been unaware of the extent of his wife’s emotional turmoil during the hospital period. Moreno said, “I wish I would have had more preparation with the medical staff to really feel like I had everything set,” and he added that he had not been absent for his partner during a significant portion of the NICU time.
As state policies take effect and federal lawmakers draft legislation, advocates say the central issue remains whether parents can stay connected to their newborns during the period when NICU care is still ongoing. The new laws in Colorado and Illinois are giving families a clearer template of what guaranteed time can look like—while supporters press for a nationwide standard that would reduce the need to rely on whether a family lives in the right state or works at the right employer.