Oh No! Our Yaya Is Pregnant (Part 2)

It took awhile before I get to the part 2 of this Yaya story.  So here's the continuation.  This experience made me realized three thing...

It took awhile before I get to the part 2 of this Yaya story.  So here's the continuation.  This experience made me realized three things: 1) Being a domestic employer is not that easy.; 2) You can't help but help a domestic employee in need or in desperation even when it's beyond your obligation.; and 3)  It's important to background check your domestic employee.

Going back to the difficult situation our yaya's in which I enumerated  in my Oh No! Our Yaya Is Pregnant (Part 1) post, summarized here:

  • She cannot tell parents or any of her family because her papa and brothers might "kill" her.  
  • She can't tell tell the baby daddy who already has a family.
  • She wants to have her baby adopted.
  • She has no means to support the baby being one of her family's breadwinners.
  • Their house was wiped out in Samar due to Yolanda storm surge.
  • She's a teenager.
Macky and I discussed what to do with her.  I sought help and advice from family and friends and we came up with this plan for her to make it a win-win situation for everyone involved:
  1. Immediate OB Check Up  This is the very first step we did to know how many weeks she's already pregnant, when will her due date be and if she and the baby are healthy.  We had her registered and checked up at a nearby health center.  The result gave us the SHOCK of our lives!

    WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT??? She''s already giving birth on January 7!!!  As I've said in my previous post, Macky and I were guessing that she's only five months on the way.  Now this gives us a very short timeline to prepare for everything.
  2. Find her a shelter for teenage pregnancy. - There were two shelters that were suggested to me by friends, one in Pasig and the other is in Quezon City.  I was told that these shelters are for teenage pregnant moms, or pregnant women who are not married and want to seek refuge, with an objective to counsel them, and keep them from thinking about abortion as an answer to their situation.  These shelters, according to my good friend Joy, takes care of the counselling, medical and childbirth expenses.  They've set up a labor room where volunteer midwives are assigned to help their patients.  They have DSWD social workers who help pregnant women go through pregnancy physically and psychologically.
  3. Help her with adoption. - The shelters' DSWD social workers not only volunteer to give counselling but to also process adoption of the babies born in case the mothers don't intend to keep their babies.  But as told, they first encourage and influence the mothers to keep their babies.  They only offer adoption help if the mothers are decided, without turning back, to have their babies adopted.
  4. Take her in again after childbirth. - She will be resting a month or two in the shelter after giving birth.  We asked her first if she still wants to come back to us or if she has other plans.  She said she still wants to stay with us and be my son's nanny.  We are her employers and whatever help we are giving her is out of goodwill, nothing that she needs to repay in debt.  Of course, there's a period where we will have no yaya for our toddler and that's another challenge for us.  We have to look for a temporary yaya quickly.  
Realizations and Learnings
Being an "amo" (the term they use for us) to your household helpers is like running a household business with focus on service.  It is business and personal at the same time because they take care of the abode we come to everyday and the people close to us, our kids and at the same time we pay for their services.  People management is not easy because you handle individual/s of different background and values and also consider their emotional aspects.  You also have to train and develop them, sometimes groom them, and assess them if they are fit to work.  TRUST is a very big issue for us, and I am sure for you too.  By employing and welcoming a stranger into your home, you are risking a lot already.  They have direct access to your private lives, your valuables and that include your family.

That's why background checking is very important.  But how do you actually do that?  In these times of yaya-scarcity or all-around-helper shortage, will you still hire a private investigator to do that for you?  In other countries they do, but this is Philippines.  It's not been our norm as mid-income earners, to do that.  But I take in yayas/helpers through referrals from trusted people.  Maybe we thought, we should just be stricter during our initial interview and verify all the information she gave (if she's using her real name or an alias).  It won't hurt to be meticulous in this area.  Believe me, I have done that, except for one, which should be part of my rigorous test: Health Check.

Now that we're already involved in her complicated situation at the time when she's already earned our trust (except in the area of this pregnancy thing - which I somehow could forgive, because I went through the same fear and confusion she's in now) I find it hard not to somehow take responsibility of her pregnancy.  We have of course no contribution to her pregnancy, plus giving her an above-average amount of salary is already okay, manos y manos, but I can't turn a cold heart on her.  A voice tells me, us, to help her.  It suddenly became an act of goodwill without a barter that she should still serve us and pay for whatever we will spend for her pregnancy and childbirth AND the inconvenience it's giving us and will be giving us.  But employee she may be, she's still human.  We are more fortunate than her and she badly needs help.  So help she is given.

Mission Not Impossible
Nothing really prepares us for what is happening in our lives right now and what more with what lies ahead.  Most of the time, we may not know it, but GOD has greater plans.  Maybe our yaya was sent to us, because HE has reasons: To test our faith; To give us a charity mission; AND To see if we could give back what He blessed us with.  For whatever it is and for all that it happening, THANK YOU Lord.  I know You will help us all get through this.

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4 comments

  1. OMG! Malapit na! Grabe shocking nga. I just hope too that the baby is healthy and fine.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well written Lousie ! I like how you are currently handling this " blessing in disguise " incident in your life and even wrote about it. I admire you and your husband of doing that extra mile to think of your house help's needs in times when she needed it most. I guarantee, blessings will be coming in to your lives before you even know it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you so much Sarah! I think I might have a part 3. I just received a shocking news and right now hubby and I are carefully processing how to address this new dilemma. Thank you Sarah for wishing me blessings. God bless you too! Have a nice day! :)

    ReplyDelete

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Mommy Practicality is a home and lifestyle blog that's about positive, informative, 
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