Our first ap was a personality dud (she couldn’t hold a conversation to save her life), but great with our baby - super attentive (constantly shadowing him), singing, reading, rocking him. He was @1 when she came. She was less good with our 3yo, but still ok. Our then 6yo figured out that the ap was dull and not very smart within a week, and didn’t really want to have much to do with her. Fortunately my schedule permitted me to pick up 6yo and spend most afternoons with her, but it was challenging for our ap to engage her beyond doing bedtime. So it worked well enough for the baby, and we got through the year, but looked for someone more engaging for all the kids after the first one.

We have had an older au pair from 6 mos. on. She’s been fine. Look for an au pair with a lot of infant experience.

I would wait until the youngest is at least 3 years old.

We have a very mediocre AP for our baby now and this is our rematch AP because the prior one was a disaster with an infant. We had a good experience with our toddler at 2 years old and an AP.

So, now I agree with those that say most APs can't deal well with infants and have a much higher rematch. (Good for you if you lucked out and had a "wonderful" AP. We didn't, twice.)

But what do you think about another AP for a 1 year old and older kids? Does it help when the baby is older? Or would you wait until 2+ years old?