Nanny 20 weeks pregnant when she started job!!

[HantsPants]

Get this... I have just gone back to work 3 days a week, started on 1st September. Found lovely nanny. DD and DS love her. She has just told me she is... wait for it... 28 weeks pregnant and due on 23rd Jan!!! She was 20 weeks when she started, apparently did not know until she was 22 weeks. You may well be wondering why I did not notice her bump. Well, dear MNers, she is very generously upholstered and you can't tell (yes, really). Nanny loves job and DC and wants to take a short time off and come back to work with the baby.

I was initially supportive but DH dead against it. DD aged 6 and a breeze but DS aged 2 and very hard work not to mention has speech delay and needs nanny's full attention for his speech development and Makaton signing etc.

Do not want to pay nanny top whack to look after her own baby in my house and put her newborn baby's needs ahead of my own children's. Cannot imagine that this is anything other than problematic.

Thoughts anyone?

Athene, I think you have a point about trying to make this work and my first sense was to go for this but on reflection, I don't think so. DH really not keen, there is quite a lot of driving to do schools runs etc, we live in a village and I need some flexibility with hours ie her working late (for OT pay) when I have to work late and DH on call. She was very good about this but is very unlikely to want to continue to with newborn's routine to consider.

Harriet, she may not have known at 20 weeks, she has told me she was bleeding irregularly but you are right to question her integrity about not telling me for 6 weeks after she found out at 22 weeks. StealthPolarBear I suspect that the fact that she has not told me by 25 weeks is my tough luck. Employment law is all about the protection of the employee, as we all know.

Nannyl I live near Alresford.

Am feeling weak just with thought of sorting this out and going through hiring process and have not even told DC yet.

Alresford - nice part of Hampshire... quite often take children on the Steam Train, plus InTech (science centre & planetarium).
Good luck in finding a temp nanny to see you though... with luck they will be able to become permanent.

I think you need to be very careful, and not announce anything to anyone -- including DCs. It is her decision, and not yours, whether she chooses to return from maternity leave. She probably won't return, as you suspect, if you say the baby cannot come with her. But, until she actually tells you (presumably in writing) that she is not returnin you can't do anything really. If you tell her she is not welcome back with that baby she may sit on her maternity leave for 12 months forcing you ti hire and pay for a temp for all that time. If you take her back back with the baby sho might come back after 4 weeks of no pay, even with a pay cut.

You have a lot to consider here.

And I still wonder if you can send the kids with her to her antenatal appointments.

But she won't be getting paid during those twelve months presumably? Can she afford to take that much time off? I would presume not if she wants a short leave, coming back with the baby.

HantsPants. I am sorry to be blunt but it isn't actually your decision about replacing her, you know.

If I were that nanny and had seen your post from last night, I could take you to an ET and win a case for sex discrimination.

You have to keep her job open for her unless she tells you she will not be coming back after maternity, and any action you do now to replace her before she has give you that decision is just piling up the evidence against you.

For all you know she may be putting into place plans to have someone look after her child so that she can return to work for those 3 days.

Assuming she will become a less flexible and more problematic employee simply by dint of having a baby makes my blood absolutely boil. How would you feel if your own employers were saying the same about you and your post-maternity return to employment?

Get your head around employment law, and start acting like a good employer.

If you do not want the baby coming along then fine, you can say no to her bringing the baby to work, but you cannot throw out the nanny.

Hesaysshesays - am also disgusted with you. Where does it say that her DP will not be taking time off to care for the baby (if ill), therefore enabling the mother to go to work? Sharing the time off is what happens in our house, in Athene's house and many others - your lazy sexism is the kind of low-level stuff that annoys the hell out of me. If you want to be sexist, then fine, fuck off and be sexist. But don't ever pretend that you are being anything other than that.

Jeez, I thought the posters on the childminder boards at least might have some inkling of appropriate behaviour towards working mothers.

It's also irrelevant whether she knew or didn't know, whether she had periods or a bump or not. You are her employer, she has an employee's right to privacy over her personal life.

Unless the law is different for nannies, she has exactly the same right to protection from unscrupulous employment practices that every other mother has, whether or not it is inconvenient for you. If her baby is sick, so be it: I don't think it is currently remotely legal to refuse employment to someone because they have a child...

@ StillSqiffy

Language PLEASE!

Pretty arrogant post if you ask me.

The OP does have a problem and is simply figuring out what to do for the best. I believe that she needs to take professional legal advice.

OK it may have been blunt,and I may have got out of bed on the wrong side, but many of the nanny employers on these boards fight this low level sexism every day in their own jobs..

Arrogant? Well, I have an MSc in Employment law, so probably do come across as a bit know-it-all. Apologies for that.

But I will not take away the thrust of my post - the OP has clearly said in her last post she is going to commence finding a replacement. And in the post before that has said she simply Can't do it in terms of having an employee with her own child, who might call in sick. That attitude is far more appalling than anything I may have said.

Hang on a minute -

She may have known, or she may have not when she was originally hired. And as you say - that doesn't make a difference. What she didn't do, though, is tell the OP when she should have. And she has said she DID know during the period of time she should have told her and chose not to. There is an integrity issue here, on the part of the employee, which it is reasonable not to ignore. Unfortunately it is very difficult to address this in the context of the situation w/o OP getting accused of discrimination.

