Nanny share pros and cons

This is my fifth post in a series on finding child care.

As I have explained previously, when I first returned to work, we placed Littles in a nanny share. Maria, our nanny, watched another girl named Dani, who is about 18 months older than Littles. Maria also brought her daughter, Gali, who is almost exactly 4 years older than Littles.

I wrote quite a bit about our nanny share in a post back in February. Overall, the experience was fantastic. Hubby and I are already thinking about trying to find something similar when we have another child.

Still, I went in thinking that it would be perfect. It was not. Now I understand that no child care situation is perfect. (Including having one parent stay at home!)

In retrospect, the root cause of the handful of complaints that I did have was that I made a lot of assumptions.

Caregiver style
Probably the biggest assumption I made was that Maria would fully defer to my desires on all aspects of Littles' care. She did not. Our biggest disagreement, as I described in my February post, was over how to get Littles to sleep for naps. Maria let her "cry it out" -- something that I was very much opposed to. I told Maria that I didn't want her to do it, and she did it anyway. In that case, I must admit that it worked quite well and does not seem to have had any negative long-term impact on Littles. But I always worried that Maria and I would disagree on something else major, and that I would have to defer to her again.

Lesson learned: Every child care provider has his or her own "style," as does every parent. Some providers are more willing than others to adjust their "style" to fit a parent's. Now I know to ask providers about their style, and to sniff out how willing a provider is to change their style to suit mine.

Breastfeeding
I had assumed that I would be able to mostly breastfeed during the days when the nanny share was at our house and I worked from home. This would have greatly eased my pumping load.

But I never discussed this with Maria before we started. Within a week, it became very apparent that this was not going to work out. Part of it was that Littles seemed to do better when she took bottles exclusively during the day -- I think she got confused when I saw her to nurse and then "left." But I also think that Maria could have been more supportive. For example, she sometimes didn't want to "bother" me at work, so she simply gave Littles a bottle without telling me. Unfortunately, that seriously messed with my schedule, because I was waiting on Maria to bring Littles to nurse, and didn't realize that I needed to pump instead.

If we do a nanny situation with future babies and I'm still working from home, I plan to discuss my desire to nurse as much as possible ahead of time, rather than springing it on the nanny on the first day.

Conserving my "liquid gold"
I also assumed that Maria would treat my expressed breastmilk like I did. This one is hard to explain if you've never pumped. Pumping moms often call expressed breastmilk "liquid gold," because it is! It takes so much effort to get it out that you don't want to waste a single drop. Maria certainly didn't waste breastmilk on purpose, but I think she could have conserved it a little better than she did. For example, she often gave a bottle late in the day (around 4 PM or even later, when I picked Littles up between 5 and 5:30 PM), rather than waiting for me to get there to nurse.

A few other minor quibbles that I had:

• We had some struggles with Dani, who was very jealous of Littles. For example, if one of her parents said hello to Littles, she would scream, "No Littles!" She also scratched Littles on multiple occasions. This did not really bother me, as I knew Dani was being disciplined appropriately for her behavior and the scratches were not serious, but it really bugged Hubby.
  
• The two older girls watched TV. Not a significant amount, just a half hour of cartoons before their nap and occasionally a little at the end of the day too, and Maria usually gave Littles a bottle or played with her while the older girls watched TV. But we try not to have the TV on around Littles at all, so even half an hour was more than I would have liked.
  
• Maria generally worked 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM. She was usually happy to come early or stay late on the occasional days when we needed her to, but I always felt bad making her do that. After all, she has a family and a life of her own. On those days, I wished we were at a daycare center, where I could drop off at 7 AM and know that Littles' teacher wasn't there just because of us.
  
• There was not much structure to the girls' days with Maria. They walked to the park when the weather was nice, and the rest of the day was spent in unstructured play. This was fine -- even preferable -- for Littles as an infant, but it might have become less desirable had we stayed with Maria as Littles got older.
  
