Someone reassure me, please?

[MrsDoolittle]

Hi Ladies. I'm almost 7 months pregnant. I alos have a beautiful 19 month old toddler who currently goes full-time to nursery and loves it.
My plan is to return to work next September 3 days a week. What do you think are the chances of me being able to get a nanny to look after both children at home for 3 days a week? Maybe someone starting when I am on maternity leave in the summer so that we could get to know each other?
I do not know of anyone with a nanny so I have no idea how it all works. I would really appreciate some advice.

I tried the following things to find a nanny:

1. agencies: not that many CVs, all qualified and experienced, no-one really suitable plus would charge a small fortune
2. nannyjob: several unsuitable applicants, one or two reasonable ones
3. asked around local mums and nannies - nothing from this, but would recommend it as an approach
4. ad in local papers, cost £50 each for the two local papers, several good responses plus several OKish ones. Put "experience / qualifications essential" to weed out the young women who think looking after a toddler and baby is easy money compared to the shop job they are currently fed up with. I would definitely do this again. Oddly, some responses WEEKS after the ad went out.
5. Phone your local college and ask the NNEB or BTEC tutors if they can recommend anyone. We got our nanny this way. Cost about 15p for the phone call. They just passed my details on to the wonderful woman who spent yesterday making handprints with my children, and hey presto!
6. ad in the job centre. It's free and while I didn't get anyone this way, I've met nannies who got their jobs via the job centre. You can give your criteria to the staff and they pass on the details of anyone who fits, so you don't get anyone contacting you direct.

Our nanny works 3 days. She moved from a nursery position, and the nursery kept her on for the other two days. The 3-dayers that seemed most likely to be sucessful were happy to take nursery / care home jobs for the other two days. Nanny pay tends to be significantly more than nursery pay, so a nanny will earn in 4 days what she would in 5 at a nursery, so she only needs an extra day.

I noticed that newly qualified nannies expected LOTS less than those with 10yrs exp wanted (perfectly reasonable), so someone with less exp was within our price range. I met a couple of newly qualified nannies who were very responsible (older or caring for sick parents).

Hope that helps

Wow Thanks very much for this advice, this is very useful.