It’s one of the most important, intimate and challenging connections you will ever have. What makes this partnership work, what messes it up and how to get it right from the get-go. 

I was on my third caregiver (yes, they do leave you, and I do have four kids) when it occurred to me as I was driving home from work that I didn’t really know where Yolanda lived. Sure, I had Yolanda’s address from her application, but where was that exactly? Sweat trickled down my cleavage as I pictured her kidnapping my children and me speeding down every freeway in Southern California only to learn there is no suburb called Fremont Park, her alleged address. From that moment on, I made it a point to do a drive-by of each caregiver’s home: first, to see if it existed; second, to see if it looked safe, in case she ever got it into her mind to take my children there; and third (and I’m embarrassed to say this, but it’s my truth), to see if she had any predatory-looking men living with her. Hey, mother love isn’t always PC.

Our relationships with those who care for our kids while we’re at work are complicated: I loved our caregivers and depended on them, but I was suspicious and envious of them, too. My sister-in-law, Janet, once told me, “The minute you hire a nanny, you start resenting her.” “What in the world are you talking about?” I blurted in response to her old-school attitude. “It’s true,” she continued. “You leave her to spend the day at home with your baby, and you have to go to work. Whose gig looks better to you?”

Many were the days I wanted to chuck four years of college and three of law school for a day of lying on the floor, the bed or the grass with my babies. But I invariably went back to work and cried in my car and called home several times a day for reassurance. Until you hire a great caregiver, you never dream how much skill and finesse, espionage and blind faith are required. At least until recently, the only people who had professional child care in this country were the Kennedys or other rich families with squads of children. The rest of us had the teenager from down the block come over to watch TV, eat delivery pizza and have burping contests with our kids on Saturday nights. Little girls like Tori Spelling may have had a nanny who lived with them throughout their childhood (and rumor has it the caregiver lived in the Spelling home many years after the kids were gone). But it’s a different story for the rest of us.

Except for the once-a-week cleaning lady who came and went without ever being seen by me, I had absolutely zero knowledge about hiring help for my home. And my own mother had absolutely no wisdom or experience to share with me on the topic, since caregivers are a relatively new phenomenon to us mere mortals. In fact, this industry only began to burgeon in the past few decades, as more and more moms decided to work outside the home. So, let’s face it, the rules are still being written when it comes to the mommy/nanny relationship. Nonetheless, I, along with some smart experts I know, will try to offer some clarity.

Seeking Mary Poppins

Most first-time moms looking for a caregiver are really clear about wanting someone who’s loving, nurturing and experienced, says Elise Lewis of Distinguished Domestic Services and Kensington Nannies in Woodland Hills, CA. What tends to be murky, she adds, is “whether there are paid sick days and vacation, whether the candidates are to be paid legally and basic employer/employee relations.” Sure, we can ask our mommy friends what the going rate of pay is, but what if the caregiver drives? Speaks English? Knows CPR? Are we willing to pay for education in these areas? Who knows, right?

The issue of pay is usually resolved in a couple of ways. First, a potential caregiver likely has a salary in mind, so you can ask her how much she hopes to earn. Or ask what she was paid at her last job. (Don’t be coy—talk about money ten minutes into the interview. If you don’t, you could be wasting two people’s time.) Second, you need to reach out to other working moms in your town or neighborhood by seeking advice in your Mommy and Me class, at the pediatrician’s office and online to find out what other moms pay, what qualifications they get for that amount and what they do about pay for sick and vacation days to retain a good caregiver.

Live-in or live-out, our caregivers often spend more waking hours in our homes than we do. Even when I chose to work from home, I’d depend on mine to do the laundry or feed the kids lunch so I could work at the computer without pureed pears spattering across the keyboard. We were often together in small places like the kitchen, the car or the cabin of a plane. My kids’ nannies and I have slept in the same hotel room, shared the same food and fretted together in hospital emergency rooms while a forehead is being stitched or a wrist is X-rayed.

What to do, then, when both of us are at my child’s side at the doctor’s, tearfully trying to reassure him and tell him he’s braver than Spider-Man, and he looks up through tears clumping his lashes like mascara and cries for…her? Wither and die from the rejection? Hope the doctor didn’t hear and judge me a maternal impostor? Fire her on the spot? I don’t know a mom with child care who hasn’t worried that her child will love the nanny more than he loves her. Like a dog licking a hot spot, we can’t stop ourselves. Yes, there will be a time (or ten) when our darlings will reach for them over us—if we’re lucky.

As psychologist Cheryl Saban, PhD, says, our children need to feel that they’re cared for and comforted by someone they trust implicitly. How terrible would it be if our kids didn’t feel safe and nurtured by their caregiver and instead retreated from her in a time of need? Most important, says Dr. Saban, whose latest book is New Mother’s Survival Guide, a child who reaches out for comfort is really expressing need, not love, and caring moms are always irreplaceable and uniquely loved by their babies (at least until adolescence, say I). In fact, it’s important to put your ego aside enough to notice how your child interacts with his caregiver when he is frightened, tired or stressed. If he always prefers you to the nanny, even when the nanny is more available, you might want to reappraise your caregiver.

Your New BFF?
Nearly all the candidates I’ve ever interviewed to care for my children initially called me Mrs. Iovine, and being the egalitarian, casual hipster that I imagine myself to be, I quickly corrected them with “Call me Vicki.” Experience has since led me to accept the more formal title to help maintain the little bit of professional distance I’ve grown to appreciate, but at the time I figured, why be formal when we can be friends, and why be just friends when we can be family? Invariably, a good mommy/caregiver relationship is intimate. Translating that intimacy outside of child care is where relations can be tricky.

