We had two more trial nannies come, one yesterday and one today. Yesterday’s trial nanny was very kind and sweet. She clearly loved babies. But her notes were atrocious and she kept on trying to force our baby to take naps. She also didn’t always follow instructions even though I wrote her very clear notes. Chris was not really a fan of her, but I told him that because she was so nice and amiable, I had confidence that she could take constructive criticism and improve based on what we shared we wanted ongoing. She wouldn’t be the first choice, but she could be a decent second choice.

Today’s trial nanny almost never even came. Like with most of the nannies who have come for trials, Chris suggested that I write some brief notes to all of them before they came, just with basics such as the baby’s eating schedule, the fact that she is going through pre-teething, her vitamin D supplement, and the fact that she does not have a nap schedule per se right now but that the nanny would need to use her own judgment to decide when she was tired and needed to nap. I wrote the same notes and copied and pasted these to every trial Nanny after the first one. I guess the length of the notes threw off today’s trial nanny because when she took a quick glance at my notes, she tried to rule herself out and said that she did not think that she could meet my expectations and that she would need to pass on this job. I was initially really disappointed, especially because she was so warm and friendly over the phone. Plus, her references raved about how attentive to detail she was. She seemed like a genuinely good person who would do her best job. So I messaged her back and asked if there was anything in particular in my notes that she thought she could not actually do. I told her what her references shared with me, and I told her that I thought she would be a fit based on all of this. She responded and said, yes, she did pride herself on her attention to detail. And she did take the time to re-read my notes, and she said that it all sounded very straightforward. Maybe it was just the length that caught her off guard. So she would still come. I told her that we wanted all of the trial nannies to have the same information ahead of time but that I would walk them through all of this when they came on site. I just wanted to give the information ahead of time so that there were no surprises.

Well, it seems like it’s a good thing that I messaged her back and didn’t accept her eliminating herself from the process. Aside from the fact that she seemed extremely shy and reserved when she came in, which was so different from how warm and smiley she was on our video chat, she did an amazing job. She was really thorough with everything, whether it was bottle cleaning, cleaning up the play area or the bathroom after the bath, and the notes… The notes that she took were so, so thorough. They basically were like the notes that Annie used to leave us. She wrote down exactly what I wanted her to write, from the poops and pees to the amounts that the baby ate to even the activities that they did and how long they did the activities. I did not always like how she held the baby (actually, I’ve already seen this multiple times now: why is it that some nannies think it’s comfortable to hold a baby with your arms between her legs??), but I corrected her a couple of times so that she understood how my baby likes to be held. And she was fine with that. I also didn’t think that her bath was that thorough, but I gave her some feedback and she took it. I am not expecting the trial nannies to be perfect. But with hiring a nanny, it’s similar or the same as how you would hire someone at work: there are certain things that you can coach on and then there are other things that you just cannot teach. You can coach someone on how to hold your baby the way that she likes to be held or tell them that you want things laid out a certain way on the kitchen counter for the baby, but you cannot coach someone on how to love babies and actually care. That just doesn’t work.

So today’s nanny may be it. That is, unless someone else makes an offer and we go through another ridiculous situation as we did a couple weeks ago. Fingers crossed.