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.