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[quote=Anonymous][quote=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.  [/quote]

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.

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