Town & Country Resources Blog

Some of the people I speak with who are considering hiring a Baby Nurse are still not quite sure how it all really works so here are some answers to a few of the most common questions I get about Baby Nurses…

If I’m breastfeeding does it make sense to have a Baby Nurse?
When the baby wakes up, the Baby Nurse can bring the baby to Mom for nursing. After feeding, Mom has the option of handing the baby right back over to the Baby Nurse who can burp, change and settle the baby back to sleep. Sometimes the burping and changing process takes as long as the actual feeding so being able to hand the baby off for this allows Mom to go right back to sleep. Also, having someone supporting you at 3 a.m. (answering your questions and getting you that glass of want you’ll need) can make a big difference.

Additionally, Mom has the option using a breast pump and having the baby bottle fed by the Baby Nurse. After feeding, the Baby Nurse can store the extra milk, clean the pump bottles and set up the pump equipment again.

According to data from a recent study 13% of mothers who wanted to breastfeed were unsuccessful in doing so because “they didn’t get enough support to get breastfeeding going.”* While a T&C Baby Nurse is not typically a formally trained lactation consultant, they are often very experienced with supporting breastfeeding mothers and have many suggestions and tips that can help make the process successful for mother and baby. They’ll support Mom without any judgment if she decides at any point that she no longer wishes to breastfeed, wants to supplement with formula, etc.

Who are T&C Baby Nurses and what are they really like?
T&C represents women of all ages and backgrounds. Because we require a significant amount of hands on experience in the field (e.g. our least experienced Baby Nurse has worked in the field since 2004) a good portion of our pool are a more mature profile. Because a T&C Baby Nurse has such a high level of experience even parents who have already had 3 children say they’ve learned valuable tips from our Baby Nurses.

A skilled Baby Nurse knows that her job is to support the parents and she is clear that her own opinions are irrelevant unless specifically asked. They are also generally quiet by nature and know when to step in and be helpful and when to be “invisible”. She often has suggestions for how to include a partner who wants to help and tips for how to help an older child adjust to the addition of a new baby.

Any Baby Nurse who insists on doing things her way, one who is overbearing or aggressive in any way is simply not a T&C Baby Nurse.

Does the Baby Nurse sleep at night and where do they stay?
A Baby Nurse will most frequently stay right in the nursery with the baby. A bed is usually necessary since it’s difficult for a Baby Nurse to sit in a chair for 10+ hours, however, this accommodation will depend on the Baby Nurse.

Some Baby Nurses will “doze” if they have taken care of everything and the baby is sleeping peacefully. Their sleep is a light one and they are always right next to the baby so that they can immediately respond to whatever the baby may need. Other Baby Nurses will stay awake all night reading with a book light, working on a laptop, etc.

What else does a Baby Nurse do other than caring for the baby?
A Baby Nurse’s priority is always the baby’s care and keeping the nursery dark and quiet, but depending on the layout of the house they will usually be as helpful as possible with other baby related tasks such as, washing and folding baby laundry, sterilizing and prepping bottles, cleaning and setting up breast pump equipment and straightening the nursery.

I’ve also found that T&C clients who have had a Baby Nurse get off on solid footing in terms of getting the baby on a good sleeping schedule. I have found that parents working without a Baby Nurse sometimes inadvertently create sleeping habits that ultimately create sleep problems for the baby (and thus the parents) down the road. A T&C Baby Nurse can also usually get the baby sleeping through the night much sooner than parents are able to without this support.

Does having a Baby Nurse impact our ability to bond with our baby?
Postpartum baby support is not a new idea, in other cultures and parts of the country, women have other women around them, supporting them with the daily care of both themselves and their babies. In the Bay Area, frequently extended family lives far away, but even if extended family is nearby they are usually older and asking them for help at 3 a.m. isn’t really a viable or appropriate option.

A new baby is a wonderful gift, but also brings on an exhausting and sometimes very stressful time. A new parent who has someone there to help maximize their sleep, answer their questions and generally provide emotional support is more able to relax and enjoy their new baby, actually allowing them to be more “present” for the bonding process. A parent with other children in the home is juggling their needs as well, including helping them adjust (without resentment) to the newest addition. Being available to nurture the bonds with their other children during the day without having support and rest at night can quickly become a significant challenge.

Additionally, according to the Mayo clinic**, about 10% of new moms experience postpartum depression, a severe form of emotional distress that kicks in the postpartum period. Hormones and lack of sleep added to feelings of being generally overwhelmed cause some women to feel that they’ve lost control. Postpartum depression can make it difficult to bond with a baby. A Baby Nurse can provide much needed sleep for a Mom struggling with postpartum depression, allowing her to function better and be able to enjoy her time with the baby.

Why do dads usually like the idea of a Baby Nurse?
Frequently Dad is big fan of the idea of a Baby Nurse. I believe this is because (frankly) it gives them a bit of their partner back and brings in a neutral party to help educate and support both Mom and Dad. Some Dads (especially of breastfeeding mothers) really want to be supportive and involved, but are unsure of how exactly how they can best do that – a Baby Nurse can gently educate a Dad on the different ways they can be involved in the baby’s care. Especially with a first child, Mom and Dad are thrown into whole new roles and a Baby Nurse can act as gentle and supportive coach to help as they begin to figure things out.

