Hiring a nanny

Yes.  We're hiring a nanny.  We've thought long and hard about letting a stranger come into our child's life, but we ultimately decided that it's necessary for us and our lifestyle to hire a nanny.

This semester, I was only at the school 3 times a week for a total of 5 hours away from home per week.  Most of the time, I'd take Desmond with me, since he's really good at being in the sling and usually falls asleep.  On the days that I had important meetings where taking Desmond wouldn't be acceptable, Billy would take off work and stay at home with me for those hours.  Billy's parents would watch Des for an hour and a half on Wednesday nights so that I could attend an Ashtanga Yoga class.  Next semester, I'll be taking a class on Tuesday evening and Wednesday and Friday mornings.  I will have a meeting every Monday afternoon.  For Billy to take that much time off of work every week is not feasible.  Because I have planned to finish up all of my required and elective credits before we move next year, I can't take anything below 9 credit hours in the spring.  Therefore, needing someone to watch him during the day became a necessity.

My good friend Sara from school, who has an 8-month-old daughter, hired a nanny when her daughter was around 3 or 4 months old.  She inspired me to look into the option of hiring a nanny for Desmond.  By the time we need a nanny, Desmond will be 5 months old.  This is about the time that babies start being really clingy and get stranger anxiety, so I needed to find someone with whom Desmond felt very comfortable.  We briefly discussed taking Desmond to a daycare, but hesitated because of all the stories we have heard of overcrowded and unhygienic conditions.  I was also terrified of Desmond getting sick with earaches and respiratory infections (interestingly enough, a new study came out that showed that among those children that were in daycare before the age of 2.5, even though they suffered more illnesses than kids not in daycare, had less illnesses when they got to elementary school than those that weren't exposed to daycares before 2.5 years of age.  Read more HERE.)  I'm definitely not saying that ALL daycares are like this - there are some really great daycares with amazing people working in them - but I feel more comfortable taking Des to a daycare when he's a little bit older and can do things for himself instead of having to be completely reliant on someone else. 

I started looking around online to see what kinds of resources there were for hiring nannies.  I was a little bit apprehensive about the cost, but decided that I had to make some financial concessions if I wanted to be on the way to completing my education.  I found a website, www.care.com, that provided a resource for people looking for babysitters, live-in nannies, part-time nannies, adult daycare providers, and dog sitters.  It cost $30 to post a job and maintain an account for a month, but it's worth it.  You post a job, people answer your ad, you look at their profiles and qualifications, and you can order a background check.  I had about 25 women answer my ad.  I specified a part-time nanny who could speak primarily Spanish, who had infant and child first aid and CPR training, and who could work during the hours that I was at school. 

Last Saturday, we met two women whom we had picked based on their profiles.  One was a young(er) girl of 20, who seemed to have a lot of experience with children of all ages.  The other was an older woman from Cuba who spoke no English and worked as a full-time nanny.  She seemed really receptive about the way we parent and had mentioned that this is what she was used to in Cuba.  Plus, she can cook delicious Cuban food and having lived in Miami for 9 years, I miss me some good ol' black beans and rice and platano maduro. 

Ultimately, we felt more comfortable with the second nanny-candidate because she was a bit older, had her own children, and had worked as a nanny before (plus, the whole cuban food thing).  We just need to call her references before we offer her the job.

We plan to offer to pay her $11/hour for ~15 hours a week.   I only have to be up at the school for 11.5 hours, but it'd be nice to have her come a bit early so that I could leave Desmond with her and get ready without having to take care of his needs.  I'm really nervous about leaving him with a stranger, partly because she's a stranger and partly because there's a little part of me that worries what she'll think if Desmond screams his head off the entire time I'm gone (I know, I know.  Stupid to think that way, but it's true.)  We're going to ask her to come by the first week in January and sort of "shadow" me around our house so that she could see how I do things and I could see how she interacts with Desmond.  Most importantly, I want Desmond to feel comfortable with her, so I'm going to be around at first for him to see that everything will be ok and then slowly slip away. 

I hope everything works out with this nanny.  If not, then it's actual class time that I'm going to have to miss and not just a yoga class or something.  Up next on my LONG to-do list: make the house baby-proof.  Considering the fact that this is a 120-year-old house, it's not going to be easy.  Wish me luck!