• One oft-cited con to a one-caregiver situation like our nanny share is that you have no backup if the caregiver is sick or unavailable for any reason. Luckily, as I've mentioned before, we have excellent backup child care through our jobs, so this was not an issue for us.

That said, there were many pros to our nanny share, and they far outweighed the cons!

Individualized attention
I cannot stress the importance of this one enough. Littles got so much love and attention! Part of this goes back to Maria's caregiver "style" -- this was definitely a positive aspect of it. She always reached out to hold Littles the moment I walked through the door, gave her lots of hugs and kisses, and generally made sure that she interacted with her as much as possible. Littles really bonded with her. Gali was like a miniature version of her mom, always talking to and playing with Littles. Dani, like most 2-year-olds, was mostly wrapped up in her own little world :), but Littles loved watching her dance, run, and play. I think that interaction and bonding was really important to Littles as an infant.

One caregiver to bond with
I also think it's really important for infants to have the chance to bond strongly with one caregiver. In a daycare environment, an infant room might have three, four, five or more teachers in and out over the course of a day. I liked that Maria was Littles' only caregiver, that she didn't need to give me daily written reports because she could just tell me everything about Littles' day, that Littles had lots of consistency and familiarity in care. Some moms don't like this because they think their baby will start to prefer the caregiver, but this never happened. Littles loved Maria, but she never forgot that Hubby and I are her dad and mom!

I remember coming to pick Littles up one day, a few weeks before we moved. Maria had given her a Doodle Pro to play with, and as Maria and I caught up on her day, Littles attempted to figure out the Doodle Pro -- she kept trying to draw with the wrong end of the magnetic wand. Finally, she figured it out and scribbled a clear black line on the pad. She looked at me with a big smile, clearly proud of herself, and then gave Maria the same smile and the same look. It was in that moment that I could see just how well she had bonded with Maria. It made me happy that she spent her days with someone she loved so much, and who loved her so much.

Social interaction
Littles absolutely loved Dani and Gali. She got a huge smile on her face every morning when they came running over to say hello. I think she enjoyed the nanny share much more than she would have enjoyed being alone with a nanny. The nanny share offered a great balance between social interaction and individualized attention.

Interaction with older kids
Dani and Gali interacted with Littles in a much different way from either adults or other babies. For example, from the day we brought Littles home from the hospital, we used a bouncy chair that had a little dog toy attached to it. If you pulled on the dog toy, it played a song. Littles hadn't figured out the dog toy when she started in hte nanny share, but within a week, Gali had taught her how to pull on the dog toy to make it play the song. Another baby would not have the awareness to show her that; an adult (like me!) would have no interest in pulling the silly toy over and over to show Littles how it worked. It took an older child to do that.

Comfortable surroundings
Littles got to spend two days a week in the familiar environment of her own home. The rest of the week, she was in a similar home-like setting, with the benefit of access to Dani's extensive toy collection :) Far different from the busy environment of daycare. She does great in these environments now, but I think it was good for her to get used to them gradually, rather than all at once as a young infant.

Convenience
Not having to pack up all of Littles' stuff on the two days when the nanny share was at our house was wonderful! Also, the flip side of "inconveniencing" Maria by asking her to come early some days was that I didn't have to inconvenience Littles on those days by waking her up to go to daycare. Oftentimes, on the days when Maria arrived at 7:30 AM, Littles was just waking up as she arrived.

Cost
We paid about the same for Maria as we would have paid at a daycare center -- and much less than we would have paid for a dedicated nanny. Yet we got a much lower caregiver to child ratio and greater convenience.

Cleaning
We paid Maria $35 extra each week, and she cleaned up as the girls napped. This was a nice little side benefit, and far cheaper than a cleaning service. She also did things that our old cleaning service didn't do, such as putting away clean dishes and folding Littles' clothes.

