Pregnant Cleaner

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Bit of background: I've had my cleaner for nearly 3 years, starting shortly after DTS were born. She does 2 hrs per week and I pay her cash. She's a nice person, but we don't really chat so I don't know that much about her except that she lives with housemates rather than a partner.

Anyway she's just told me that she is nearly 4 months pregnant, that the pregnancy is unplanned but she wants to work right up to the last minute. I suspect she means she can't afford not to work.

Now my first thought was WTF are you doing scrubbing my bathroom & emptying the rubbish when you should be sitting down with a cup of tea. I have recently found out I am pregnant again myself & given I have had several miscarriages, I am planning on taking things as easy as I can.

So, how unreasonable is it going to be when I end up watching a woman several months more pregnant than I am, doing the jobs that I don't have time/energy to do myself? I feel quite worried for her as I don't think she realises how hard things can get when you start getting big. But it's her business & she needs the money. AIBU to feel concerned & how would you handle it?

I meant I did it with each pregnancy of my 3 children

Nip out?? To assuage your conscience? If you don't see a heavily pregnant woman cleaning your house for you then you won't feel guilty...is that it?

Treat her extremely well and look after her - she is doing your dirty work for you after all.

This has to be the absolute ultimate mc class guilt thread....!

Anyone see Blood Brothers....

sigh seen not see.

Hi, I was a cleaner and I worked right up until I was 35 weeks. it was hard and I never expected to do any less. But one of my clients still expected me t shift furniture and clean floors by hand! Nice lady!

Canspel: A little housework? Being a cleaner when people are paying you, their standards of what they would do and what they want you to do is completely different. I worked bloody hard!

I think everyone here is violently agreeing (as do I)...

Just make her tasks as easy as possible, within reason.

Country:Treat her extremely well and look after her - she is doing your dirty work for you after all.
And she is getting paid to do it. She's not doing OP a favour.
If she is self employed, she is responsible for assessing her own H+S at work/insurance. Got a feeling she may be cash in hand which is tricky not to mention dodgy.

I would just make it clear that she should tell you when/if she starts to feel the workload is too much.

Work is similar to exercise, as long as she doesn't suddenly increase the amount she is doing there shouldn't be any problems. To put it in perspective I know the hotel nearby doesn't reduce it's housekeeping allocation until 5 months.

Agree that it's important that you let her make this decision- lots of us are working right up until we pop, even in quite physical jobs. Exercise is actually very good for pregnant women without complications, so that shouldn't be an issue for her - if you're worried about the cleaning products, you could always change them over like the pp said. It would be very harsh to stop her now, because people aren't going to hire a pregnant cleaning lady!