Click Here to view our Baby Nurse Candidates.

* From “New Mother’s Speak Out” created by Eugene R. Declercq, Carol Sakala, Maureen P. Corry and Sandra Applebaum. August 2008. Report of surveys conducted January – February and July – August 2006
for Childbirth Connection by Harris Interactive® in partnership with Lamaze International

** By Mayo Clinic Staff June 7, 2008. © 1998-2009 Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research (MFMER).

One of the important conversations that we have with new clients to Town & Country is whether they have thought about how they will handle payroll for their new nanny, housekeeper or other household employee.  We don’t have reliable data on what portion of household employees in this country are paid “off the books” or “under the table,” but we suspect the percentage is pretty high.

So, probably because it’s so common, it may seem as if paying “off the books” is safe – or at least very low risk.  But doing so carries some important risks for the family who is employing someone in their home (and those risks can come to pass in some unexpected ways, and means that the employee could miss out on some important benefits.

First, here’s the basic law.  When a family hires someone to work in their home, they become a household employer.  Household employees include nannies, medical caregivers, housekeepers, gardeners, cooks, personal assistants, household managers, etc.  By law, these individuals cannot be classified as independent contractors (or, at least, the exceptions are very, very few).  As an employer, the household is required by law:

1.    To pay federal and state employer taxes, including Social Security, Medicare, federal and California unemployment insurance.  These are obligations of the employer, and they’re separate from the obligations that the household empoyee has.

2.    To withhold certain taxes from the employee’s wages, and report and remit those amounts to the IRS and California (or other state) tax authorities.  These amounts include the employee’s share of Social Security and Medicare, as well as disability insurance inmost states.  In addition, as employer you are obligated to withhold state and federal income tax on behalf of the employee, but that amount may be zero based on your employee’s W-4 elections.

3.    To carry workers’ compensation insurance.  This is a requirement in California and most other states.  Workers’ compensation insurance is meant to provide certain coverage if an employee suffers a work-related injury.

Payroll services can typically calculate and help a family with the first two items above, or you can calculate and pay those amounts to the appropriate government agencies.  Workers’ compensation for household employees may already be covered under the homeowner’s policy, or is likely available as a relatively low-cost rider.

(One exception to note:  If an individual household employee is paid less than $1700 (2009) in a year, then the household does not have any federal employer tax responsibilities.  You may still have state or other tax obligations.)

For potential employers, there are three main reasons we recommend paying household staff on the books – and many of these reasons apply to employees as well:

Tax Breaks for the Employer:  Household employers are entitled to certain tax breaks if their employee is paid legally.  If you have access to a Flexible Spending Account (or Dependant Care Account) through your own employer, you may use those pre-tax contributions to pay your own household employee’s wages.  If you do not have access to your own FSA, then you may claim the Tax Credit for Child or Dependent Care on your personal income tax return at the end of the year.  The after-tax benefits to you of these breaks can cover all or most of the additional costs otherwise associated with paying an employee “on the books.”  Check with your tax adviser for specifics.

These tax breaks will not be available to households that have not made the appropriate IRS and state tax filings.

Disability, Unemployment and other Important Benefits:  Depending on the state, if a household employee suffers a non-work related injury that prevents them from working, the employee may be eligible to receive financial assistance.  (Work related injuries would be covered by workers’ compensation insurance.)

In general, if a household employee loses their job through no fault of their own, they should be entitled to receive up to six months of unemployment benefits at up to 50% of their salary.

Often, household employees will be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit. Employees who are single parents may qualify for this federal tax break, reducing their tax bill by as much as $3,500 per year.  In order to receive this credit, the empoyee must, among other things, have earned some income that has been reported.

Employees paid on the books will receive retirement benefits and basic medical coverage through Social Security and Medicare contributions.  Research shows the average household employee for whom employee payroll taxes have been paid will receive $5 for every $1 they contribute.

People with reported incomes will be establishing a verifiable employment history, which is necessary to qualify for things like car loans, home loans, student loans, credit cards, etc.

Peace of Mind:  This is the important one.  At the start of this post, we said that the risks of non-compliance can come to pass in some unexpected ways.  It is true that IRS has been aggressively pursuing household employers who pay illegally.  It’s also true that in this tough economic environment the IRS is likely going to be stepping up its enforcement activities (and failure to meet these tax obligations is considered tax evasion and can result in expensive back taxes, penalties and interest).

But in our experience, getting audited is not the normal way for families to end up in trouble.  Instead, something happens during the course of the employee’s job that triggers a need for one of the benefits above – and if the employee has been paid off the books, then the needed benefit won’t be there.  The most common scenario by far: The family’s employee loses his or her job and files for unemployment insurance.  The state unemployment agency then checks to make sure that unemployment insurance has been paid, and if it hasn’t (i.e., because you were paying off the books), then the state unemployment agency will start a process that will typically result, in one way or the other, in the family having to make up for the unpaid unemployment insurance premiums, payroll taxes, etc. (plus interest and penalties).  Often, an employee does not realize that unemployment insurance has not been paid where they have been paid off the books. But in this tough economic environment, finding a new job is taking longer than ever, and the chances are good that an employee that has been let go will have to file for unemployment benefits.

