What do you do for backup care?

[Anonymous]

OP here. One of the things we love about our nanny is that she is very, very active. But, as a result she's had some sports-related injuries so it hasn't been 15 separate incidents. At least one was several days. "Fortunately," five of the 15 days overlapped with vacation we had already planned, so of course we didn't count our vacation week against her PTO. She has three weeks PTO, and is in the negative already. The truth is, if she isn't up to taking care of our child, we'd rather find a backup who is. I do know she powers through not feeling well on some days. She has a chronic health condition (which we didn't know about when we hired her) which means she is used to not feeling 100%, but she still shows up. (I may be a little extra sympathetic on this point because I had a college roommate who dealt with chronic pain). I do believe our nanny tries, and I know that we're all better off if she takes a day when she needs it, vs. powers through continually and provides sub-optimal care as a result. Its just stressful to scramble and frustrating that I can't seem to find better emergency back-up care options.

Thanks for sharing your experiences and commiserating.

[Anonymous]

Fifteen absences in an entire years is unacceptable to me. That's like one per month. More!

I understand things happen on occasion, you go to bed the night before feeling great, then at 4AM you may be puking your brains out.

It happens.
Just not 15x a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. One of the things we love about our nanny is that she is very, very active. But, as a result she's had some sports-related injuries so it hasn't been 15 separate incidents. At least one was several days. "Fortunately," five of the 15 days overlapped with vacation we had already planned, so of course we didn't count our vacation week against her PTO. She has three weeks PTO, and is in the negative already. The truth is, if she isn't up to taking care of our child, we'd rather find a backup who is. I do know she powers through not feeling well on some days. She has a chronic health condition (which we didn't know about when we hired her) which means she is used to not feeling 100%, but she still shows up. (I may be a little extra sympathetic on this point because I had a college roommate who dealt with chronic pain). I do believe our nanny tries, and I know that we're all better off if she takes a day when she needs it, vs. powers through continually and provides sub-optimal care as a result. Its just stressful to scramble and frustrating that I can't seem to find better emergency back-up care options.

Thanks for sharing your experiences and commiserating.

OP - you are being very generous in not viewing this as a performance issue. We previously used day care, but now have a nanny, because we moved out of state and have no local family or friends for back up options, DH travels a lot for work and it is all on me, so one of our top priorities was a dependable nanny who would show up on time every day. I couldn't be finding backups for day care every time our child was too sick to go to day care. Our nanny gets our personal situation and prioritizes being on time and being there as she knows it puts us in a real bind if she isn't. She has been working for us since last summer, and has called out last minute only once since then. She ended up getting an awful stomach bug and was in the ER overnight. She had her husband text me from the ER to let me know she might not be at work the next day - and then she even offered to come first thing in the morning until I could get someone there to help me. This was crazy talk, of course I told her to stay home as she had been up all night at the ER. She also texted me the name of a friend of hers who could help watch my son- again not her job to help me find back up care, but shows she gets how much we count on her to be there and that it is a real problem when she isn't.

If you can juggle this much scrambling for back up care and be OK in your own work lives, then this nanny continues to be a good fit for you. If it is impacting your own jobs, then she isn't the right nanny and you should consider moving on to find someone more dependable. If I were in your shoes, I would have to prioritize a nanny who was slightly less active, but I could count on to come to work on a regular basis.

For backup care, there is day care center that we have registered with that does limited hours for hourly drop in care. We have now been using that if our nanny has a scheduled appt that I need to cover but I would use it to cover any work commitments I could not reschedule if we had another emergency. And when I say nanny has a scheduled appt, she asks me weeks out and before she schedules, which would be the best days and times for her to do it. So honestly I have her schedule at times I wouldn't even need to use the backup care, but we are using it to keep our son used to it.

[Anonymous]

Thank you PP. I really appreciate your perspective on this! (this is OP, by the way).

[Anonymous]

I used to send my child to an inhome daycare. My old inhome daycare takes in kids on a day to day basis. But because they don't want to go over the ratio limit, they can only take in my kid if one of their usual kid is out for whatever reason. Out on vacation, out sick.
I haven't had to actually use it yet.

[Anonymous]

My family is screwed. I can't find back-up placement at any of the corporate back-up places because I don't work for the feds or a firm that provides it. There are literally zero spots for a baby in my kid's age group for people who don't have agency/employer preference. It sucks.

I wish I had a college kid back up like the poster above. I guess I will need to start cultivating that.

Our nanny supplied us with a backup for a few long-absences, but I don't trust/like the backup, so I hate to have to use her.

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry PP. That really stinks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our nanny (who we generally like as she is very loving) has had a number of unfortunate events over the course of the year which have led her to take time off from her job with us at the last minute. She texts or calls either the night before or the morning of. While I understand that the unexpected comes up, DH and I fear we are annoying our own employers with so many last minute telework days (to be home when a stranger from a backup care agency cares for our child) and bothering our friends who have at times been gracious enough to care for our child so we could go to work. We have no family in the area.

So, my question for the DCUM world is what do you do for emergency backup care when your regular care giver calls the night before or morning of? Are they friends? People you also employee as baby sitters? I find it hard to imagine many people are regularly available at the last minute, so wonder how others handle this. Also, how often in a year do you have to deal with this? In the past year, our nanny has had last minute emergencies (none of them her fault) about 15 times. It feels like a lot of last minute scrambling and stress, and I'm having a harder time handling it.

In my experience hiring a local teen works rather well, they do not need advance notice, they work hard, are responsible, and want to impress. In particular, one of the teens I hired blew me away. He was amazing with kids, cooked, cleaned, was punctual and responsible. If you would like to contact him his email; [e-mail]