In my first week as a mom I even made a list of the most irritating questions and remarks.

Here they are - 7 things I would never-ever-ever in a million years say to a new mom:

• Your baby looks tired.
• Is he sleeping through the night?
• If he cries don’t pick him up, you’ll spoil him.
• Why is your baby crying, is he hungry?
• Does your milk satisfy him?
• Just give him a pacifier, it makes all the difference.
• You have gained some weight, haven’t you?

So keep your cool, count to ten before you react. There is more than one way to cope with unwelcome parenting advice or criticism. Usually it comes from two sources - people who don’t insist, like neighbors and friends, and people who do insist, like immediate family (your parents, in-laws, etc.)

Handling advice from people that don’t insist is much easier. If it’s not something you want to consider, you could

• drop the issue by saying “I am not too sure, let me think about it”.
• blame it on the family doctor: “Well, our pediatrician Dr. Walsh suggest otherwise”.
• let the stuff go in one ear and out the other, just say: “Thanks, that’s an interesting thought”.

When your family’ members give you unwelcome advice, it must be dealt with properly. These people are very much involved in you life and they are not going anywhere, so sooner or later they will ask you again, “Well, are you doing it, how did that work for you?”

So if you’re feeling comfortable with white lies, just say: “It didn’t work for my baby”.And if you want to put it behind you once and for all, explain why you haven’t tried this and not going to. Mention your sources, what have you read on the subject and what is your logic behind this decision. Once they know that you feel strongly about this, have your reasons and know what you’re doing - they’ll leave you alone.

This is how I dealt with all kinds of advice. What have you been doing, what worked for you?

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Question: How will you play with my baby during the day?
Reason: To see what activities she has on her list. Will she read to my baby, sing songs, play outside - or will she glue him to the TV or stick in the pram and go to shops.

Question: What will you do if you feed him and he spits out the food?
Reason: Eric often does that just because he is playing. It can be annoying to a person who doesn’t know him and they could even punish him - I wanted to make sure it doesn’t happen. I also wanted to make sure she won’t force the food on him.

Question: What will you do if you are walking with him in the pram and he starts crying and fighting to get out?
Reason: This is a real life example. I wanted to see if she will discipline him - and if so then how, how does she handle child’s resistance.

Question: What will you do if he chokes on food or a toy?
Reason: This is to see she knows first aid. If she’d say “Heimlich maneuver” I would never hire her - that’s not done on babies under 12 months.

Question: What do you think about spoiling the baby by too much attention?
Reason: I don’t think babies under 2 can get too much attention - the more, the better, so this is to make sure we’re on the same page.

Question: What do you think about holding a baby in your arms?
Reason: I didn’t want her to smother him with hugs and kisses - but I also didn’t want her to never touch him. Babies need to be touched and held, so I wanted to hear something indicating a healthy balance.

Question: Why do you want to care for children?
Reason: To see if she likes what she does or it’s just another gig. When they answer this, the words don’t mean much (no nanny will admit she doesn’t like kids) - I was looking for the body language.

Question: What was your previous job like and why did you leave it, please tell me about it.
Reason: To see if she had disputes with the previous family, or if she tends to quit easily.

Question: What do you think can happen to my baby and how will you prevent it?
Reason: To see if she’s aware of the safety issues and trained to watch for those.

Question: Do you have any conditions (health-wise) I should know about?
Reason: To make sure she doesn’t have contagious diseases and that she’s not going to get a heart attack or a seizure, all alone with my baby.

Question: Do you smoke/consume alcohol?
Reason: Alcohol - no need to explain, no one wants a person under influence near their kids. Smoking - being an ex-smoker myself I didn’t want a smoking nanny, I know for sure that she would have lit a cigarette on every walk they’d take. I quit smoking especially to get the poison out of my system before getting pregnant - so why ruin all the efforts now.

Question: Can I see your references
Reason: If a nanny has good references - she’ll be showing those off. If she’s being funny about references - that’s a red light.

Question: What would you like to know about my baby?
Reason: To see if she is trying to understand what are your babies’ needs and interests.

And now comes the important part - everything I’ve shared with you so far REALLY WORKS. I know because thanks to this system I’ve found a great nanny. I am not going to reveal her name - because I’m afraid you’ll steal her from me. Just kidding but seriously - she’s awesome.