My girlfriend Mary, a Democratic Party leader and another mom of four, ended up throwing birthday parties for her au pair, sending gifts to her family and including her in family get-togethers. It was exhausting and created expectations that grew burdensome in a couple of years. But at that point, to do less could seem like a slight. Rachel, another friend, who’s a book editor in New York City, once called me in the middle of a summertime barbecue to ask what she should do about her young caregiver’s boyfriend, who’d accompanied her and was downing tequila shots at the backyard bar. My advice? Ask the young woman to drive him home and risk her quitting out of embarrassment.

Gladys, my very first household helper, was with us for seven years, and I often passed clothes on to her and her daughter. One day, my girlfriend Corki walked into my house and laughed out loud, pointing out to me that Gladys was wearing a complete outfit of my clothes, had styled her hair like mine and even adopted several of my phrases, like “That’s so perfect!” and “Hey there!” A veritable doppelgänger, a usurper of not only my style and mannerisms but also my kids. What was her next conquest, my husband? I let her go—my insecurities, I admit—but waited to do it until my youngest was in preschool.

Before she left, however, our intimacy led down other unforeseen roads. She came to me crying one day, saying that she couldn’t get her driver’s license renewed because she didn’t have a valid green card. I couldn’t imagine her leaving us when the babies were still so young, and I was still certain that I could never live without her, and I hated her being so upset. So I hired an immigration attorney for her. I, who had frugally negotiated her hourly pay, was now paying thousands of dollars a year to a lawyer who never really got her anything.

I’ve offered to pay off car loans when it looked like my caregiver faced repossession and wouldn’t be able to commute to work. I’ve advanced vacation pay to help a nanny leave town to escape an abusive boyfriend. I’ve paid preschool tuition for one of our caregiver’s children so he’d be occupied while she took meticulous care of my kids. My worldview telescoped into a single penetrating focus on protecting the rhythm of my work/family life, cost and sanity be damned. Why? I’d experienced days of four sick kids who—having infected their caregiver—were left in my care while I called in my own sick days to nurse them all. So I knew what was at stake, and being babysitterless was justifiably terrifying.

Truly, says Dr. Saban, women who are desperate to keep good child care often go to extreme lengths to do it—part of the insanity that mothers can be driven to in order to take care of their kids and keep their own lives on track. I guess that led me to my greatest realization: Caregivers, like lovers, should be heartily appreciated but not needed like an iron lung. Also, like lovers, they may come and go, but there’s generally an even better one in our future, because we’ve become better equipped to state our needs and expectations and more confident that we deserve the help in the first place.

The first time a nanny quit, she just didn’t come back from her weekend off—no goodbyes with my baby boy who had come to love her. I sat on the front steps that Monday with the baby in my arms and cried, hoping she’d show up if I waited long enough. We had been rejected. We weren’t good enough. Eventually, I went inside, took a bath with my little boy and poured a glass of wine. But wine isn’t a good long-term solution, at least in polite society, so I needed to learn some lessons from the agony and be wiser when I went looking for help again.

Over the past 20 years, it’s taken a whole village of child-care helpers; they get more diverse and specialized as our kids grow. It’s taken three nannies, five or six housekeeper-caregivers, six tutors, two sports coaches and a priest and a rabbi, as well as my husband and me, to get two kids into college and two more to high school—so far, no felons or teenage pregnancies in the group. I might have been able to do it alone, but I would be a bent and bitter woman today if I had. I am deeply grateful for each and every one of their contributions to our lives.

7 rules for a Successful Mommy/Caregiver Partnership
Although I believe the tribal wisdom that my working girlfriends and I have accumulated over years of trial and error is as good as it gets, I turned to caregiver expert Elise Lewis for some professional pointers about getting it right the first time we hire child care. Here’s what she suggests:

1. Let the caregiver sell her/himself to you. Many of us try to sell ourselves and our children to the potential caregiver. Remember, this is a paid professional service that you are seeking, not a date. You must expect competency and respect, along with warmth and charm, of course.

2. Always call references. Make a list of your questions regarding resumés, time at previous jobs and skills at, say, cooking, driving or first aid. A good former caregiver will usually get rave reviews, so beware of lukewarm responses. Also, make sure to ask why she left the previous job.

3. Check with the DMV. If driving is a requirement, ask to see a recent DMV printout of the candidate’s driving records. Also, reputable agencies check for arrests, outstanding warrants and any indications of driving under the influence. Ask the candidate to take you for a drive, too.

4. Ask about her life. Feel free to check on preexisting health problems, dependent children and spouses. A woman with a diabetic husband or an absentee spouse can have her own obligations that need to be addressed up front.

5. Succinctly list your expectations for an average day of child care. Make a schedule that includes meals, house-keeping, naps, playtimes, pickups or drop-offs for activities, how often to call you to check in or to report crises—and food philosophies. Being specific about what’s acceptable and unacceptable is not only your privilege, it is your job as a mom.

6. Schedule a weekly meeting. Discuss with your caregiver your concerns or satisfaction with her performance, and hers with yours. You’ll be surprised at how much direction and feedback she’ll invite. It’s crucial not to be defensive at these meetings and to really listen to her concerns.

7. Check in with your kids at least once a day to see if they’re happy, calm and secure. Routine is very important to people, particularly children, and if you sense they’re uneasy or anxious, it’s your duty to pursue the issue.

Vicki Iovine is the author of The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy and four other Girlfriends’ Guides.