to not tell them I'm pregnant.

[moogster1a]

I'm a childminder and am 8 weeks pg. I've got a family coming at the weekend to hopefully sign up for full time care ( 5 days a week) for their lo starting July.
Would it be very wrong of me not to mention the pg. until the lo has settled in with me. I just really don't want to put them off.
If my last pg's are anything to go by, I won't be showing till about September.
Also, I've only ever taken 4 weeks off maternity and last time just 2 weeks. I'm due at Christmas so this would tie in nicely with Christmas hols.
If I needed to take more time off, I have back up CM's who would cover.
Would you prefer to be told now, and would it put you off? ( my other parents have been very happy when my other dc arrived and it really didn't impact on their lo's care ).
Writing it down it seems a bit dishonest, doesn't it. Maybe I'd mention it come JUly when she starts...

Freddos I really don't get why the parents have a 'moral right' to know their CM is pregnant.

I mean, if I were looking at childcare for my LO, I'd think very carefully before putting them in any setting and ask lots of Qs. If I were looking at a CM in (say) her early 30s with a couple of DC already, it would probably occur to me that she might have more. Personally I think it'd be pretty unethical to ask, but I guess parents always could.

And if they don't think of it? Caveat emptor. IMO.

Also what if she MC at 11 weeks? Sorry OP - but what if? Should she then have to go and divulge that to these people too?

I also really don't think the child will be massively damaged by spending a few weeks with alternative care arrangements. With someone she already knows. It might be a bit unsettling but it's hardly going to give her night terrors, surely.

If you employ paid childcare, it is a business arrangement. Just like employing an independent midwife - or gynaecologist - or psychotherapist - or any other trusted position with initimate access to your life. Those people have lives too. Decent people understand that.

You are right Angeltulips, it is just a job to earn money, like any other business.

Maybe not, but she is one woman. And that is the risk you take with a childminder. She is trying her best and the nub of the matter is it really is her business. She is eight weeks pregnant, Eight weeks. Would you say to colleagues, "I am trying for a baby and I really think my husband got me pregnant last night" Of course not. I realise that this is a ridiculous example, but she wants to keep her business going. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. She is a childminder, not a surrogate parent. And she has clearly said she will say when she is ready. I was asked, fresh out of uni in an interview what my plans were for having a family when I had just had a miscarriage. I wanted a baby, but of course I was not going to have that discussion at an interview. I didn't know how things would work out. And it was not right for them to ask and it is not right for the OP to be forced to divulge and it is not right for people to make anyone think that she should. Women get pregnant! Who knew!

It's no one's business but your own until after the 12 week scan.

Also when the OP tells them at 12 weeks how will they know she knew? I mean, it's totally possible to find out you are pg at 10 or 11 weeks. Are they going to shriek 'But how long have you known? A week? 9 days? Why didn't you tell us first?'

12 weeks is really pretty early on. The OP might well have only found out a week or so beforehand.

outraged comparisons are limited in value but when I fell pregnant with ds (and still worked full time) I specialised in complex asylum cases for women torture survivors. And yes, my maternity leave caused emotional problems, especially for one of my ladies whose psychiatrist went on leave at the same time.

And indeed my ds has been in two different nurseries for a good few years now (a sn one and a mainstream one) and has had a fair few staff changes and that is fine. As long as he's well looked after.

What is the real difference for the parents if the OP is pregnant now or gets pregnant in a few months? All it does is move the short break the OP is having by a few months. Pregnancy is a normal thing to happen and to be expected in a profession where most employees are women.

Well said Revolting

Sorry Freddos got a bit ranty there - was not implying you are not a decent person

The parents don't have a moral right to know the CM is pregnant.

The parents have a moral right to know that there is something that will either mean they have to leave their child with the CM they just left, or they will have to take at least two weeks of annual leave that they weren't expecting. They also have the moral right to know that their dd is going to be cared for alongside a two week old baby, and that there is a chance their CM might not be as reliable as she would normally be because not all pregnancies are completely worry free.

Freddos I guess my point is this early on, no offence OP, but even the OP doesn't know she will def have a baby.

This is probably not an ideal analogy, but - I am a university lecturer and one of my colleagues got pg over the winter. She is very popular and a number of students had already asked to do their final projects with her next year when she will be off on ML. She found this very tricky- she didn't want to turn them down but she didn't want to tell them she was pg either.

The compromise she came up with was saying yes provisionally but crossing her fingers behind her back and actually planning with me that when she announced her pregnancy to the dept I would offer to take over supervising those students (we have similar research specialisms, but I was not their first choice).

She is very glad she did this as early on in the pg she began to get pains in her side and feared it was ectopic. Imagine it had been and she had had to explain that to a whole year of students? How horrible.