She pays attention to Eric and watches him walk and talk. She lets me know what new words and things he learns. She knows when he’s tired and tries to be closer - so that if he falls she could catch him. She changed the hour when they used to go the playground - because she noticed that he is sleepy in the morning and active in the afternoon. She knows when he has a wet or dirty diaper and needs to be changed. And as a final proof - when she leaves for the day, he comes running and gives her a big hug.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this article. My next one will be out really soon - subscribe and you won’t miss it.

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Realizing that this search is an additional load for me I decided to save some time. I broke the interview process into 2 stages:

Stage 1: I would speak with the interested person on the phone and get all the details, making sure they match my nanny profile (age, education, certificates, etc).

Stage 2: I would invite those who passed the phone stage to meet face to face. This way I wasn’t wasting my time on the people who couldn’t help me anyway.

So I have done my homework and worked out how much I am willing to pay. Because of the job being part time and not requiring much effort from the nanny (she didn’t have to cook or wash baby’s clothes, not even to clean up after him - just entertain him for 3 hours, feed him one pre-arranged meal and change his nappy once) I set the hourly rate in the middle of the range.

For example if the experienced trained nannies with references are getting $20 per hour and young girls with no education or references are getting $15 per hour, I decided that I am offering 18. But of course I was prepared to be flexible, in case I find the ideal nanny and she’s worth $20 an hour then so be it.

After some phone conversations I ended up with quite a few interviews scheduled and it was time for me to get ready. I have never employed or interviewed a person in my life - on contrary I was always the employee or the interviewee, so that was a new skill to learn.

I sat down and started a list of questions to ask. A couple of books I had suggested asking an open-ended questions, meaning questions that you can’t answer with Yes or No. I’ve written the questions about things that were important to me - and then I placed them in the order of importance, with the most important first.

So here is a list of questions for my prospective nanny - and reasons for every question.

Question: How long are you planning to be a nanny?
Reason: I wanted to spare Eric the trauma of getting used to a new nanny every month because the old one has quit and gone backpacking.

Question: What will you do if he cries?
Reason: I wanted to see if they have this standard technique that they use. If that doesn’t work, will they try anything else?

Question: What do you think babied of his age need the most (Eric is 11 months)?
Reason: To see if she realizes what she’s into, to see what she knows about this specific age, if she has experience with little kids - not jus older kids.

To be continued. Don’t go away, but if you do - subscribe

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I was falling behind with my work, the dishes piling up in the sink, the dog was neglected, the garden was abandoned, my friends thought I left the country …you get the idea. Eric is a great kid, and he needs a lot of attention so I wasn’t making progress on anything else. The situation was getting ridiculous: when I was with Eric, I couldn’t stop thinking about the work, and when I was trying to do the work I was feeling guilty about not doing enough for Eric.

This had to end - and I started to look for a nanny. I knew from the very start that it will be hard to find the kind of nanny I’d like my baby to have. She has to be very kind, gentle and patient with him, she has to pay attention, she has to understand when he’s cold or hot, she has to know when he’s hungry or thirsty, she has to know how to make him smile, she has to …be me.

Life teaches us all about compromises - so I sat down and drew up a nanny profile.

Age: not too young because I want someone responsible, and not too old because she won’t be able to keep up with him - and he is one quick little boy.

Gender: hmmm, I know that I don’t get on very well with women - so why not have a male nanny? Let’s say that both are acceptable, there are not much men in that profession anyway.

Education: I prefer people who had certificates in child related education. Why? Two reasons:
1) I might learn something from them without having to do the course myself
2)They will help my baby’s development because they are trained to.

Certificates: Two that are a must: pediatric first aid and police check. I didn’t insist on a clean driving record because she wasn’t going to drive my baby anywhere.

References: I wanted recent references with contact phone numbers. One can’t be too picky when it’s about their baby’s well-being.

And then the search began. I posted an ad in the online classified ads portal. There were some responses but mostly from students and people who were looking for a summer job - not really what I had in mind.

So to get some serious results fast I bought a subscription to a nanny database website. It took me a while to pick the right website - there were too many. Here’s how I’ve chosen a good one: they all let you do a sample search for free, so you select your requirements (how many hours a day, how many days a week, baby’s age, etc) and get a number of carers available in your area. I have chosen the website with biggest number of nannies in my area, it has been around for two years and had a reasonable subscription price.

To be continued. Don’t go away, but if you do - subscribe.

