Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
I’ve been on an emotional roller coaster for the past 10 days. Last Saturday I heard from my nanny that she wanted more money and less hours. As much as I loved her and how she cared for Aidan, after much debate and number crunching, Ryan & I agreed that we couldn’t give her what she was asking for and we had to let her go.
Making that phone call was one of the hardest things I had to do. As I play it back in my head now, I am confident that my voice was steady, but when I hung up I broke down and cried. Finding this nanny was difficult when I was only a few months pregnant–but that’s why I started looking for childcare so early. I did not want to do the nanny search when my son was 3 months old and I was back at work full-time–I wanted it all in place before even returning to work. But you can’t always get what you want. Not only am I sad to not be able to work with our first nanny ever again, but the thought of going through the nanny search a second time is stressful and overwhelming.
As a mom, I have learned that there will be stressful moments and even emotional ones when it comes to my child. I think it is important to allow myself the brief moment to be stressed and sad, but then I have to find a solution to the problem at hand.
I immediately re-posted the live-out nanny position on care.com (which is how we found the first nanny) and within an hour, we started getting email submissions from women in our area who were interested in the job. The good thing about this website is that you can screen the applicants prior to returning their emails. You can see their picture, review their job experience and get a background check and references from their online profiles.
We interviewed 2 people, but the first woman we met with was the first one who inquired about the job and she’s the one we ended up hiring. I am smarter the second time around and have learned some valuable lessons about employing a live-out nanny. The most important being the realization that this won’t be the last nanny we hire.
