You're hired!

I don't know how stay-at-home parents manage without help. As friends fretted about trying to choose the right daycare or how to manage gaps in care, such as during school vacations or if both parents need to work late, I assumed being a stay-at-home parent avoided all those problems. But what I didn't realize (and then accept) was that just because I didn't need full-time daycare, I'd still need help, especially during the day.

I'm lucky to have in-laws who will watch Oliver with little notice and friends from the babysitting coop who feel comfortable watching him as if he were one of their own. Having hours-long or even overnight breaks has been enough for me to recharge, and in those weeks after Oliver's birth, allowed me to feel human again. Chris and I are more fortunate than some parents we know who don't have anyone close by who they can call upon and trust to watch their kids. But none of the people we have relied on since Oliver's birth is available during the day and I have been discovering more and more ways why that was problematic.

As Oliver morphed from a sleepy infant who could be carted around in his car seat to an active kid with a set schedule, his own interests and a developmental need to keep moving, I found it harder and harder to do the things I had previously taken care of over lunch breaks, leave from work or on the commute home. For instance, I can't take a kid with me to the dentist or to the salon for a hair cut. Scheduling doctors appointments has been a logistical headache and Oliver has had to accompany me to more than one ultrasound. Errands had become highly orchestrated operations. (And that's just with one kid, not two kids on completely different schedules.) I managed to make do (or just without).

Then Chris started traveling and later I got pregnant, and day after day, I wondered if I was going to make it through the afternoon. I was often on my own for a week at a time and either I was nauseous, exhausted, was dealing with a whiny kid while trying to make dinner, or all of the above. Chris eventually stopped traveling and his work load at the home office even slowed down, so having him home more surely helped. But he'll be starting back up with school in the fall and if I've managed any semblance of keeping the household afloat and my sanity in order, I know that the arrival of a new baby will upend any routine or order we had created.

My "aha moment" regarding hiring a sitter occurred on a very hot afternoon at Target, where I had taken Oliver just to have somewhere (air-conditioned) to go to kill time before Chris got home. I ran into a friend, who I almost didn't recognize because she was kid-less. They were with their regularly-scheduled sitter and my friend looked very relaxed. Chris and I had been discussing the idea for awhile of hiring someone, but after my chance encounter at Target, less than 24 hours later, I had a job posted on the website my friend said she had used. Starting in two weeks, Tara, a college student who happens to live nearby, will be coming two afternoons a week.

I'm a little nervous as I hope and hope that Tara is indeed a good match for Oliver and that she likes being our nanny. And I have no idea what the transition of having a nanny care for Oliver and then a newborn will look like. I'm hoping it's not too chaotic.

But overall I'm very excited. I'm hoping a regularly-scheduled sitter will make my life less stressful and Oliver's more fulfilling. Although I had assumed that as his parents, Chris and I would be his only caregivers, I think he's at an age where he will enjoy having other adults be a regular presence in his life. And practically-speaking, I think we've hit a stage in our lives with work and school obligations and another kid coming, where we can't get away with not having a paid sitter.

Despite my original reluctance to hire a sitter, (a reluctance based on denial) I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the set-up works out so well that I'll wished I'd hired someone sooner.