The night nanny

K - cute toes after her bath

Well, the night nurse worked out beautifully.

I mentioned the money issue in my last post about sleep and I must say it got a lot worse before it got better.

Since Kendra wants to be held all the time, I decided to buy a sling so I phoned (just for you Mandy P :)) the lady who'd come to demonstrate her slings at our antenatal classes to order one. She was coming to the hospital to do the demonstration so we arranged to meet there.

Since I was there anyway, I decided to pop into the NICU to chat to the nurses who do night nursing. Long story short, they charge much more than the R250 I'd been expecting (R384) and was therefore totally out of our budget.

Very disappointed since I really liked these ladies and they know Connor and Kendra from their NICU days.

A friend then sent me another agency's details who place night nannies/ nurses and their rates were R250 per night so I emailed her too.

I also had a bright idea. So I texted my nanny starting on 1 Sept to see if she'd be willing to do some night nannying for us this month. And after some negotiations around price (R200), she agreed.

She arrived on time (actually a bit earlier), I showed her everything I needed to and left her to it. I was concerned that she wouldn't remember everything or that one of them would act up (K) and cause her to be flustered but she was very relaxed.

If you're paying for sleep, then you need to sleep. (earlier on Thursday, our paed said to me that I probably wouldn't be able to relax properly this time - I said "you don't know me - I love my sleep")

So I slept for 9 solid hours, totally uninterrupted by baby cries, worry, etc.

The next day was amazing - I felt myself again. D and my mother were also cheerful because we were all caught up on sleep. D slept 8 hours because he had to get up to go to work and my mother slept 10 hours.

The two of them were all "you're wasting your money" before but yesterday had totally changed their minds :) and came up with all these suggestions - "can't she work one or two nights when she starts in Sept?" etc, etc.

Finally they could see the value of sleep.

And I woke to two sleeping babies and a clean kitchen!

So we will see - she'll work a night for me every week until her actual start date of 1 Sept. I don't think she'll be able to continue after that but I will discuss with her because it's easier for me to cope on my own during the days than endure the sleep deprivation.

D's idea is that we negotiate instead of the 5 days we'd decided on, she does 2 days and 2 nights, so there's no difference in salary for her but we benefit at night, at least for the first month or two.

And now we look forward to our next full night of sleep - probably Monday or Tuesday night.

I'm so grateful to live in South Africa where help is very affordable - I don't know how you US gals do it all alone, I really don't know!