If the pregnant employee is sick before the 29th week of pregnancy, you should treat the absence as sick leave, regardless of whether the sickness is pregnancy-related.

If the employee is sick after the 29th week of pregnancy with a pregnancy-related sickness, she can choose whether to start her maternity leave or take sick leave.

If the employee is absent due to a pregnancy-related sickness any time within the four-week period before the EWC, the maternity leave is automatically triggered, even if she has not given 28 days' notice. She must give you notice as soon as possible after the maternity leave begins. Maternity leave is not triggered if the illness is not pregnancy-related; however, any decision that is made must be reasonable.

Once maternity leave has started, the law does not allow the employee to return to work until after childbirth. Therefore, if she has a sickness that triggers her maternity leave, she is obliged to remain absent until the end of her leave, even if she had not planned to take it so early. This is the case even where the employee is sick for only one or two days. Of course, she could ask the employer if she could return to continue work until the date she intended to start her maternity leave, but the employer does not have to agree to this.