The Catch-22 Of A Pregnant Nanny

Feeling guilty is a hallmark of motherhood, and leaving your child with a nanny as you head to the office doesn’t exactly help matters. You’re essentially putting another woman in charge of your child’s safety and well-being for eight-plus hours each day and hoping for the best. Which explains why a woman’s relationship with her nanny is not your typical employer-employee relationship.

It’s a working agreement, to be sure, but it comes with some pretty heavy emotions (I have yet to find a couple who doesn’t consider their nanny at least a good one, anyway to be family). These feelings only get intensified if and when a nanny gets pregnant. Most moms are thrilled how could they not be? but deep down there’s that panicked feeling as they figure out the implications on their own lives. And there’s a fine line between supporting your nanny emotionally, financially, legally and doing what’s best for you and your children.

When Marissa Scott, a Montreal mother of three, got separated from her husband back in 2007, there was one person she could count on most: her nanny. Helen had been with her for five years and was pretty much an honorary member of the family. She was a live-in caregiver and spent her days caring for Marissa’s young children feeding them, bathing them, taking them to programs, on play dates, to and from school. She was almost like a second mother to these kids, who told her daily, “I love you, Helen.”

Marissa’s parents and siblings all live out of town, and so Helen has become her lifeline. Often, when Marissa is stuck at at the office late she works as a creative director at an international advertising agency she takes comfort in knowing that Helen’s there to feed her children dinner and tuck them in at night. So you can imagine how Marissa felt when Helen announced that she was pregnant.

“I didn’t sleep that whole night thinking about the implications for her and for me. We’re dependent on one another,” explains Marissa. “I’ll admit I wasn’t thrilled at first. I knew our situation was going to change. But I was also very happy for her because I knew she wanted children.”

Ah, the catch-22 of a pregnant nanny. On the one hand, you want your nanny to be happy and fulfilled. That would be the case with any employee but even more so with the woman who is caring for your children the most important beings in your life day in and day out. In fact, you’d climb mountains for this person so long as she keeps your children happy and safe. On the other hand is that feeling of, “Holy shit, what does this mean for my life?” And, also, “How will this impact my children?”

In Marissa’s case, she was worried about how she’d cope without Helen by her side, especially given that she had no one to fall back on. In Canada, women are entitled to 52 weeks of maternity leave, and Marissa had no choice but to find someone else who could step in during Helen’s absence. But she was worried about finding someone as special, someone who could come in and take control and love her children like Helen did. Plus, she was worried about what would happen once Helen’s mat leave was up. How could Helen come back and look after Marissa’s children when she’d have her own baby to to care for?

So Marissa worked out an agreement that left her friends scratching their heads and calling her crazy. Helen took a four-month mat leave in which Marissa continued to pay her taxes and then came back to work for Marissa with her baby. That was four years ago. Helen’s been with the family for nine years now, and her son has literally grown up in their home.

“It definitely changed the dynamic of the family,” says Marissa. “It’s like my children gained another sibling. My kids love him they literally include him in the family tree.”

“There’s no question there are quite a few negatives,” she admits. “For example, there’s an extra cost because I feed her baby. And sometimes he’ll come to my house with a fever and get my kids sick but that works the other way around, too. And from a get-up-and-go perspective, I find her less mobile. But these are all small prices to pay.”

Marissa and Helen’s unconventional setup isn’t for everyone, but it works for them. For many women, however, having a pregnant nanny in the house is in and of itself an awkward scenario.

Kimberly Ross‘ nanny Eva has been with her family since her eldest child Jacob, now 6, was just eight months old. Eva is expecting her first child in January and, as Kimberly explains, “Jacob’s so excited, he thinks he’s getting another cousin!” (He he even calls Eva Tita, the tagalog word for “aunty”).

Although it broke Kimberly’s heart, she and Eva decided that it would be best for Eva not to return to work once the baby’s born. That’s because Kimberly requires a live-in nanny who can work overtime (for pay) especially evenings while her husband’s at work and Eva anticipates she won’t be able to fill that requirement. (They’ve already worked out an agreement in which Eva will babysit for Kimberly’s kids on weekends for cash.)

“I lie awake at night thinking, ‘What the hell am I going to do about Simone [my middle child]?’ She is so attached. When we say ‘Goodnight Jacob, Goodnight Baby Sasha, Goodnight Daddy…’ each night at bedtime, Eva always comes before my parents and way before the cousins. She’s family,” says Kimberly.

