MY NANNY IS WAY UNDERPAID

ModernMom.com
Posted by Newbie Dad - Kelly on June 10, 2009

Nine months ago I became the proud father to a beautiful daughter named Isabella, after a long battle of getting pregnant.

My wife and I have been on cloud nine ever since. During our stay at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, I often looked at my daughter when she was asleep and I would start to cry, this precious little thing was a creation of two people that loved each other so much. I always wanted to be a dad and this wish had finally come true. I began to write my daughter a letter of the emotions, feelings and events during this special time.

I finished the letter by the end of our stay and sealed it up placed it in our safety deposit in hopes of giving it to her when she is much older and will understand the importance of my emotions and love that we have for her. During this time I finally realized that life would never be the same again, which leads me to title of this blog.After a very careful background check, resumes, interviews and referrals we selected our nanny. She is a very cheerful, bilingual, caring and honest lady who is in her 50’s who takes care of Isabella while both mom and dad go to work. For the first several months she was invaluable to assist my wife who took only four weeks off from work to meet the demands of her clients.

It was shortly after this that our nanny was involved in a car accident and couldn’t come to work. Luckily my schedule from trials had freed-up so I really didn’t hesitate to tell my wife that I would stay home for a few days to take care of Isabella. Now I have to be honest I never spent an entire day by myself with her.

So the morning was started out in a typical fashion as I woke up, drank my coffee, my wife fed Isabella and gave her a bath and then Isabella fell back to sleep. At this point my wife sat me down and gave me explicit instructions on when to feed and how much, when she should take a nap and when I could take her for her walk to the Palisades park. No problem I told her. I felt like I should be getting college credits for this lecture on how to take care of my daughter. My wife left the house and no more than five minutes later she called telling me to have a nice day with my daughter and if I needed anything she could be reached via her cell phone.

Isabella woke up 20 minutes later which was the start of the longest day in my life. She was crying so I had to feed her (this was no problem as the formula was already in the bottles).

Problem #1: She would not drink and continued to cry. I walked her around the house for an hour before she finally drank three ounces.

Problem #2: She dirtied her diaper so badly it leaked onto her clothes, carpet and changing table.

Problem #3: I didn’t have five hands to solve the problem of changing her. This was all in the first three hours of the day. I was so exhausted by this time but luckily I somehow made her fall asleep. She woke up 45 minutes later with the same issue. She was fussy and wanted nothing to do with the bottle in the beginning and then finally drank four ounces. I then put her in the stroller and walked to Montana Ave. She either slept and we people watched the entire time. It was great-- just like I always imagined it would be. Then she dirtied her diaper again.

Problem #4: I was at Ocean and Montana, a long way from home and during the lecture I was getting earlier in the morning I neglected to remember that if I leave the house make sure your bring supplies to change her. I felt so bad for her so I jogged as fast as I could pushing that Bugaboo, it felt like an eternity to get home.

We made it home and all I kept thinking that its only 11am and Mommy isn’t coming home until 5pm. I spent the next two hours either holding her or attempting to get her interested in her toys but she only really wanted the TV controls. So I gave into her and let her push buttons and drool all over it.

Problem #5: I couldn’t get the TV to work for the remaining part of the day. She finally fell asleep I lay on the floor next to her crib and started to fall asleep as well. I was so tired and exhausted in such a short period of time I couldn’t believe it, then all of a sudden I heard the front door open and much to my surprise it was my wife home, four hours early. I was so exited!

My wife asked me how my day went I could only tell her what I was truly thinking at the time "Our Nanny Is Way Underpaid."