Nanny & New Arrival

My bosses had their second last year and kept me on for maternity leave. Baby arrived mid week, I worked the day the baby came home from hospital and came in for a few hours on the friday to carry on normality for pre-schooler and also gave mum a couple of hours 9-3 just 1-on-1 with the new baby then I covered 3-5 so Mum could get a nap while I did dinner routine with pre-schooler and watched the baby. Family had the 2 day weekend to get used to family life and then I came in as usual on the monday. Early days I would arrive in the morning allow mum to grab a shower without kids or take over from dad if mum was sleeping. I would take pre-schooler to our usual groups in the morning then we'd spend lunch time with Mum and then I would supervise baby when mum and eldest would nap. Then preschooler and I would go out in the afternoon again to allow mum to rest but home again at tea time and I would help mum with both to do dinner/bath etc.

From the early days I would look after number 2 as it gave mum time with the eldest one. Some days I would take them both out for a couple of hours so mum could sleep [with a 3 hour window for feeds] Sometimes I would disappear upstairs to do chores and leave the 3/4 of them to it, without me and somedays we would all go out together for a day trip.

We needed open communication - we almost faltered about 6 weeks in but soon worked out a way to communicate what we all needed from the situation and we managed 6 months maternity leave together. It was harder with the oldest as dc1 wasn't used to us both being there together and would try and play us off each other but I soon got confident with dc2 and having both together.

I don't have a child to take to work with me but my current mb had a baby last year. I was given 2 weeks off when the baby arrived and Dad was on paternity leave. They had some family and friends visiting over that time. It was also special bonding time for the siblings and for their new family unit. I think I would have felt in the way if I had been there during this period.
Once back at work I got back into the older children's routines. I'm out and about with the children quite a lot so this gave mb some space to feed and relax. When I was in the house she spent quite a bit of time in her bedroom - she was feeding quite a lot and resting when the baby napped; we'd had a chat because I was worried that she felt like she had to be out of the way when we were in and didn't feel relaxed to be around me feeding etc but she explained that she was quite happy to be up there, she had the tv, her laptop etc and preferred to feed lying down so tended to feed upstairs anyway.
Have a think about what you might like to happen once baby is here and have a chat with your nanny. With a lively 7 year old she'll probably want to be out doing things with the children. Maybe increase the activities kitty for the holidays and pray for some nice weather so they can have picnics and spend lots of time in the park