How to tell nanny about pregnancy

[pecanpie]

I have just had my 12 week scan and confirmed that everything is looking good with my pregnancy. I obviously need to break the news to work, which I've done before, but also have a nanny for my 2 other children. While I will still need help when DC3 arrives, I forsee needing a mother's help - i.e. someone to clean, bath the kids, help with school runs etc - probably after school help rather than having someone around all day as we have at present. I just don't know how to break the news to our nanny - any advice or are there any nannies who can tell me about their experiences?

How long will your maternity leave be? Will there be a nanny position when you return to work? If a nanny job no longer exists, you are looking at redundancy. If you make her redundant and then go back to work 3 months later and need another nanny, you should offer the job to her first.

Yes of course she will get first offer of job whenI return to work and will be looking at a 9 month leave most prob. Just feel guilty I guess for redundancy as she fits in as a part of our family. Am just going to have to get over that I assume.

Just sit down and be honest with her. I jumped up and down when my boss told me she was pregnant even though I knew it meant I had to go down part-time (which I did and found other arrangements for the rest of the week). In previous jobs I was made redundant when mum went on maternity leave but got at least 6 months notice to find a new job. Talk to her now and give her plenty of notice, also mention the new position and ask her to consider whether she would like to take it. If she is part of your family ,she'll be happy for you.

Thanks Lily. She is v young and it's her first nanny job so I think she's going to worry about where to go from here, but there are always loads of people locally looking for nannies so I should be able to help her. I don't think she'll want mother's help job - she won't get enough hours from it and it will be a drop in pay.

We do try to help her as much as possible in terms of development etc but the only thing I've not really pushed her on is cooking for the kids (she can't really beyond baked potatoes, pasta and needs to learn more about balancing foods etc) which might let her down in another job. Any advice on how I can help her to develop this skill before she moves on for her benefit in the future - e.g. are there any cookery courses for nannies or mums about which I could offer to send her on? Hope some nannies still reading...

Just give her a recipe a day and ask her to cook it for the children. That's what my first MB did with me and I learnt withing a month how to cook:). Annabel Karmel's book is great, easy to follow recipes and you can't go wrong with it.

Tried that, not really got anywhere with it yet but will push. Have even been through the book with a pen to change recipes where kids can't eat certain things... Thank you!