I’m just old enough to remember trying to read columns by Herb Caen, Art Hoppe and Charles McCabe in the San Francisco Chronicle.  (This is back in the day when the “Sporting Green” was actually printed on green paper.)  I was trying to move beyond the funny pages, and I was just old enough to read their columns, but not really old enough to understand what they were talking about, so that didn’t last long.

What does that have to do with raising kids you ask?  Well, in reference to the three asterisks that would separate the paragraphs in the column, I think one of those columnists (all of them?) would talk about the “three dot lounge,” and “three dot-ism,” and a laundry tip we recently heard about reminded me of those columns years ago.

The other day we had spent the day with neighbors whose three sons are friends with our two kids.  All five of them are on the same swim team, so as we were packing up at the end of the day and trying to separate their (mostly identical) sweat jackets, we noticed that our friends had put dots on the labels of their sons’ jackets.  Curious, we asked mom what the dots meant.

Well, it turns out that when she bought a piece of clothing for the oldest son, she would put one dot on the label.  When that item got handed down to the next oldest child, she would add a dot, and so on.

That made it very easy to identify which clothes belonged to whom when the clean laundry was being folded and separated – one dot for the oldest, two dots for the next oldest, and so on.  And it was also a relatively easy and unique way of finding their stuff in the piles of forgotten clothes at school.  Maybe not as effective as a good old sewn-in name label, but certainly a lot easier to update as it got handed down.

*     *     *

Herb Caen probably wouldn’t have thought it worthy of his column, but we thought it was a great idea!

Initially, a share care seems like it should be a very straight-forward and attractive alternative to hiring a nanny just for your own family.  In general, if two families split one nanny, then for each family all the costs should get split in half too.

Sounds simple, right?  Share care arrangements can work well, but potential problems can often arise among families with different schedules or different parenting requirements, styles or needs.  Here in our second ‘share care’ blog post, we’d like to highlight some of the important issues that we see arise in a share care situations and should be considered at the outset.

One way to look at it is this:  At one end of the spectrum, if your family hires its own nanny, you will have all the complete control and get to make all the decisions.  At the other end of the spectrum, if you were to try to combine enough families into one share care group, then you would essentially be a part of a private day care arrangement, and you would need to have maximum flexibility to get the benefits.  So, if you’re going to do a share care, somewhere in between those two extremes you should be able to find a good balance that meets your needs.

So at the outset, the two important questions to address are:

1.     How many families should be in our share care?  More families means greater cost savings for each family, and also greater flexibility in case any one family decides to leave the share care group, but it also means generally greater complexity on things like arranging schedules and making decisions, and also a need for greater flexibility and willingness to compromise by each individual family.  Our family started a share care group with our in-laws.  We started with three families, and over time, some families left and others joined.  At its peak, the group had a total of five families involved, though the group broke up shortly after that.  Our sense is that two or three families works well, and four is probably the practical limit.

2.    Who should be in our share care?  In general, the greater the overlap or similarity there is among the parenting styles, schedules, kids ages, etc. among the share care families, the greater the likelihood of success.  Of course, issues or even disagreements will inevitably arise, so just as important is the willingness and ability of each family in the share care to communicate, to amicably work through issues, and to compromise.

My husband and I decided to do a share care with our two kids by partnering with our in-laws.  We had three families, all the kids were of very similar ages, and they all got along really well with each other.  We had several meetings of all three families to try to hammer out some of the details.  Going into it, we all knew that no matter how deep any disagreements, we would still have to see each other at the holidays!  And even with that going for us, it still felt like we all had to be patient and flexible.

In the next posting we’ll talk more about some of the specific issues the share care group should talk about at the outset and be prepared to deal with as time goes on.  At a minimum, however, as you start to organize your share care group, here are some of the things to ask yourself (and your potential partners):

-    Can we as a group talk about money issues?  Money will tend to play at least some role in most issues that come up.  This will range from the obvious (how much to offer a nanny, how much of a raise to give, how much of a year end/holiday bonus to pay, if any), to the less obvious (how to split costs where the number of hours used by each family differs, or even varies from day to day), or the difficult to quantify (how, if at all, to account for the cost of using a family’s home).

-    Can we as a group talk about parenting issues?  Opinions and beliefs about how to raise children are going to be very important to each family in the share care, and will greatly influence what tasks and responsibilities a nanny can or should handle when caring for your kids.  Some random examples: How should discipline be handled?  How much reading?  How much out-door play?  Is TV allowed?  If so, what are the limits?  What kind of food is OK?  Is snacking OK? Will the nanny be allowed to drive the kids around?  Can the nanny bring her own child?  What projects or activities are OK or not OK?

The key to moving through these issues will always be communication, flexibility and compromise, and one of the most important factors for the success of the share care group will be to partner with other families where you believe you will all be able to communicate and compromise with one another, and where all will be willing to be flexible and accommodating when needed.