This story from a British woman whose au pair, hired to give a mom a break, became pregnant reminds me that I've not done an update on our similar situation here in a long time.

To recap for those not familiar with the saga of Catherina ...

In October of last year, an assistant who'd pledged to stick with me for the duration of a book-writing stint I committed to because of said pledge left me high and dry by quitting on a Monday morning via a text message.

After interviews for possible replacements proved too depressing to describe, I ended up hiring an 18-year-old who seemed keen and not as obviously useless as the five or six others who had actually bothered to show up for the interview ... unlike the five or six who'd made an appointment for an interview and didn't bother to show up.

Catherina started work in November. I finished the book in January, which was close to the same time she told me that she was pregnant.

Eventually, it became apparent that she was at least two months along at the time she applied for the job, but kept that information to herself.

By the time her probationary employment period was drawing to a close ... the one chance to send her on her way before committing to a long-term, difficult to terminate relationship ... I'd become well aware that Catherina was not only pregnant, she was also lazy, unpleasant, rude and dishonest, which left me with two options: fire her, or not.

She and her boyfriend had already been kicked out of her mother's home, so had no place to live. They were sheltering where they could with no organized plan of what to do next.

After much discussion and acknowledgment the we were complete suckers who would rue the day we led with our hearts, Mark and I decided to keep her on, and to let her and her boyfriend live in a little house we have next to ours that is for guests.

They moved in in February. March and April passed with her getting bigger, slower and lazier and me doing more and more of the work I was paying her to do. In May, she began her fully paid maternity leave and had the baby, a little boy I call Rocky because the name she gave him is so silly, and commenced to sit around and collect her pay while living in my house and bringing her dirty laundry around every day for me to wash.

Because I need the help, we hired a fine woman, Nadine, to work Catherina's maternity leave which meant we were paying two salaries for one job. Nadine, it turned out however, was well worth her pay.

Catherina was due to return to work at the end of this month and again start working for her money, but I had decided that I wasn't interested in letting Nadine go in favor of going back to doing all the work myself and paying Catherina to hang around ... she was going to get her notice.

A week before, Catherina came over to pick up her clean washing and informed me that they were moving out ... now, that minute ... and that she would be back to work on the specified day. I told her that her services ... if you could call them that ... were no longer required.

She collected two months pay, the last of her maternity leave and one month's notice, let me kiss and cuddle the baby one last time, and went off happily.

The guest house is a filthy mess. She left rotting food in the fridge and inches of filth on every surface. The shower, toilet and music system are irreparably broken, and a yet undetermined number of DVDs she'd borrowed have disappeared.

And that, I'm afraid, is that.