Home Birth

written by Rebecca Nelson Lubin

I had been holed up with the three year old for hours in the den, Disney movies on repeat, the day of her sister’s birth, when her mother’s contractions had quickened enough to summon the team of midwives. We had been lazily timing them all the day before, my boss announcing, “Another squeeze,” as she bustled about her house, wearing one of her daughter’s flower garlands to keep her hair out of her eyes as she frantically tidied up. I had heard those tales of the expectant mother’s need to nest as labor drew close, but I had never witnessed it. It was practically comical. She looked, with the flowers in her hair, almost like a child, except for her protruding stomach, and she smiled beatifically as she passed by me again and again, arms full of toys and sweaters and shoes.

“Can I help?” I asked her.

“Just keep writing down the time,” she said, and paused, inhaling deeply.

“Squeeze.” She said.

She looked angelic with the garland of flowers on her head, and she seemed deeply at peace.

Twenty-four hours later, as I snuck down from the den to the kitchen for a snack for the three year old, I could hear her weeping in the back room with the midwives, and even though I knew it was from the pain, it sounded like the bitter grief of the deepest sort of mourning. I could hear the soft murmurs of encouragement from the midwives, a muted hum under the sound of her tears, and I stood frozen for a moment, lost in the sounds, feeling like a trespasser, but unable to walk away. The sounds were so deeply personal, so intimate, and for a second I caught that feeling that I was stumbling into the soundtrack of someone else’s life. It was not for my ears, yet here I was listening to it, transfixed, unable to tear myself away.

When you are a nanny you are a part of someone else’s life but not of it. You bear witness to their moments, and you feel for these moments, but they are not your moments. You witness birthdays, and Christmases, and graduations, and arguments, a million little snippets of life. But this is not your movie.

When her labor reached that transitional state, the three year old and I were sent away to the park. I gamely climbed after her the play structure and down the slides, all the while wondering what was happening at home, as was she.

“When will there be the baby?” She kept asking me.

I thought of how painful her mother’s weeping had sounded just before we were sent away and I assured her, “Very soon.”

We were summoned back within the hour, her father calling my cell and saying, “Better get back up here in a heartbeat,” with so much urgency, that I thought perhaps they had decided that their older daughter could be present for the birth.

But when we arrived and tiptoed cautiously through the front door, and her mother called out to her older daughter to come and see her sister, I could hear the coos of a baby, little sighs and gurgles, and I marveled at the miracle of a being that could make such audible noises, after only being out in the world for a few minutes.

Their oldest ran to meet their youngest, and the cooing sounds that had replaced the weeping sounds were now replaced by laughing sounds, as they spent their first few moments as a family of four. I slipped quietly off to the dining room table, and sat off to the side, trying to be respectfully quiet and unobtrusive in this extremely personal and private moment. Again, I was swept up in that sensation of being in someone else’s movie.

I could hear the midwives offering instructions for some afterbirth interaction, and asking for a little space, and then the father walked quietly through the living room, his minutes old daughter in his arms, swaying his elbows lightly, rocking her with in a calm and reserved manner. His eyes caught mine where I was sitting off to the side, and he nodded at me, and then glanced down at the baby in his arms and sighed, and then said, almost Shaman like, “And so it all begins again.”

That sentence stayed with me for years. And so it all begins again. I wondered at the time if he meant all of the stuff of the work of infanthood and parenting, that if as he held his second daughter he was remembering the burping and the diapering of the first, the walking and the bouncing the baby through colic and gas, the sharpening focus of sleepy infant eyes, the first tentative smiles and coos, the relentless crying. But as time went on, I wondered if he had been speaking in a more spiritual sense. Perhaps he was talking about the soul in the little body he was carrying, that her soul was beginning again. I had heard him sing from time to time about souls coming in and souls going out and the cycles in which they spin around each other. I suppose it would not take much more than holding your spring fresh newborn in your arms to consider the notions of life and death and the wonderful dance that these two opposite ends of the spectrum tend to do with each other, often in a most spectacular display. Over time, I decided, he had been talking about life. He had looked down at the little life he had helped create, curled into the crook of his arm, and had wondered at it all beginning again.

