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[quote=Anonymous]Hi OP - You sound like a perfect candidate for an au pair.  Make it clear to the au pair what her schedule is and what her car situation will be right up front before you match.  You will definitely find someone that is fine with it.  I will add two things though - you are required to give them one weekend totally off per month, so count on that.  And having an au pair work three Saturday nights a month IS actually a recipe for bitterness.  During the day Saturday would be a much better schedule for her.

Check out aupairmom.com for tons of resources before making the jump.  It is a HUGE time commitment in my experience - much more than a nanny.  And it's more expensive than they tell you on the agency websites - it runs us about $23,000 a year for a regular au pair, and $27k for an Extraordinaire (which I recommend hands down).

A few comments on your hesitations:

1.  Au pairs absolutely can be responsible enough to watch an infant.  The only ones that can be matched with a family with an infant are "infant qualified" au pairs, which means that they have spent at least 200 hours caring for an infant.  Now that doesn't mean every one of them would be great with an infant.  You will have to interview hard to find one that can handle an infant, but they are out there.  We have had great luck with Extraordinaire au pairs from Au Pair in America - they are a little more expensive, but based on our experience they are much much better equipped to handle young kids, particularly if you have three of them.  I personally would not trust a regular au pair with an infant unless she had extensive experience (based on our two Extraordinaire and one regular au pair - the regular one was very mediocre).

2.  It is absolutely normal to use all 45 hours.  Yes, there are many au pairs who have really easy schedules, but there are just as many that work all 45.  As long as you have your schedule set up from the beginning when you match with her and make sure during interviewing that she understands that it is a full-time schedule and what that means, you'll be fine.  Our first au pair worked 45 hours and she was awesome.  Most of her friends did too.

3.  Three kids is a lot - and that's why you'll want to interview the heck out of them.  Check out aupairmom.com and read about some of the host parents' "dare to match with us" approach.  You don't want just any au pair - you want an au pair who will really rise to the occasion.  It means you'll probably get rejected a fair amount by candidates that really just want to come to party, but that's good.[/quote]

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