It's been a few weeks since I posted as I ended up on bedrest at 30 weeks after spending 5 days in the hospital. (I started having contractions 5 minutes apart so my OB put me on mag sulfate for a few days... fun, fun.) Anyway, I don't have a laptop so I'm sneaking over to the computer for a quick post. I will be 33 weeks tomorrow (yipee) and am looking for a nanny to help me out, at least initially. I interviewed my first candidate yesterday and feel like I could have asked better questions. I need advice about what questions to ask and how to do a background check. Thanks so much!


Olga C
GGB due 3/1/04

Olga C

Mom to Olivia, Natalie and Jacob
born on 1/29/04 @ 35w3d

There are lots of great books on this subject. Be very careful with who you hire. I had two really bad experiences. Be sure they understand what you expect (put into writing) everything that you discuss. Be sure you emphasize what they are to do for the children (ex. are they responsible for the night care, will they be preparing the formula, will they bathe the children)will you be participating in their care at night. If you expect this person to get your children on a schedule or keep them on the schedule they are on in the NICU be specific. Be sure they know and understand you are having multiples and if they claim they have experience call their references. Will this person be living with you? If so make sure she understands what you expect at night.
There are all kinds of crazy people out there, one of ours was a religious fanatic and claimed she was visited by an angel who told her something was going to happen to one of my children. Needless to say she was gone within a minute of notifying me of this.
If you can find someone with multiples experience that is the answer. The lady I had for the first three months was a godsend, she kept my children on a schedule and they slept all night at the age of three months.
If you are like me you will get a warm fuzzy feeling when you interview the right candidate. You cannot be too careful with this hire, check all her references!
Debbie

How are you going about finding people? Are you using an agency? If so, they should do a backround check and should also provide you with a list of references that they have contacted (and I would contact them as well.) We went through an agency for our night nannies, and it took alot of the work out of it. She asked us a bunch of questions, and then screened the applicants for us and only sent us the applicants that met our criteria. Some of the things she asked us were:

Do we require someone with triplet experience? Is twin experience enough? (For us, it was, but we wanted someone who had worked with newborns and had set up a schedule for them and worked with them until they slept through the night.)

Do we want the nanny to be more nurturing or more business-like (for us it was nurturing in the beginning, but able to switch to business-like when we were trying to train them to sleep through the night.)

Would we accept a smoker?

Do we want the nanny to stay up all night, or would it be acceptable for her to take naps? Would she sleep in the babies room, or in another room with a monitor?

What other duties would we expect her to do? (Laundry, prepare bottles, tidy up baby area, etc.)

What role did we want the nanny to take in terms of scheduling? Did we want to dictate the plan each night, or did we want her to make suggestions and take initiative in terms of scheduling?

Were we ok with the nanny propping bottles?

Were we ok with someone who had small children at home? (Risk of transferring RSV/cold/flu is higher)

I can't think of any of the other questions off-hand, but I know there were lots more. The main thing though was that the owner of the agency met us in our home, and was able to get a feel for our personalities and what type of person would mesh with us.

If you put an ad in the paper or something, you'll have to be much more careful (and you'll have to weed through some more wackos!) but I know that people have found people they're very happy with through ads they've placed.

Good luck!

Melinda
mom of Annabelle, Lillian and Charlotte, 2/25/03
35 weeks, 6 days