As a nanny, I have gotten to witness a lot of life. I get to walk along with you in your life for a spell, sometimes for years, sometimes just for a few moments, but I get to bear witness to your moments. I become familiar with the soundtrack of the songs of your life. I watch your movies and soon I know all the scenes by heart. I find my self celebrating your joys, and feeling empathy for your pain. And I wonder at how all of it is such a wonderful ride.

 Rebecca Nelson Lubin is a nanny and writer who resides in Marin County, California. You can follow her writing at rebeccanelsonlubin.wordpress.com. If you would like to share a story, please email isynblog@gmail.com.

Poached

By Rebecca Nelson Lubin
ISYN Guest Author

My favorite scene on Bravo’s new original scripted series “Odd Mom Out” is where the Uber Alpha East Side Mom Brooke urged her sister in law Jill to “staff up” and procure a nanny. Jill (the odd mom out of the title) asks what nanny agency she should call. The overly confident and bitchy Brooke laughs off that idea and takes Jill to a popular children’s museum where they can observe the nannies from a high balcony and decide which one to poach, like big game hunters seeking out the best trophy. It is a delicious scene to watch.

So, my fellow nannies, a show of hands, who has been poached on this blog? And let’s not leave the parents out. Who reading this has been guilty of being a big bad poacher? I myself have been poached twice in my nanny career, plucked out of what previously seemed just peachy a position and led towards greener pastures. The first time I was poached, it was by a good friend who offered me a significantly higher salary than I was receiving at the job I have actually loved for a little over a year. How could I say no? Better pay, working with a friend, and the promise of fun travel on the horizon. I jumped ship and never regretted my decision. My friend and I worked together for an agreed upon contacted year, and you know what? It was great. I made more money and received better benefits and travelled with the family to far-flung fun places.

 My second poaching proposal (Several years and another job later) around came my way as a second hand secret. One of the mom’s I was friendly with on the playground had floated my name to her friend who was expecting. Mom A (my friend) had gotten out of me what it would take to leave my job, and had told Mom B. (Her friend.) Mom B had Mom A make me an offer. It was all very mob like. I didn’t even get to meet the Big Lady until it was already agreed via our go between that I could be had for a raise, medical benefits, and paid sick days, paid vacation days and paid bank holidays. And poof – just like that I was plucked off the playground to a new position. Again, I had no regrets and I equally adored my new job along with the perks my old job had not offered.

Now this is not to say that I am the type to jump ship at the drop of a hat, continually seeking out greener pastures. I have been stubbornly loyal to many jobs, no matter how pretty and shiny the poacher might be, and there have been some mighty tasty threads dangled in my face over the years. I have said no to a pitch of “more money and less hours” because truthfully, I just really liked the family I was already with. Starting over with an adorable baby who sleeps all day? No thank you. That 90’s television actress I crossed paths with in my neighborhood Whole Foods who was toting an adorable toddler? Yes, I told her with a smile, I was a Nanny. But no, I said, still smiling, I was not available.

Sometimes we can be so satisfied with what we already have that even the shiniest of stars cannot sway us away. And perhaps that is the real answer with poaching. If your nanny is happy with her job, then nothing and nobody can steal her away.

Rebecca Nelson Lubin is a nanny and writer who resides in Marin County, California. You can follow her writing at rebeccanelsonlubin.wordpress.com. 

If you would like to share a story, please email isynblog@gmail.com.

Traveling with Babies - Part One

Rebecca Nelson Lubin

Little darling, it’s been a long cold rainy winter here in the Bay Area. (I know, I know. It’s really brutal everywhere else, but I’m a California Girl and my blood is thin) When my boss told me we would be spending February break at the Turtle Bay Resort on the North Shore of Oahu I was completely consumed with gratitude that my awesome employers had the resources to travel with their Nanny. And, that they were extremely cool people that I adore spending time with.

Rule number one of travel: Never go anywhere with assholes. Seriously. Someone reading this is right at this moment thinking about that unfortunate road trip they took with their Drama-Queen-Sorority-Sister/Whiney-Cousin/Bitchy-Brother-in-law/Overbearing-Employer or Needy-Nanny. Make sure that the people that you travel with are the lot that you would look forward to spending six hours with on a plane, coasting around in a cramped rental car or camping out in a hotel room while your beach day gets rained out. In the employment world this cannot be a guarantee, but it certainly makes it better.

