The highs and lows of keeping an expectant house help

 The last three months have been eventful. Eventful because my house help Petronilla, is four months pregnant.

Like I have mentioned here before, Petro as we call her, landed in my house after my one of a kind house help Eshe, left for Uganda in August just before elections. Eshe is the kind of house help made in heaven. I miss her terribly because she brought a heavenly sense of peace, order and joy in my house.

She promised me she would come back once she finishes doing certain things. But looks like these things are not done yet. I am holding on to hope that one day my Eshe will come back.

Back to Petro. When she told me she was pregnant, I was devastated because I knew I had to terminate her services prematurely. Somehow she convinced me to let her stay on until she gives birth.

“Wacha tu nifanye kazi mpaka nijifungue,” I remember her pleading with me. Because she was generally a good girl, I decided to keep her. Petro is a quality house girl, she is excellent with Tasha and Troy, is a great cook, is clean and polite. Who would want to dismiss such an asset in this era of bad house helps whose sole agenda is to give working mums nothing but headache? But I digress.

I have never had a house girl who is expectant so my experience with Petro has been a roller coaster of a journey. There have been good and bad days and on many occasions, I have asked myself whether I made a blunder to keep her, but somehow she always proves to me that I made a good decision and we will make it.

Like majority of pregnancies, Petro’s first trimester has been a hurricane of sorts. For her sake, we stopped putting onions in our food and I had to drop a certain perfume which she politely told me was making her sick.

There are mornings when she is down with nausea -- I immediately call my boss and inform him I have an emergency, but on many occasions, she has stopped me with this assurance: “Mama Tasha usijali na mimi. Wewe nenda tu job. Nikisha pumzika nitang’ang’ang’a tu.” (Mama Tasha, you just go to work, after taking a rest, I will manage.)

When that happens, I go to work half-heartedly because her assurance is not convincing enough.

On such days, I get worried and call every hour to find out if she is well, and she always assures me all is well.

“Hata uliza Tasha, niko sawa,” she tells me when I insist she should not stress herself with work. Sure enough when I get home, I am amazed at how she has managed to do everything including feeding Troy and making him happy. Rough as it may seem, I have vowed not to send her away just yet because she needs the money. I am simply amazed with her resilience.

The writer is a married working mother of a toddler boy and a pre-school girl. She shares her experience of juggling between career, family and social life.