When Eva announced that she was pregnant, Kimberly said she spent the next 12 weeks coming home to see Eva hunched over the kitchen table, drinking tea and trying not to vomit for the fourth or fifth time that day. Thankfully, Kimberly who lives in Toronto was on her own mat leave at the time and so she was around to help out. Had she been at work, she doesn’t know how she would have managed with a sick nanny caring for her three children.

“It’s not like you can ask her to take out the recycling or schlep home heavy bags of groceries after she’s just thrown up. She was too weak even to lift my baby,” explains Kimberly. “Suddenly, I found myself looking after her all day.”

For Jennifer Lee, she felt the same mixed emotions when her nanny, Tasha, gave birth in 2009:

“I brought my girls and visited her in the hospital right after the baby was born. There was Tasha, happy but exhausted, and I spent hours rocking her baby to sleep. It was a total role reversal.”

Tasha came back to work for Jennifer after just five weeks, and Jennifer can remember feeling super guilty about the whole thing. “She was in such a newborn haze, which I remember well from my own kids. She had left her baby with an old woman from her apartment building to come and care for mine, which was awkward. She was hormonal and exhausted and she missed her baby. I remember her pumping [breast milk] at all hours in our bathroom,” says Jennifer. “I didn’t mind, of course, but I felt sick for her. She needed the money but you could just tell she didn’t want to be there.”

Eventually, Tasha gave notice and decided to go back to school. Today she works as a medical secretary her child is in daycare and Tasha and her daughter see Jennifer and the girls around three or times a year. “The kids play together like long lost cousins,” says Jennifer.

For some women, supporting a nanny through her pregnancy with the hopes that she’ll return is so important, they’re willing to readjust their own work schedules to make it happen. That was the case with Cincinnati-based Sandi Straetker, a PR professional and mother of two. As soon as her nanny, Patty, shared news that she was pregnant, the women devised a plan: Patty would take a two-month, unpaid maternity leave and then come back to work along with her baby.

For Sandi, this meant enrolling her son Matthew, then 18 months old, in a daycare center. At the time, she worked three days a week at a PR agency and spent the other two days at home with her son. It was a challenge to find a daycare center that would take her child on a part-time basis and, when she finally did, it made more financial sense to have him there two days a week rather than three. So Sandi got creative. She presented a written plan to her boss that showed how she could work two longer days rather than three shorter ones on a temporary basis (until her nanny returned). Her boss was game.

“I won’t say it was fabulous. It was a challenge and it screwed up my world,” admits Sandi. “But I had months to plan for it, prepare my child and get all my ducks in a row. I was upfront with everyone involved, including my boss, my clients, my child and, of course, our nanny.”

Things went smoothly during Patty’s mat leave. Matthew did well at daycare and Sandi and her husband would often pick him up at the end of the work day and go for dinner together to avoid rush-hour traffic, which made for some nice and unexpected family bonding time. Eight weeks later Patty returned to work, baby in tow, and it was business as usual.

Until it wasn’t. Two months after returning to work, Patty quit. “By then I had gone back to my original work schedule and so when she told me she was leaving I thought, ‘No! Really?’ It was disappointing,” says Sandi.

More than 11 years have passed since then Sandi went on to have another child, this time a daughter and she remembers Patty with fondness. “If you had talked to me at the time, I would have been very frustrated and upset. Childcare is so difficult and challenging. But in retrospect, it all worked out fine. I was fortunate,” she says. “I had a great employer who was willing to accommodate me when I needed it most and that’s what it’s all about, give and take. Patty was my go-to gal and I knew I could trust her. She went the extra mile for me, and so I did the same for her.” [tagbox tag=”nanny”]

Pregnancy or not, ask any woman who has ever employed a nanny and she’ll tell you this: The relationship is a complex one. On the surface, it would appear similar to any employer/employee relationship one that involves a salary, benefits, time off, professionalism, maybe some camaraderie. If only that were the case!

In reality, a mother-nanny relationship is fraught with emotions. Here’s a woman that’s caring for your kids while you’re off at work or the grocery store or, in some cases like Kimberly’s, even in the same house. She becomes like family. She is family. And yet she’s your employee. It’s complicated, to say the least, especially when there’s a pregnancy involved.

Candi Wingate, president of Nannies4Hire a nanny placement agency says it’s vital to acknowledge your mixed feelings about the situation. “It’s normal for you to feel happy for your nanny but concerned about how you and your children will be affected,” she says.

Wingate also recommends telling your nanny that she’s a treasured employee whom you don’t want to lose. “Ensure that she knows that you and your children will miss her while she’s on maternity leave, but that you’re happy for her because you know what an exciting time this is for her,” she says. “Be respectful of her right to have a life outside of her employment with you.”

(Photo: iStockphoto)

 

 

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