Rule number two of travel: If you are going to be travelling with small little people, be prepared for any and every type of disaster that could happen from exploding diapers to a large scale earthquake.

Our disaster was a six-hour flight delay. We had sauntered into the San Francisco airport with fully stocked carryon bags for each child, containing numerous snacks, diapers, pull-ups, wipes, and a variety of entertainment, in electronic, sticker board and book form. We had bought our gum and tabloids. We had gleefully boarded our plane and settled into our seats. And then we sat. And sat. At first we were waiting for a flight from Boston (where it is truly cold) so those passengers could make their connection to Honolulu. Then it was some small problem with the air conditioning or the wings or the engines or something vaguely important for a six-hour flight over the ocean. We sat and waited over an hour for maintenance to arrive.

“Twenty bucks we end up switching planes.” I said to my boss, holding the Girl Baby on my lap and entertaining her with Dora stickers.

It was when they announced that we would be waiting yet another hour that I became aware that the man across the aisle was glancing at me in such a manner that could only be described as creepy. He was smiling at me and shaking his head in such a way that his thought bubble would have read, “You are such a dirty little Bunny!”

Finally I stared back at him and demanded, “What?”

He said in a thick European accent, “I am sorry. I am from overseas and I have never seen such a family as yours.”

The Girl Baby needed a change of venue as this exchange was going on, and I stood up and handed her to her mother.

“What are you talking about?”

He now addressed my Mom Boss and myself.

“Can I take your picture?” He was in his overhead bin and pulling out a camera. “We don’t see this in my country.”

And he began snapping away at our startled faces.

“Holy crap,” I mouthed to my Mom Boss, “he thinks we’re in a plural marriage!”

“We are not a polygamy family!” My Mom Boss shouted at him, holding her hands over the children’s faces lest they end up in some sort of salacious article in a Swedish newsletter. “This is our Nanny!”

We decided to beat the crowd and exit the plane, which was clearly not going anywhere. We were rebooked on the 5pm flight, and retired to the First Class lounge where we recharged every cell phone, computer, iPod and Game Boy while the children snacked on the complimentary cookies and carrot sticks, dropping huge crumbs on the floor until our little area looked liked rampaging rock stars had just rolled through. One guy, hugely fat in unfortunate denim shorts, actually hissed “pigs” at us as we caravanned out, a carnival of strollers and carry-ons and all those neck pillows we had just had to buy five hours earlier. We boarded our new plane and sat with our fingers crossed until we taxied to the gate. We were on our way! And only one hour after we already should have landed in Oahu!

It’s a weird thing how small children who have just spent many hours in an airport with no naps with not get tired once settled into cozy plush first class seats that fold out into beds. Our children seemed to be on some sort of speed. The Girl Baby pointed out the window and repeatedly squealed, “Deda ook ki!” (Rebecca, Look, Sky) for three full hours. The Four-year-old boy only wanted to sit under his seat, and happily spent most of the flight burrowing. We did many laps to the rear of the plane and back again. Thirty minutes before landing we got the Girl Baby to sleep. The boy powered through and exited the plane dragging his own bag.

“Where are we?” He asked, zigzagging through the Honolulu airport.

“Hawaii.” I said, breathing in the warm air and smiling. “Finally!”
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Rebecca Nelson Lubin is a writer and Nanny who resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. You may read more of her articles at http://www.abandofwives.ning.com/

If you would like to write an article for I SAW YOUR NANNY, email isynblog@gmail.com.

Music Class

Rebecca Nelson Lubin

I love when my charges get old enough to attend their first real class. It’s usually just past the first birthday when the Mom Boss and I will begin to discuss the sudden urgent need for the baby to be “socialized” beyond the library story time and the side by side interaction at the local park. I like to begin with a music class. Me, I love music. I breathe music. I sing to the babies in the bath, while rocking them to sleep, and have my iPod mounted and plugged into my car stereo with a six CD changer on backup should we run out of song choices from the 5,000 or so at our disposal. Oh, and then there is the tape deck just in case the right song for carpool is actually the bootleg Grateful Dead tape from the fabulous second set of the Cornell ’77 show. You could say that I am a bit of an audiophile.