So she 'lied' but really I think she was right to do so. It will cause the students some disruption - the final project is a big deal for them, some of them may not want to work with me, yada yada - but IMO her need for privacy is more important than those temporary inconveniences.

I'd wait until the scan, which I believe you said would still be before their LO starts with you, so they at a push can start looking for other options, if you being pg doesn't work for them, then they can give notice and go elsewhere. Between now and your DC being born, there could be a million other things that might happen that would lead them to giving notice anyway.

Personally, I would be happy to hear at 12/13weeks, because I felt like that's when most mothers tell, however, I would not want my DC being taken along to any of your medical appointments - I don't know how that normally works for CMers (only used nursery for DS) but I wouldn't want DS taken along for those, nor would I want my DS dragged along to all your new DCs checks/jab appointments etc. that might put me off and make me want to move DS before you got to that stage.

I was very ill after having DS due to complications in the birth, and so I'd want alternative childcare in place for at least 6 weeks after you have your DC regardless of what you said about your ability to cope, you don't know if you'll have problems with this one, you might not, but as a working mum, I can't deal with 'might' and 'probably' I would need to know I had cover, so from 36 weeks pg until your DC was at lest 8 weeks old, I'd want rock solid alternatives. If DS seemed settled with the alternative, I wouldn't want to go back to you until I could be certain you were coping. (Sorry, not what you want to hear)

i wish i could of kept my pregnancy a secret, but i work with highly contigious patients so had to tell my boss asap to protect me and the baby.

op I wouldn't tell them untill you want (12 weeks i think i have read) they will have 5 months to find another CM if they don't want a pregnant CM

I don't think a whole year group of students is the same as telling another mother, although I do take your point. I also take the points about women's working rights and everything that goes along with that.

I don't think any of those things trump what's best for the child though, and a good childcare professional should be mindful of that. I work with small children (reception class) one of the joys of that is that the children grow to love the people that look after them in their own little way. And it's a honour that the parents trust us to look after the people that are most precious to them. I can only imagine that those feelings are intensified in a home from home childcare setting with even younger children. So while I accept and understand all the valid points that have been made in favour of not telling, I just don't think they are the most important thing here.

Okey doke Freddos I guess we just differ on that. I get your points, I do, but I think the most important thing is the mother's privacy and well-being and that children of that age are resilient and won't be emotionally damaged by a 4- or 6-wk disruption to their lives. I guess my own feeling is that if you are a mum, sacrificing your own feelings/ privacy for your DC is kinda par for the course, but paid childcare is different in that respect, however close you might get to the DC otherwise.

I don't feel ashamed of myself angeltulips - I'm honestly not sure whether I would still use a CM in this situation, it's never arisen for me (and never will, because as I said upthread my CM is in her late 50s). I would completely respect the CM's right to not reveal her pregnancy until after the first scan, but if it was kept from me 'until my child had got settled' with the CM then I would be annoyed.

CMs are not employees. They are running a business - as you point out yourself. There are advantages and disadvantages to being self-employed: one of the disadvantages is that you can't dictate whether people choose to use your services or not based on an unfair or unreasonable factor. If this doesn't outweigh the advantages for you, then get a job in a nursery and do the same sort of work as an employee.

I pay my CM the rate she has set. She is not exactly sitting at home supping gruel in rags to the best of my knowledge. Calculating how many children she has and how much all the parents must be paying, I think she's doing quite well - and good for her, she works incredibly hard and is a lovely person and an excellent childminder.

For what it's worth, I turned down a job last year because I was planning DC2. The job was to replace a retiring person, who was due to step down in 18 months' time (coinciding with the sort of time that I would be hoping to get pregnant and take mat leave), and to be the sole person at that firm doing a specific type of work. It would have been perfectly legal to take the job, take the nice salary and then get pregnant - but it would have been morally wrong IMO. I couldn't in good conscience take a job knowing that I would be planning to leave them in the lurch with nobody else there doing that sort of work able to cover (it's also quite a specialist area so fairly hard to recruit people with suitable experience).

Fair enough, we can agree to differ

I disagree that all children are resilient and won't be upset though. I think many would be fine and take it in their stride, but I also think there are many that won't be fine. I think as adults we can sometimes be guilty of believeing that children are fine just because we don't always know what they are thinking or feeling, especially when they are too young to know themselves what it is they are feeling, let alone articulate it. But I might be more sensitive to this because my ds has AS, and although we didn't have a diagnosis until he was seven, it would have affected him when he was much younger than that if he had been swopped between child carers.

I also think a lot of this is about trust, not just contractural rights on either side. It may be a business arrangement, but most CMs take their mindees in as part of their family, and I think it's important to people who choose childminders that they can also see their CMs as an extension of their family. That's why they tend to choose that kind of setting for their children to spend so much time in. As has been shown by many on this thread,they would be upset to have allowed their child to settle with someone who knew they would need to take leave and then have a baby of their own, and that's a natural feeling to have. Both Mothers feelings are equally important in this situation.

