Urgent Advice Needed

[bunnebear1981]

Afternoon Everyone

Hoping you can offer some advice to the situation my girlfriend and I find ourselves in.

I met her about a year ago, I live with my parents and she rents a house.

Since the turn of the year I have been self employed but things were not working out so I wrapped my business up and started to seek employed work.

My girlfriend was then made redundant at the end of July, but received enough money to pay for 2 months rent and bills so she had a small cushion before things got to the point where she couldn’t afford to pay her bills.

Soon after this we discovered that she was pregnant, so the race was on for us both to find employment, she successfully found a full time job earning a good wage for the part of the country we live in, a week later I found a job albeit with not as good a wage but still enough to get by.

The big thing playing on her mind is when to tell her employer, originally she was going to try and stretch it out till xmas, but she has started today and is being sent away on a number of course's in Birmingham for 3-4 days at a time in the run up to the xmas period. She is concerned about going without the company knowing she is pregnant, mainly from a health and safety point of view i.e. : lumping suitcase on and off trains, taxis into hotels etc etc, if something goes wrong while she is away etc .

The only other option I can see is that she gives up the job, gets some housing benefit etc to help with majority of bills and rent and we live off my wage, obviously that will limit the amount of money we have to save.

The plan is to utilize the time im at my parents and save as much as possible before I move in with her just before the baby is born.

We both just feel like we are in a situation that we would really both love to enjoy together but the circumstances around that at the moment are over shadowing things

Has anyone got any advice they offer

 

[Rainbow82]

The company that your girlfriend has started working for cannot discriminate against her for being pregnant, they may not see it as an ideal situation but if you tell them they will be able to do a risk assessment, it may be inconvenient having some time away on courses if she is having morning sickness etc but I don't think wheeling a suitcase with 3-4days of clothes is going to be heavy lifting really, taxi drivers will normally lift it in and out and similarly train guards always willing to help as well. If she is asked to do something on the course she feels may may be a risk to the pregnancy she can always refuse and say she found out that morning she is pregnant. I would personally keep the job as if she leaves voluntarily I don't think she will be able to claim all the different benefits straight away anyway (and if you live with her and earn over approx 15000) she won't get anything but a bit of working tax till much later in the
pregnancy. Also if she wants to work after the baby it will be pretty difficult to find a good job in her field with an 18month to two year gap on her cv even if some if it is after having baby. Good luck whatever you decide to do.