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When Eric was 6 months old, we had another lot of visitors - Rob’s parents arrived from overseas and stayed with us for a month. This case was even tougher to handle than my mom - by 6 months I was a pro, knew exactly what my baby needed and was opposing to pretty much every advice they tried to offer. What I really disliked about the way they treated Eric was how they wrapped him with kisses and hugs. They were literally wearing him around their necks like a fur collar and he clearly didn’t like it. It took me a lot of self control to keep quiet.

To be perfectly honest I didn’t trust them with my baby. They hadn’t had little babies around for a very long time and weren’t trained to think of baby the way I was. The way they lifted the pram, almost tipping it over, with the baby not wearing safety harness filled me with fear. Every time they were pushing the pram I had to jump and stop them when somebody backed out of the driveway right in front of them. They couldn’t wait to give him bred or cookies when was fully breastfed and were dreaming about offering him some candy. Brrrrrr.

Anyway, we survived that too. I didn’t loose my breast milk supply (although I was worried that those stressful days could cause it) and once the visitors returned back home - we returned to our peaceful routine.

To make the most of the period when Rob wasn’t working full time he began to look for a house for us to buy. It took him 3 months to check out various houses, compare them and choose our future home, which is really good compared to the average 8 months for working couples.

We bought our home and moved in when Eric was 10 months old. The plan was that once we are settled, Rob will start looking for a full time job and I will start looking for a nanny to help me with Eric. I needed to work more hours and still wanted to keep him at home - away from bugs of childcare and in familiar place.

So after a couple of months Rob found a job and was supposed to start in a week. That meant that I had exactly 7 days to find a nanny - which surprisingly I managed. It was pure luck more than anything else, but it happened and she was great. After we spoke over the phone and she came in for a chat for 15 minutes I canceled all the interviews I had scheduled with other nannies, because I knew - she was The One.

The story goes on and on, but I think that by now I have proven my point: a couple of clueless first time parents can have a baby, learn, survive and raise a happy child - even if they live alone, even if there is no one to ask.

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Once Eric was 2 months old, my mother came to meet her first grandson, she stayed with us for a month. I consciously postponed her visit because I wanted to use the first two months to bond with Eric, get used to this whole new situation, start to understand my baby’s needs. It is my understanding that if you start to rely on advice of “more experienced people” from the very beginning, then you do not develop your own ability to observe, understand what’s going on and make your own decisions - so I tried to avoid that as much as I could.

Now at this point you are probably thinking: “Aha, so you had your mother there to help you!”. The thing is, that her visit brought equal amount of help and extra work so I can’t say that I’ve been resting more while she stayed with us. She came from overseas and we took her on trips to various places, which wasn’t always easy and enjoyable with a 2 months old baby. Eric, our poor free spirit, hated being strapped in his car seat and could scream on top of his lungs for an hour.

Now I must say that we didn’t plan beyond the first 3 months - and I am glad we didn’t. Having a baby changes a person a lot and after Eric was born I have made some decisions that I wouldn’t make before I had him.

One of those decisions was not to put my baby in the childcare. We, Rob and I, discussed it and agreed that we want to keep him at home until he is eating solids and not relying on me for food. I was breastfeeding and there was an additional reason against placing the baby in the child care - he wouldn’t take bottles and I didn’t want to wean him before he is at least 6 months old. But I had to return back to work - even if for a few hours a week - and needed extra help. So we planned that Rob would help me at home.

When Eric was 3 months old, mom left and, as we planned, Rob quit his main job to help me at home with the baby. He did what not many dads are prepared to do - he became a stay-at-home dad. Some of the people we know didn’t understand his choice (some even said so to his face), but he was man enough to do what’s best for his son - even though it wasn’t the best for his “macho reputation”.

With Rob’s help I was able to return to work and I started to do 10 hours a week. That meant 2 hours every day - I was planning to do that when Eric is asleep or while Rob is taking him for a stroll. Rob was still working part time, one-two days a week. So his income, whatever I earned and some money from the government were enough to keep us afloat. Of course we could hardly make the ends meet but we decided that it was worth it - Eric got to stay home with us and not in the child care.

We even started to take Eric to the pool twice a week, from 4 months of age and until 11. I have read a lot about swimming for babies and how it makes them stronger and develops coordination and motor skills, so once he had his immunizations we started to go. First Eric and I were having a swim, and then I would dress and feed him, give him to Rob and swim some laps myself. That really helped me to get back to shape - I was back to my pre pregnancy weight when Eric turned 6 months.

