How early to start contacting/interviewing for a nanny share?

[Anonymous]

You might have to move to a neighborhood where you can afford a bigger space, your wife can have more space at home, and you can hire a nanny just for your twins. It’s going to be an expensive few years of childcare, but you’ll have the advantage of having a nanny work just for you and having those years pass simultaneously (vs staggered for two kids of different ages). I would be very surprised if you find another family that wants to share a nanny with twins at all, and then at their house. And you’d have to pay a nanny a lot to take this on (all to achieve an infant daycare ratio in the end).

[Anonymous]

1) You will be very hard-pressed to find a share family open to joining a share with twins.

2) What is your space like? I know space in NYC is at a premium, so are we talking 2-bedroom apt?

3) Even in NYC, $3500 per month is a decent nanny wage, even for twins. Focus less on someone with formal education and look for someone with lots of infant (preferably including twin) experience.

4) Even if you could find someone willing to do a share with twins, you need to be prepared for one or both twins to have additional medical needs. Twin pregnancies are HARD. What is considered full-term for twins would be premature for a singleton, and many twins are born even earlier than that! Reflux is more common as are NICU stays. I am not saying this to scare you, just trying to help you realize that a nanny share where the nanny has 3 infants would be tough in ideal circumstances (3 healthy babies who are able to be in a normal schedule and nobody is high-needs). If you have a baby who just got out of a NICU stay and needs to be fed on an alternate schedule due to reflux (for example), that is going to make a 3-infant share unsustainable.

In conclusion, I agree with the general consensus that you should look for a way for your wife to work from home alongside the nanny or for her to go into the office a few days a week or something that allows you to host the nanny in your own space. The good news is that an experienced twin nanny should quickly have them napping simultaneously and eating on a schedule, so if your wife’s concern is noise during calls she can start to plan for calls to happen during predictably quiet windows by around 4-6 months.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1) You will be very hard-pressed to find a share family open to joining a share with twins.

2) What is your space like? I know space in NYC is at a premium, so are we talking 2-bedroom apt?

3) Even in NYC, $3500 per month is a decent nanny wage, even for twins. Focus less on someone with formal education and look for someone with lots of infant (preferably including twin) experience.

4) Even if you could find someone willing to do a share with twins, you need to be prepared for one or both twins to have additional medical needs. Twin pregnancies are HARD. What is considered full-term for twins would be premature for a singleton, and many twins are born even earlier than that! Reflux is more common as are NICU stays. I am not saying this to scare you, just trying to help you realize that a nanny share where the nanny has 3 infants would be tough in ideal circumstances (3 healthy babies who are able to be in a normal schedule and nobody is high-needs). If you have a baby who just got out of a NICU stay and needs to be fed on an alternate schedule due to reflux (for example), that is going to make a 3-infant share unsustainable.

In conclusion, I agree with the general consensus that you should look for a way for your wife to work from home alongside the nanny or for her to go into the office a few days a week or something that allows you to host the nanny in your own space. The good news is that an experienced twin nanny should quickly have them napping simultaneously and eating on a schedule, so if your wife’s concern is noise during calls she can start to plan for calls to happen during predictably quiet windows by around 4-6 months.

OP isn't in NYC...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1) You will be very hard-pressed to find a share family open to joining a share with twins.

2) What is your space like? I know space in NYC is at a premium, so are we talking 2-bedroom apt?

3) Even in NYC, $3500 per month is a decent nanny wage, even for twins. Focus less on someone with formal education and look for someone with lots of infant (preferably including twin) experience.

4) Even if you could find someone willing to do a share with twins, you need to be prepared for one or both twins to have additional medical needs. Twin pregnancies are HARD. What is considered full-term for twins would be premature for a singleton, and many twins are born even earlier than that! Reflux is more common as are NICU stays. I am not saying this to scare you, just trying to help you realize that a nanny share where the nanny has 3 infants would be tough in ideal circumstances (3 healthy babies who are able to be in a normal schedule and nobody is high-needs). If you have a baby who just got out of a NICU stay and needs to be fed on an alternate schedule due to reflux (for example), that is going to make a 3-infant share unsustainable.

In conclusion, I agree with the general consensus that you should look for a way for your wife to work from home alongside the nanny or for her to go into the office a few days a week or something that allows you to host the nanny in your own space. The good news is that an experienced twin nanny should quickly have them napping simultaneously and eating on a schedule, so if your wife’s concern is noise during calls she can start to plan for calls to happen during predictably quiet windows by around 4-6 months.

OP isn't in NYC...

Sorry, I misread. The advice still stands, though.

[Anonymous]

OP here, we are switching into a 2 bedroom from our current 1 bedroom this summer to give us time to get the twins room set up and it sounds like we'll probably just have to hope to find our own nanny. My wife's concerns are solely about noise during calls. She is part of the team that does interactive client demos of her companies software and is concerned about crying babies in the background.

Neither of us had a nanny growing up and we're having the first kids on either side of our family so we're total newbies with respect to how noisy babies can be. I appreciate everyone's input and it seems like what we really need to focus on is finding a nanny with twins experience. We've got some fun interviews coming up!

[Anonymous]

OP, I am a nanny who specializes in twins (with my 4th set now and have been with them since they were born nearly 5 years ago)!

If your wife has a reasonable amount of control over when calls happen, she can make it work by coordinating with the nanny. An experienced twin nanny will focus on getting them into the same schedule ASAP for everyone’s sanity. So your wife should be able to time calls for during naptime or arrange with the nanny for the kids to be on a walk for an hour. She could also just budget for working out of a rented office space one day per week—there are solutions to this problem.

[Anonymous]

I doubt you’ll find an experienced nanny for twin newborns for 40K per year. Your best bet is to seek out a daycare worker with several years of experience. They will be used to juggling multiple infants, and the pay rate you can afford might be a decent wage hike for a daycare worker.

A nanny share is an awful idea, especially with your budget limitations. You’d need a nanny with triplet experience, and those nannies make very very high hourly wages.