This December my Mom Boss and I sat down to talk classes for the Girl baby, who was just turning sixteen months. I would have loved to take her to my usual music class, the one I have been taking charges to for a good ten years – the one where the founder actually once mused that I might take over from her one day due to I think my gusto at repeated renditions of “Row Row Row Your Boat” since Bush junior’s first crack at the presidency. Sadly though, my go to class did not fit into our busy schedule - and more importantly – the schedules of her very busy older brothers – or her extremely regular nap schedule. So I went on the Internet and choose a class for us to attend completely based on timing and location. Big bad mistake.

I did not know the grave gaffe I had made for several weeks as Girl baby attended Music class with her Mother. It fell to me to take her four weeks in, and at first it was all good. We left our shoes at the door and sat in a circle with an assortment of grownups and toddlers. The teacher began the class by calling in her musical muses with sweet stokes of a bow across a well-trod violin. Then she laid the violin at her side…and barked at us. In melody. I swear. She nodded eagerly at the grownups and they barked back, off key. She smiled, and repeated the melody in meows. I looked around the circle and thought, “Are you freaking kidding me?” But no, they were not, meows sounded all around me. Quacks followed, then moos.

The teacher preceded the next number by announcing, “I trust everyone has memorized their CD’s by now,” and then launched into a song that had more words than “The Day The Music Died.”

For forty-five minutes we endured, with not an instrument in sight, not a drum to bang, not a song I recognized, not a recognizable toddler music class moment save for the movement with silk scarves montage that required actual chorography that brought forgotten scars bubbling to the surface, long buried from my 8th grade failure at ball room dancing. As the teacher launched into her goodbye song I felt parched and sweaty and longing for a thick peanut butter sandwich and a nap. I glanced around the room and judging from the expressions on the other adult’s faces felt a dim sense of reassurance that I was not the only one completely done in.

I sought out my Mom Boss once home and inquired,

“What did you think of Music Class?”

“It kind of sucked.” She conceded.
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Rebecca Nelson Lubin is a writer and Nanny who resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. You may read more of her articles at http://www.abandofwives.ning.com/.

 Would you like to share your story with I Saw Your Nanny? Email us at isynblog@gmail.com.

M.

By Feature Writer Rebecca Nelson Lubin
In our Nanny profession we usually have very few co-workers, but there is one relationship that more often than not, causes a great deal of stress, that being the relationship between the nanny and the housekeeper. This week I wanted to share my most terrible experience with a truly awful housekeeper, and in return, invite you to write in response with your experiences.

M came to the household where I worked as a Nanny after I had been there a little over two years. The housekeeper she replaced had been just wonderful, a hard working, quiet, polite man in his thirties who left to become an Estate Manager. I met M at her second interview as my boss wanted to get my opinion on her. She was in her mid-fifties, with a broad, solidly built body, and a very thick European accent. She seemed shy and sweet as she told me that she was from Croatia and was considering leaving a long-term job in the South Bay as they had seven children and it was just becoming too much for her.

“Three sets of twins,” she said, rolling her eyes, “they do in-vitro four times. Only one time make one baby.”

M sighed and looked exhausted just talking about it.

She was hired and my boss asked me to assist her with getting used to the neighborhood. I spent the first week driving her around Pacific Heights and showing her the market, the drycleaners and the special butcher my boss liked. As live in housekeeper she would be taking over all the food shopping and errands (she had her own car) and I would be responsible for chaperoning the children around after school to their various activities. That first week she was friendly and chatty as I drove her everywhere in my car, even to places that we did not usually shop, such as the Costco 20 miles away. She loaded the cart with a couple of bulk rolls of toilet paper and then finally found the item she had really come for, a huge bottle of discount Brandy. She loaded six bottles onto the cart.

“This is best brandy.” She said by way of explanation when she caught hold of my startled expression. Obviously, I didn’t think work time was appropriate for stocking up on liquor. But she just staunchly pushed the cart to the little cage where they sold cigarettes and bought two cartons.

“Okay,” she said, now fully stocked up, “we go.”

Her friendliness towards me took a hit when she announced the third week one afternoon at 3pm that she was ready to have me drive her to the market.

“M,” I said, “I have to go and get the girl’s from school right now.”

The expression on her face was not kind. She turned heavily on her heal and stomped away.

The same thing happened the next afternoon. I was getting the girl’s soccer bags and snacks together and M appeared at my side, looking gruff.

“You need to take me to butcher.”

“M,” I said, “I’m leaving right now to get the kids. You can’t drive?”