But Outraged following your logic CM should not be allowed to have babies at all!

It is interesting what you say about your DS with AS Freddos - I grew up with a seriously ill sibling and our childcare was all over the place as a result. I remember being left with teenagers, with a lady who didn't speak English, with God knows how many random mums who were helping out my mum if she had to stay in hospital overnight with DSis.

It definitely wasn't ideal. But we coped. I guess for me this feels so much less serious and disruptive than that that it's hard to see it as massively emotionally detrimental - but I am not trying to be an Internet Tough Guy about it

If I were the parent I would be hugely pissed off. I'd feel that you had been dishonest, and I'd give notice regardless of your mat leave plans.

Revolting (I feel horrible calling you that!) I guess we all come at these things with a perspective that comes from our individual experiences, but that's what I like about MN

Madmouse, I don't think I've implied that I think CMs shouldn't have babies at all, of course that woudo be silly. But I think in OPs situation where she knows she is pregnant and a child hasn't actually started yet, it's a different situation to having a child already settled and then becoming pregnant. The point is that the OP already knows she is pregnant and this child hasn't started with her yet. There is something that the parents could know about when their child starts with OP, and that may affect their choice of CM. There is something dishonest about withholding that information for your own benefit.

Until you feel secure in this pregnancy it is nobody's business except yours. If you want to tell them, fine but you are in no way obliged to do so. Circumstances change all the time. I would be miffed a bit if you hadn't told me but I would understand. Very few people tell anyone at this early stage. just because you are selling a service doesn't mean you have more obligations. Do whatever you are comfortable with.

Will withholding info about your pregnancy void the contract?

Sorry if I'm repeating previous comments but there is indeed a difference between a self employed person that works on their own to a lecturer, who may also be self employed but works for a university that is obliged to provide a cover.

If I were the parent I would want to know, as an important reason to prefer a CM over a nursery is continuity of care - and perhaps the backup CM would not be a person I would have originally chosen.

To be honest, I would appreciate honesty in this case, and would feel a bit like you withheld rather important info from me...how do you know the parents won't decide to stop using your services later on?

Whatever you decide - congratulations!

OP, whilst I wouldn't wish a misfortune upon you... she could break her leg next week with no notice (except my fortelling ). In this case, she will be giving ample notice of her leave and has an option for cover that the parents can choose whether or not to take up, with plenty of time to make alternative arrangements.

I think the important thing OP is that you tell/have told your prospective parents what your normal arrangements for cover are generally and they can decide if they are suitable or whether they would prefer to make their own arrangements in the event that you are unavailable for any reason.

I don't think you need to tell them until you are ready to, certainly not before your 12 week scan if you aren't telling anyone outside close family until after then. It really isn't necessary.

I'm pretty flumoxed by those on this thread that seem to think you need to inform them of your pregnancy this soon. Of course you may have more health problems this pregnancy compared to previous ones, sometimes that happens, but it would be just as inconvient if you had a non-pregnancy related condition disrupt your working life and you can't just give up work prematurely on the offchance that it might happen.

I'm really surprised by the person who turned down a job because she intended to try for a baby in a year or more's time. It took me 6 years to concieve, completely unexpected as I was only 20 when we started. Pregnancy isn't that plannable in my experience.

Speaking from experience I would say tell them. If they don't want to hire you on that basis, whilst seeming unfair to you, it's their perogative. And you can continue your search till you find someone who will employ you without being prejudiced nervous of your capabilities and commitment.

I got a new job knowing I was 6 weeks pregnant (unplanned!) and also thought: I could miscarry, I wouldn't tell anyone else at this stage,
if I do a good enough job they'll be fine, I'll only take 1 months
maternity leave etc etc bla bla. Well none of it really washed when I did tell them. They felt lied to, deceived and the relationship was
forever soured. In fact despite me working my arse off they tried
some sneaky, underhand ways to force me to resign. Ended in
lawsuit. Nightmare. Appreciate this is an extreme case but if I could
turn back the clock- I'd never do that again.

From a different perspective, I employ a nanny who became pregnant, naturally I was genuinely delighted for her but the pregnancy was very difficult. She had a huge amount of time off, was on bed rest for
a while, had restricted duties i.e couldnt pick up my toddler and sadly it ended up in a miscarriage. It was very sad and stressful.

It was also extremely hard and stressful for my dc as they had have emergency childcare, and also for me as I kept having to take unplanned time off work. It really dud impact in my family.

You can't predict how well a pregnancy us going to go, and I think a prospective employer needs to know do they can decide what's best for their family when they employ someone - especially when it's
looking after children.
Good luck with whatever you decide to do.