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My friends were talking about not being able to move to another city because they were terrified of loosing the support that Nan and Pop are providing and I thought - you can’t allow that kind of fears rule your life. So this post is all about how a couple can have a baby and survive - on their own, in a strange city, where they barely know 5 people.

Here’s how we did it:

We’ve done some research, found out what kind of main baby things we would need – a cot, a bath, a changing table, a pram. A month before the baby’s due date we went and bought them. We weren’t sure about the car seat, what type would be the best, so we ended up renting a capsule for the first 6 months.

I went on my maternity leave a week before the due date. That gave me enough time to get the house ready for the baby, buy some baby clothes and do some reading about what exactly do people do with a newborn. I needed to be prepared because there wasn’t anyone I could ask.

We planed everything for the first 3 months of baby’s life:

This is not the end of it - more is coming. Stay tuned!

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When your kid slaps your face, what do you do? It’s really tempting to slap right back, isn’t it? Just to show him what it feels like, so he learns that doesn’t feel nice. Ok, let’s get this straight - it’s wrong and won’t teach him anything except that hitting is acceptable.

When you repeat for the 10th time: “Move away from the dishwasher, leave the dog alone and stop feeding him your food’ - and he is still throwing the dishes on the floor and hands the dog his sandwich, what do you do? Do you start a fight or turn a blind eye?

Those were my dilemmas and here are the solutions. They take time and require patience, but they work.

When he screams - I lower my voice and whisper calmly: “Why are you shouting? I can hear you just fine if you speak quietly’. After a few sentences I’ve whispered he lowers the voice and still shouts, but it’s not as loud. We continue this until he gets to the normal voice, mimicking me and my whispering.

When he slaps me, I remind myself that he doesn’t mean to slap. His hands’ control is too weak yet, that’s all - it helps me to control my anger. Then take his hand and say: “You don’t slap, you stroke, gently…’ and show him how to stroke my face. He likes the way it feels and tries to do it himself, pressing his hand against my face. I did it every time he slaped and after a few times, when I caught his hand just before it landed on my cheek, he laughed and stroked me.

I was very creative solving the dog and dishwasher problem. I make the dog go outside first and then feed Eric his dinner - so the temptation to share food isn’t there any more. And after the main meal is finished, I give Eric some finger food - crackers, pieces of tomato, cucumbers or avocado and unload the dishwasher while he is feeding himself and watching me.

Do you have similar problems or issues? Did you solve them, and how? I’d like to hear from you, let me know.

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Secret # 2: Get hygiene issues out of the way. Ask to have the scissors and the comb disinfected.

Secret # 3: Safety first. Ask to have all the extra scissors and potentially dangerous objects removed from baby’s reach.

Secret # 4: Prepare the hairdresser. Let them know if it’s the first time your baby gets a haircut and that you can’t guarantee the best behavior.

Secret # 5: No spraying. Ask the hairdresser not to spray baby’s head with water – baby can get scared by this sudden “cold shower”, use a wet hand or a wet towel instead.

Secret # 6: Hands out. Make sure baby’s hands are not covered otherwise he might panic and fight. Don’t expect the baby to sit still – instead act on the first signs of impatience, switch toys, sing songs, whatever works.

Secret # 7: Distractions, a lot of them and keep them coming. Make funny faces in the mirror, bring new toys or old and favorite ones, have a selection - if one stops working, maybe another one will. Ask to be sited next to another person that is having a haircut - so that baby will see that “Everyone’s getting a haircut”

I find those simple rules very useful. What do you think? What works for you? Leave a comment, let me know.

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I have a little story of my own about predictions (a bit skeptical, I’m afraid). Once upon a time, before they invented an ultrasound, there was a doctor who could predict the gender of the baby. And he was never wrong. Every time a pregnant couple would come to see him and ask about the baby’s gender, he would say “You’re having a boy / a girl” and make a note in his notebook.

Some people were surprised when they were expecting a girl and instead a boy was born, or vise versa. So when they came to see the doctor and complained “You predicted a girl and we got a boy”, he would say “Oh that can’t be right, let me check in the notebook, what’s your surname, Smith? Aha… here, see, here – Smith, a boy is what I predicted. And indeed, the notebook said “Smith, baby boy”. So the couple would return home even more confused.

But here is what really happened: every time the doctor was writing the opposite sex from what he was saying. He would say: “You’re going to have a boy” but wrote “a girl” in the notebook, because he figured – only those whom he got wrong will want to come, complain and check the notebook

Now that’s a smart way to make predictions! What do you think? Leave a comment, let me know.

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