“The city is scary.”

I totally understand that driving on the hills of San Francisco can be daunting for some, but where they lived it was a straight, flat shot to the market. And besides, she had been driving every weekend to see friends in the South Bay. Her aversion to driving was only limited to working hours.

I had my own driving incident later that evening, driving over the Golden Gate Bridge after I had put the girls to bed. In the middle of the span I got hit with a horrible cramping feeling in my stomach, one that I was all too familiar with, being severely lactose intolerant. I was sweating by the time I made it to Mill Valley.

“M,” I asked her the next day, “is it possible that you put butter in my food last night?”

My boss had specifically told her that I couldn’t eat any dairy when she was hired, and he had stressed that it would make me very ill.

“I put no butter.”

I let it go, but that night too, driving home, I got sick again.

The following night she held out a plate of rice to me and beckoned for me to serve some to myself.

“Uh, M?” I asked hesitantly, “Are you certain that there is no dairy in this?”

She shook the plate at me. “Eat.”

I took a small spoonful.

“Eat!” She said, and heaped more on my plate.

I took a tiny bite. It was delicious.

“What’s in this?” I asked.

“Spices.” She said.

I didn’t even make it to the bridge that night. I was in the bathroom a half hour after eating, in severe pain.

I decided that it might be prudent to make my own dinner from now on, except M was furious when she saw me steaming vegetables in the kitchen before the family dinner. She demanded to know what I was doing. She complained to our boss that I didn’t like her cooking. I told him that I was simply on a diet and trying to eat very healthy. He laughed and told M that her cooking was very rich and that he himself had gained some weight in the almost month that she had been working, and to let me prepare my own dinner if that was what I wanted to do. He left the kitchen and went to call the kids to the table. M glared at me and slammed pots into the sink. I had defied her. As far as she was concerned it was war. Any trace of pleasantries towards me was long gone. When I left that night she stood in the alley between the house and the neighbors, smoking a cigarette and giving me the stink eye. Smoke was wafting up into the children’s open bedroom window.

“Uh, M?” I said, warily, “ I think you might want to smoke somewhere else. The kid’s window is open right above you.”

I don’t understand exactly what she said to me, but it translated, no matter what language it was spoken in.

At Christmas time we were given the joint task of dismantling the Christmas tree while the family was on vacation. She refused to help, but kept walking into the living room to snap and bark at me while I wrapped ornaments in bubble paper. I had to drag the ten-foot tree out to the curb myself. She screamed at me when she saw that there was a trail of dry pine needles and called me a bitch for messing up her living room. I vacuumed it up and left, refusing to engage with her.

In January, she got worse. She yelled and kicked at the dog. She berated Sierra, six, for getting her white socks dirty.

“Yooooooooou need to have white socks so my hands get dry with bleach!” she said, and Sierra looked confused, but asked sweetly,

“M? Are you pissed at me again?”

I took her aside and asked where she had learned the word “pissed.”

“From M,” she said, “she’s always saying that I make her all pissed.”

I went to my boss and explained that M was increasingly hard to get along with and that I wanted his assistance in smoothing out some troubling workplace dynamics. He did what most overworked, overtired employers do.

He said, “Work it out yourselves.”

Of course M showed him a totally different side of herself. She could be kicking the dog and slamming plates and yelling at me and as soon as the front door opened and our boss would stroll in she would put on a huge smile and warmly welcome him home. He had no idea what she was really like. He did not smell the brandy on her breath because she did not lean into his face and scream until she was spitting. She stood at the back of his chair at a respectful distance at the dinner table and asked almost demurely, “Do you like your chicken tonight?”

When I gave notice to move to a job that was more hours, M seemed remorseful. She took me aside to apologize.

“I was bitch at Christmas.” She said, “and I put butter in all your food because the children liked you better.”

I told her to try not to smoke directly under the girl’s window.

Three months after I left, she gave notice and moved back to the family in the South Bay with all the twins. I think about her sometimes, and I wonder if she still works as a housekeeper, and if somewhere out there, she is busy terrorizing some other Nanny.
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Rebecca Nelson Lubin is a writer and Nanny who resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. You may read more of her articles at http://www.abandofwives.ning.com/

Would you like to share your experience with the readers of I SAW YOUR NANNY?

Email isynblog@gmail.com.