Nannies, Part 1

Before you have kids the only thing you might know about nannies is the picture of exploitation you get from Nanny Diaries.  Rich family, unloved kid, understanding nanny becomes surrogate mother.  Before you have kids you wonder what sort of socialite life the mother must have in order to need a Nanny.  Is she lunching at the Country Club again and helping plan for their next charity function?  Or maybe the parents are a power couple, Mother/Father always gone for business travel or taking over new companies and laying off the workers.  Fun!  Okay, maybe you have completely different experiences with nannies in your past and know a lot of normal people with them, but I didn’t know anyone who wasn’t doing it the way my mother (and the rest of the family) did it.  By themselves.

I was not working when I had twins.  My husband was in a good job with a generous paternity leave.

We could not do it by ourselves.

Hell, we couldn’t even make it the first few nights at the hospital with the girls in our room.  Funny story: Husband swore we had to try to do it ourselves on the second or third night at the hospital after the birth.  Like, do the feeding every three hours by ourselves for the whole night.  About two or three in the morning he was crashing (he’s not a night person) and just about falling over in the chair.  I told him to forget it, call the nurse and have her take them to the nursery because we were going to have to leave the hospital soon and why not take advantage of the help while we could?  I went to sleep.  He tried to do the next feeding by himself before giving up.  The nurse took them away shaking her head.  I think we heard her tell another nurse the next day, “Look at them, they try so hard”.  Hahahhaha…

Anyway, we were so lucky my parents volunteered to stay with us and help take care of them at the beginning.  They got us through that vital period where you are brainless with exhaustion.   However, my husband was going back to work.  My parents were still with us, but it was making me very very guilty to have them stay up at all hours to help with the feeding AND make them carry the kids up and down the stairs AND help with the cooking and cleaning.  The rest of our family and friends lived at least six hours away.  So we started thinking about a nanny.

A nanny would provide another set of hands that were totally devoted to the children.  We could keep going with the “one baby, one adult” thing we were doing between my husband and myself so that each child got the attention a single born kid would have gotten.  We could do some of the household chores if someone helped watch the kids.  We could clean something or cook something.   A nanny would be able to do all that and (Bonus!) would be experienced with children enough to help advise us.  It sounded like a good idea.

So we went looking for a nanny.

(to be continued)