The nanny situation

The time has come. We need a nanny. This isn't a permanent thing, but K has a short-term consulting gig, 2-3 days per week, so we need to find someone to look after Poppy.

We thought we had someone lined up, but it turned out that she had just found a full-time gig. The next step was to join the Yahoo group for parents in our neighborhood. There were a few posts looking for someone to share a nanny, or for someone to use a nanny on days when they didn't theirs.

I got close to finding someone, only for her to say that she had found work. Now we started to worry. I sent emails to other people on the parents list, got a referral list from the Children's Council of SF and even sent some emails to nannies who had posted on Craigslist. Finally I posted on the parents list myself.

We found one family who wanted to share their nanny on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and they were happy with a short-term situation since it gave them some time to find a permanent solution. We went over to their house last night, met them and their nanny, and it looks like this will be the way we end up going.

The takeaway from all this is that finding a nanny is a tough, cutthroat business.

We have one additional thing to stress about with having Poppy be looked after by someone other than us, and that is that she has decided that she won't feed from a bottle anymore. We can trick her, by putting her on the breast and then sneaking the bottle into her mouth, and she'll happily feed from that, even if I take over holding the bottle, but the moment she takes a break we have to start the process over again. Luckily a bottle-striking baby didn't seem to worry the nanny, since she's seen it all before. At times in the past she's even resorted to using a spoon to get the milk into the baby. That seemed like a creative solution to me and instantly made me feel like she is a pro.