Ashley May

USA TODAY

A mother who lost her 15-week-old baby on the first day of day care wants to hear more from Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton on parental leave.

Amber Scorah took three months maternity leave after her son was born last year. Even though her work’s leave policy is more generous than many other employers, Scorah didn’t feel like three months was enough time off. She struggled leaving baby Karl, even asking her employer if it was possible to take more time off. It wasn't if she wanted to keep her job. So, like most working moms in America, she took him to day care. When she went back at lunch to check on her son, he was dead. You might have read her heartbreaking story on a New York Times parenting blog last winter.

"I saw my son unconscious, splayed out on a soft changing table. His lips and the area around his mouth were blue, and the day-care owner was performing CPR on him, incorrectly," she wrote in the article.

The cause of death was inconclusive.

Ali Dodd’s story isn’t much different than Scorah's. Dodd’s son, Shepard, suffocated in a car seat when a childcare worker didn’t check on him. It was his sixth day at the day care. He was “still too little to lift up his own head,” she said. Dodd didn't get any paid leave off. Shepard went to day care at barely 11-weeks-old.

Scorah said she knows their circumstances were "a worst-case scenario," but cites data from Save the Children showing America has the highest infant mortality rate of any industrialized nation.

Twelve percent of U.S. non-government workers have access to paid family leave, according to the Department of Labor. The Family Medical Leave Act, gives 12 weeks job-protected unpaid leave, but many workers don't qualify for that. Unlike nearly all countries around the world, the U.S. also offers no paid leave for parents, as visible in a map by World Policy Center. New Zealand, France, Spain and Russia are among countries to offer at least 14 weeks of maternity leave paid in full.

"The reality is, most families have almost no options but to return to work too soon," Scorah told USA TODAY.

The majority (90%) of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome deaths occur before a baby reaches 6-months, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development reports.

Together, Scorah and Dodd launched a Change.org petition in the spring, asking the government to commit to paid family leave.

In April, the women wrote a USA TODAY opinion column saying if they had more parental leave, their children might still be alive today.

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To date, more than 135,000 people have signed the petition, hoping parents will get much more than three months leave.

“I think as a bare minimum we should consider job protection for a minimum of 6 months, and paid leave or partially paid leave for a reasonable portion of that,” Scorah said.

Dodd said Americans shouldn't have to wait for a new president for this kind of policy to move forward.

"We know that 4,000+ infants in the U.S. die every year," she said. "Week 8 to week 16, it’s the highest ... We are sending them to the day care when they are most vulnerable."

Dodd, who is also working on a policy for parental leave in Oklahoma, is pregnant, and once again has no paid leave available.

She's frustrated she doesn't have the child care options she wants, especially after the loss of her son last year. Her family, who lives about 3 hours away, has offered to help with care of her girl due next month.

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Katherine Glenn-Applegate, director of the Early Childhood Program at Ohio Wesleyan University, recently dropped off her 4-month-old for his first day of day care.

Glenn-Applegate said even though she studies child care for a living and was a former preschool teacher, finding child care for her own children was a nightmare.

She waited 8 months before sending her first son to daycare, who is now 3, and wasn’t comfortable with the decision at all.

"The first place that my husband and I toured, we both left and said right away 'no' and then that’s where we sent our son," she said. "That was the only place that was available."

She said they "got him out of there as soon as we could" and eventually found a place that better suited their needs —into a program with teacher with 20 years of experience and caregivers who seem to "genuinely enjoy the company of children."

While she trusts the day care, leaving her babies still isn’t easy. Leaving her youngest for the first time, she said she cried the minute she got inside her car.

"We want more options," Dodd said. "We want better options. What we are doing to our families?"

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