More Than Just A Nanny

I have a special guest on the blog today. Emma from Five Degrees Of Chaos has written a post about ‘the time she hired a nanny to care for the kids’ and how 4 years later that nanny had stolen their hearts! I’ll give you a heads up – you’re going to need tissues!

In fact I was still blubbering this morning when I arrived at work. I was greeted with a frantic Boss Mum searching for her left shoe, a 7-year-old still sporting epic bed hair and Vegemite smudged cheeks, and a cheeky giggling baby who was no doubt the culprit of the missing shoe. For me, I’d just walked into my second family. It’s where I feel at home. It’s where I feel I belong. My love for the kids and my Boss Mum and Dad goes beyond any other nanny job I’ve experienced. Because sometimes, you’re more than just a nanny. You’re family.

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More Than Just A Nanny

Emma Fahy Davis

When she first came to interview for the nanny job, I had reservations. She was really young, and I’d been burned by the last one we had who’d panicked and called me out of a meeting the first time the babies cried on her watch. Short on sleep and patience, I’d let that last nanny go the same day and I really wasn’t up for a repeat performance. Twins are hard work, mine perhaps even more so than most. I needed someone competent and reliable.

The funny thing is, while I was sitting there thinking about how young she was, she was actually sitting there thinking how young *I* was –when she first got the job brief for a 4-year old and baby twins she wasn’t expecting to encounter a 25-year old mum!

After calling the agency to double and triple check her references and ensure that yes, they really did think she’d manage fine with the twins, I decided to give her a three-month trial. It didn’t start well – she called in sick the first day and had a fender bender on her way to work the second day. But just as I was about to give up, on the third day she turned up on time and the babies loved her.

Part bridesmaid, part nanny

Turns out they have good taste, those babies of mine. Four years later, that nanny, the one I was so skeptical about, would be a bridesmaid at our wedding. Nine months after that, she’d become godmother to our surprise honeymoon baby. Of course, a lot happened over those four years…

When she first started with us, the twins were only five months old. She was there to mop up my tears when our oldest daughter started school, she took care of the girls while I was off giving birth to their baby sister, she sat with me through countless surgeries and hospital admissions when one of the twins became chronically ill, and she was my extra pair of hands and eyes when I was frantically trying to stay afloat with three babies under two.

When I went back to work part time, she’d drop the twins at preschool and bring the baby to me to breastfeed. She’d take them all to Mainly Music, gymbaroo and the park. She spent hours sitting at the twins’ bedsides patting them to sleep, and when they emptied the contents of their dressers onto the floor every day for a week until I moved the drawers out of their room, she sat with them and painstakingly supervised them putting it all back. She folded her own bodyweight in laundry every single week, and she had dinner on the table every single night when I arrived home. I wanted to keep her forever.

But nothing can stay the same forever. Shortly before the twins were to turn 4, we made the decision to move to Australia. I knew she had family and a life and a half-completed degree in New Zealand, but I was only half-joking when I implored her to come with us.

While she’s no longer our nanny and living in different countries has its logistical issues, she’s still very much a part of our lives. When we made the perfectly random decision to get married after twelve years and four children together, she was the first person I called, and the first member of our bridal party (after my sister, I promise!). She counselled me through the shock of that honeymoon pregnancy, even when it meant that I was too sick to travel back to New Zealand for her wedding. And she was the first person I called when our fifth daughter finally made it into my arms (after my mum, I promise!), by which stage she was pregnant with a little girl of her own.

These days, we don’t talk as much as we used to, but when we do talk, it’s as if we just saw each other yesterday. When I see her pop up on Skype, I’ll interrupt whatever I’m working on to give her a call, and the girls are always excited to see her flash up on the computer screen.

You see, despite all those reservations I had in the beginning, it’s clear that she was meant to be our nanny. And somewhere along the way, she became far more than ‘just the nanny’. She became a trusted friend and a much-loved part of our family. We really couldn’t imagine our lives without her in it.

A very special godmother

Do you have a special person caring for your children? Have they become part of the family?

To read more of Emma’s stories and the chaos that is her beautiful family, you can click through to her blog here. Also at Five Degrees Of Chaos, I shared 10 Sanity Savers for a Rainy Day.

This post is linking up with Essentially Jess for IBOT.