A few days ago there was an segment on the news about the many ways to spy on your nanny. From nanny-cams ton an online site in NYC where people take pictures of nannies doing "inapropriate things" and post them so parents can scan them in case their nanny was caught in the act of doing egregious things to the children in their care.
Now, having gone to a liberal arts college in the 90's I am programmed to be "fight for the rights" of the worker/nanny and yet I also completely empathize with the mother who wants to make sure her child is in the right hands. When I went to that developmental movement class from the last post there were two care-givers there with children. One of them was basically the Mary Poppins of nannies, well possibly Mary Poppins meets Piaget. She was engaged, asked questions, practiced on her child, shared in detail the developmental milestones of the kid. Basically she was like a very involved mother, well in some ways better than most of the other new mothers there because she evidently knew what she was doing and let's be honest, the rest of us are still kind of in the trial and error stage. She was the "Top Chef Master" equivalent to my "Let's turn whatever is in the refrigerator into a one-pot wonder." Not that those one-pot wonders aren't delicious and filled with heart but they sometimes lack some technical knife skills or a recipe/plan.
And then there was the other nanny. I don't know if she was tired, having a bad day, or really just mediocre, but she spent the entire class texting, even when her ward army-crawled over to my immobile babe and tried to claw his eyeballs out with saliva-drenched fingers and then promptly spit-up up on our swaddle. And for those of you not schooled in the mommy and baby events, laying down the swaddle in front of you pretty much creates a territorial spot of sanctity. It is the baby equivalent of pissing on your section of the rug. It is the layer of germ protection, sleep inducer, baby comforter. . well you get the picture. And even then, bad nanny didn't move, so, I did carting my baby and swaddle to the other side of the circle as the kid went after his next target.
And this is when I had the us vs them moment. I thought - my god I wonder if her the mother knows how bad her nanny is. And furthermore I understood that if I knew who that mother was, I would tell her. GASP! I recognized within myself the potential to be a nanny-tattler.
The aforementioned news segment said that nearly 100% of people who install nanny cams fire their nannies within 24 hours because they are so horrified. Now I do realize that these numbers are probably fairly unscientific. In the first place, probably few people who have Mary Piaget Poppins who bother to install a nanny cam and second I'm pretty sure anyone responsible for watching a colicky infant for 14 hours straight would have at least one "fire-worthy" moment a day.
And today - if someone was "nanny-camming" me, I'm pretty sure I would have been canned. This is roughly what they would have seen.
7-7:30 breast feeds baby while watching Sister Wives on-demand. (okay ignore the fact that it would be weird if your nanny was actually breast feeding your child since the whole wet-nurse thing went out a few decades ago not to mention the fact that no one should be watching Sister Wives at 7 AM -we'll let these go)
7:30-8:30 plays with baby, does some great yoga exercises, encouraging tummy time with the techniques learned in developmental movement class while watching Good Morning America. Now potentially there is room for nanny failure since one should focus completely on the baby and not divide one's attention between the baby and the screen but to be fair Lady Gaga was on GMA and any employer should be sympathetic to that.
8:30-9:15 baby naps. . none of your business what I was doing here. .oh wait, it would have been caught on nanny cam. . fine. I ate breakfast and checked facebook
9:15-10:00. . baby nursing .. . (blah blah - nothing interesting here fast forward the tape)
9:45-10:45. we play, dance around the room, go look at ourselves in the mirror
10:45 - 2:00 I'm not going to break-down this timeline further because it is all a part of the hysteria section and the minutes become a blur. . a very, very slow blur, but a blur nonetheless.
Baby goes into the swing for a nap, I vacuum to lull him to sleep (look a nanny who cleans bonus!) He does not fall asleep but is calm so I go to the bathroom. While there, I get mesmerized by the mirror, examining all the baby weight I have not managed to slough off through the "miracle of breast-feeding" (I'm pretty sure this would be considered 'ignoring a child' in nanny-cam world but probably still not fire-worthy.) The baby starts to cry. I leave my reflection in the mirror, pick him up, rock him, dance him around, re-swaddle him, burp him, change his diaper. He is having none of it and is now screaming so loud he's choking and turning red. I put the vacuum back on with one toe so I don't put him down. He screams more. I feed him again, he starts to spasm and grunt and cry WHILE his mouth is attached to my breast. I decide to go for a walk. Now the nanny cam could not follow me here but if it could it would see him momentarily calm down and then start to scream again. I pick up my phone to text my friend to not to meet me at the park because our mission is being aborted (yes while the baby is crying) and I'm sure someone would be taking a picture of me to post on 'nannywatch' if I didn't look so, well, white. I pick him out of the stroller, put him in his carrier and walk the stroller back with one hand while jiggling him up and down and patting his back. We get home, he eats again, and he is STILL crying. It is at this point that I kind-of-sort-of scream at the baby. It wasn't a full scream but it was surely a "fire-worthy" scream that went something like "PLEASE BABY, PLEASE STOP CRYING. . OH GOD I JUST NEED A MOMENT!!! PLEASE STOP!!!" Okay, so it was a scream. Not a 'god what a worthless piece of cr*p baby you are (shake-shake) moment' but a 'God I sure am glad my bad mommy/nanny moment was not caught on tape moment. Note to my husband: If you ever put a nanny cam in our apartment I will divorce you. I promise for the most part I am a wonderful, loving, giggle inducing, creative mom.
So I am torn between having sympathy/empathy for nannies and also understanding that when you leave your kid with someone it is hard not to want hold them to higher standards than yourself, meaning I would probably fire her if she was me. And this is not self-judging, As indicated, I think that I am doing a bang-up job. But looking at a tape of anyone doing their job over the course of sixty hours would probably lead them to being fired. So we'll see. For now there will be no nanny-cam because of course there is no nanny, and probably unless I win the lotto, never will be one. But if I do have a nanny, well, I guess I'll have to wait and see.
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