Conclusions
We really lucked out with our nanny share. As inexperienced parents, we didn't even know what questions to ask in our interview with Maria. But we went with our gut, and ended up finding a wonderful situation for Littles. It wasn't perfect, to be sure, but Littles was safe and very loved, and that's all a parent can ask for.

It never gets any easier

Just arrived in Seattle for my August trip. This is my third trip alone, and leaving Littles and Hubby never gets any easier :( I'm always near tears as I walk out the door.

I'm already counting the hours until I get home.

Mia's first day at daycare!

Kristi (Littles' normal sitter) took a day off today, so we needed backup care. For the first time, Work Options Group was able to locate a daycare center that would take Littles as a drop-in, rather than assigning a nanny to come take care of her at home. I think it helps that she's now a "toddler" rather than an "infant" -- the ratios in the toddler rooms are a little higher, so they're more likely to have open spots.

So I pulled out the Sharpie to label all her stuff last night, then packed her up this morning and off we went!

She got off to a bit of a rocky start. Moments after we arrived, they combined the two toddler rooms (10 kids and 2 teachers each) for a special "exercise" program with music. She seemed to be settling in fine, so I stepped away to hand over her diaper bag and give some instructions to the lead teacher in her room. When I came back, Littles was whimpering, and then she started crying when she saw me. I think that all the kids, activity, music, etc. just freaked her out a little.

I knew that my presence probably wasn't helping, so I left, and called about an hour later. The teacher told me that she had indeed stopped crying after I left and was off playing happily.

She ended up doing really well! She only napped for 20 minutes (normal for her is 2 hours), but that was actually more that I expected, given that she had to sleep on a mat in a room with a bunch of other kids rather than in a crib in a room by herself. She ate all her food and was a good girl. The teachers said that she did even better than two kids who started a few days ago. I was so proud of her!

Nanny share logistics

This is my fourth post in a series on finding child care.

As I explained in my last post on this subject, when I first returned to work, we placed Littles in a nanny share. Maria, our nanny, watched another girl named Dani, who is about 18 months older than Littles. Maria also brought her daughter, Gali, who is almost exactly 4 years older than Littles.

Nanny share logistics can be a little tricky, since you're dealing with not only a nanny but also another family. Here's what we figured out for ours.

Which house?
Some nanny shares are always at one family's house. In our case, we decided to split days between Dani's house and our house. Usually, everyone came to our house on Mondays and Wednesdays, and we took Littles over to Dani's house the rest of the week.

Equipment
Both families provided pack-n-plays (portable cribs/play yards). Littles slept in Dani's pack-n-play at her house, which was set up in the bedroom of Dani's school-age brother. Dani slept in Littles' pack-n-play at our house, which we set up in either our master bedroom or our office, depending on whether or not I was working from home that day. At our house, Gali slept on a mat on the floor of the living room; I assume she did something similar at Dani's house.

We purchased a Fisher Price Healthy Care booster seat right before we started the nanny share, and that is what Dani ate on at our house. We then purchased a high chair for Littles when she started solids. Dani's family had a Healthy Care booster seat and a high chair as well, so Littles used their high chair at their house.

Dani's family had previously purchased a double stroller, so Maria kept it in her car and brought it back and forth between our house and Dani's. This allowed her to easily take all three girls out for a walk.

We had to do some childproofing of our home when we first started in the nanny share -- mostly putting gates on the steps to ensure that Dani didn't fall. We didn't mind at all, since we knew we would need the gates for Littles in a few months anyway! (And we did...) This might be bad, but we never really looked over Dani's house from a childproofing perspective, even after Littles got more mobile. We figured Dani's family had already childproofed well enough to keep her alive, and Maria would raise any concerns she had about Littles' safety.

Nanny pay
As is typical, Maria charged a little more to watch two children instead of one. Typically, each family paid $8/hour, so Maria made $16/hour total. If one family needed Maria but the other didn't, the family who needed her paid $14/hour. For example, Maria typically worked 8:30-5:30, but some days, we needed her to come early or stay late. On those days, we paid her $14/hour for the extra hours.