I agree with squiffy. Surely - if she is a good nanny - the employer's approach ought to be 'how can we find a way of keeping this woman who we have spent lots of time and money recruiting to do the most important job in our family'?

Relief at the fact you don't have to provide maternity pay, or hoping she won't be able to manage her own childcare so you can get rid of her IS frankly offensive. Large organisations get taken to employment tribunals for this kind of thing. So it is complex and costly to re-arrange things? Yup. You should have thought about that: it is employment.

Why should the OP not feel relieved re the no maternity pay? Given the employee has only been there for two months and was already 20 weeks pg it would not be fair to expect the employer to pay for maternity leave and neither does the law require for it. The OP has every right to feel agreived that she now has to find a temp nanny etc and all withing such a short time frame.

I agree with her DH in that the baby should not be bought along, the OP employed a nanny for one to one care not for shared care.

Sqiffy, you raise an interesting point: to what extent can people be held legally liable for something posted anonymously on a forum like this? Can information posted here be used to support a legal case against the poster?
Does anybody know? Do the mods of MN know?

I wondered about that when I slated the celebrity OBGYN who failed to diagnose my ectopic. Quite spectacularly. They didn't actually reply to me when I asked about it.

Isn't that exactly what Gina Ford did to mumsnet?

Squiffy - I agree with you totally and didn't find your post arrogant - feisty maybe, but not arrogant!

As a working mum I am mightily relieved that my employer doesn't have the attitude of the Op - and I am shocked that another working mother would has this attitude.

Well, in this case the employee would need the wherewithal to conclusively prove it was her boss posting it. Which would probably require a certain degree of disclosure from Mumsnet, and some IT skills or employing someone who had them. Plus other things. Not outrageously straightforward but probably a way to use it as evidence I would have thought.

What do you reckon? Will this thread last the day?

If you look at this from the DC's point of view, they may be happy to have this nanny with them with the new baby.

I would consider taking her back after maternity leave (which she said would be short) but under a new temporary contract and review period.

It may be additional things to talk about with DC2 re the speech therapy.

It may be an easier solution and transition period for all concerned.

Oh dear. You've upset Squiffy. She's a bit riled up, but still giving credible advice.

If your nanny can prove that you have started looking for another nanny as soon as she told you she was pregnant and before she resigned, I think you could be in a heap of trouble.

Can I ask something else. I notice that your DH is the one who is opposed to keeoing her, but it is your burden to deal with the stuation. Am I right? I ask because my DH has sometimes had (quirky) ideas of who can or can't be our nanny. But, I am the one who has to hire, manage, basically do all the work. So, I have a set of criteria. I figure if he/she is my responsibility to manage and pay, then I will choose whom I want to work with. He once wanted to rule out a candidate who looked pretty good on paper and had a good clique factor because she was Australian. I asked what was wrong with Australians and it transpired he finds the Australian accent annoying. Needless to say I sort of took hi scomment onboard but really I was thinkin hmmm you are going to have to do better than "annoying accent" if you want her off the list. What I'm saying is are you getting rid of her ONLY because your DH has been inconvenienced. And is getting rid of her a bigger inconvenience than keeping her?

And, I'm going to have to point out in nanny's defense that your DH's cut and dry response to getting rid of her is exactly why people don't tell prospective employers that they are pregnant. So, I do have some sympathy for why someone might lie.

Whatever happened, she is now your employee, and you are bound right or wrong by the employment law.

Now, if you stop upsetting Squiffy and she goes off to have a stiff drink and clams down, you will find that she has been round the nanny employer block and she givves sound advice.

Athene passes drink to Squiffy

Oh bugger...

calms down, not clams down.

And as for nanny working out who this is, how many fat nannies who just started work for a surgeon and corporate mum who have a 2 yo son with speech delay and a 6 year old DD and live in Hants near Alresford and have just been told by nanny that she is due in January can their be?

I think if said nanny reads MN she will know who it is.

Athene
There's feeling anxious about it- and then there's leaving it to the third trimester. She is 28 wks pregnant for God's sake.

For one thing - the employer is supposed to do a risk assessment. If had a health issue which meant the job was unsuitable for her w/o some sort of adjustment would the employer be liable? Who knows.

It's not on. The OP needs to do what is right but the nanny needs to be a big girl too, which also goes with the territory of being an employee.

OP whatever you do - don't try to hire someone else. She may not even know that she's not entitled to any maternity pay from the state - you should print off the stuff from the website nanny nick posted which give her all the information which details her rights and her obligations in terms of keeping you informed as well as what she can expect from you legally.

And get this thread deleted.

if shes not getting smp then she will be entitled to maternity allowance from the goverment thats what i got as i am self employed as long as she has been in wrk before comeing to you and wrks the rest of her pregancy. i would also suggest she takes the children to appointments thats what you the parent would do if you were pregnant and already had children. i was pregnant while childminding and arranged appointments for my quieter days where i only had 1 or 2 kids and i took them with me.

very true about why nannys dont want to tell employers they are pregnant - legally their job HAS to be kept open - nanny may ask her parents to look after her dc for 3 days

i would be and if i had read this and knew it was me, and would be very pissed off being called fat

Now, to be fair HantPants said she was "generously upholstered". Perhaps she has a nice sofa?