We have a pregnant employee who is insisting that she will only take the minimum of 2 weeks maternity leave and then come back to work. However, (recently) her father died and she's not only suffered the emotional effects of this but she's been into hospital a couple of times with some pregnancy complications. My concern is that she'll come back to work after two weeks but may not actually be fit enough both emotionally and physically.

Is it appropriate for me to ask her for some kind of note from her doctor that says she's fit enough to come back to work?

Apart from my concerns about her health, I do have to be honest and say from a small charity's perspective, we couldn't afford for her to come back after two weeks and then be off sick (she is employed on a fixed term contract until 31 March 08 that we won't be renewing (but completely because of funding reasons not pregnancy or maternity reasons). Is there anything we can do to mitigate against this?

Many thanks - Caron