Both families also paid Maria about $35 extra per week to clean up around the house. She vacuumed, cleaned the bathrooms, washed windows, cleaned the kitchen, put away dishes/loaded the dishwasher, folded laundry, dusted, etc. She usually waited till Littles took a nap to vacuum, and she did the rest of the cleaning while all three girls were down for a nap (right after lunch). This was definitely a nice perk of having in-home care!

Sick/vacation days
We did not specifically negotiate a certain number of sick days or vacation days. Dani's family had been using Maria for over a year when we joined the share, and they assured us that she was very reliable and almost always there. Indeed, in 8 months with her, she never called in sick and only asked for three days off, each time with over a month's notice. We paid her when she took time off -- I figure everyone needs a break from their job every once in a while! Also, if either family took vacation, they still paid Maria as if they were there. This allowed Maria to count on a consistent income, and it also allowed each family to count on a consistent price for Maria -- it would have been awful if we had had to pay more than anticipated one week just because Dani was out sick or on vacation!

Conclusions
Really, the arrangement was pretty informal. We did not sign a contract or talk about liability (e.g. if Dani got hurt at our home) or decide on sick-child policies or write up emergency policies (i.e. if Littles or Dani needed to be rushed to the doctor) or anything like that. Naive? Maybe. But it worked out fine.

In my next post, I'll talk about the pros and cons of our nanny share.

I'm still alive!

I know it's been a while, but yes, I'm still alive!

I made another trip up to Seattle last week. It was pure craziness, as a number of my friends and co-workers were there as well, so we had some late nights out on the town :) And I thought I didn't get much sleep at home with a 1-year-old who wakes up at 7 AM every day. Yeesh.

This was my longest trip yet, at six full days. I left early Sunday morning (there was a meeting on Sunday afternoon) and got home on the red-eye early Saturday morning. I had fun and got some good work done, but by the end of the week, I was so ready to come home. I missed Littles and Hubby terribly, and the week just dragged on and on.

As a result, I continued what is probably a bad habit: I buy Littles a gift on every trip I take. It helps ease the guilt I feel from leaving her. Sort of. At least this trip, I had the good sense to indulge at a thrift shop, where I picked up a baby University of Washington football jersey for all of $2.17. Last trip, I happened to walk past a super-expensive toy store just a few hours before my flight. Not. Good.

Nothing has changed with Littles' nursing situation since my last trip -- she still nurses morning and night -- so I had to pull out the pump again. I skipped my pumping session on Sunday night, and ended up pumping really late (ummm, 3 AM) on Monday night, so my supply seemed to take a bit of a hit, and Littles seems a little less interested in nursing now that I'm back home. I'm fine with that; I'm not rushing her into weaning fully, but whenever she's ready, I am too.

I'll have only two weeks at home before I have to head up there for another week :( It's OK, because I did have a long stretch at home (4 full weeks) between my last two trips, but ugh, I'm not really looking forward to it.

The one thing I'm happy about is that Hubby and Littles may come with me on the two trips after this next one! I have a meeting in Jackson, Wyoming, in mid-September, so we're all flying out a week early for vacation. Then, Hubby has to go to Seattle in late September, so if we're able to find backup care for Littles, I'll probably try to fly out that same week and we'll bring Littles with us. Cross your fingers that it all works out!

In conclusion, I'll leave you with another installment in my "Where I pumped today" series. This is the nursing room at Seattle-Tacoma airport. Yes, a nursing room! It's a quiet, private space with two rocking chairs and outlets for moms who need to pump. Far better than nursing in public or pumping in a bathroom. Every airport should have one of these! I pumped here on Friday night just before boarding my red-eye home:


Adjacent to the nursing room is a children's play area. Brilliant! A place for active toddlers to burn off some energy before boarding their flights. Hopefully Littles will get a chance to play here in a few weeks when she comes up with Hubby and me!