Night Nurses/Nannies for New Born

[NewBorn2025]

Could I possibly get help with your reviews on night nannies and nurses in London, did you use them for your new born, how did you recruit them, what do they do when the baby is sleeping at night? By night nannies, I am referring to service providers that come into your home in the evening and stay till the morning to look after your baby.

We had a new born recently. The boy is a few weeks old. I am thinking about hiring a night nanny or nurse for the new born.

I work about 17 - 18 hours including commuting. To support the family, will need to get back to work. My partner is nursing herself after a traumatic birth experience, I expect her to recover fully after a few months. I expect our new born to become more difficult and demanding as he goes through growth sprout from week 4 to week 12. I am thinking the week 12 as a milestone.

• My partner is on a maternity leave for a year.
• My income is 3 if not 4 times that of my partner's.
• We do have a mortgage, monthly commitment, not a large amount.
• I don't work from home.
• We do have some savings say live for a year without work at the current rate of spending.
• Night nannies seem to be around £200 - 300 a night (?) which we can afford with my income for a few nights or business days without using savings.
• My partner does not like the idea of night nannies or getting any other individual involved, not to mention a significant saving you achieve by not hiring a night nurse.
• Family member help is not an option for us.
• We already have gadgets/gimmicks that you can buy that are supposed to make your life slightly easier such as UV steriliser, electronic bottle maker, multiple bottles to make washing manageable, air extraction device etc.

I am trying to think logically. I cannot think at the moment of any other solution than night nurses or nannies till the week 12 unless I want to sleep even less than I do today which is about 4 - 5 hours.

My personal beliefs (you might disagree with some of them) are

• The baby at this stage does not see or comprehend emotional attachments or bonds the same way as we do (these seem to me advanced concepts which need to be learned over time and not given innately, if given innately why we have serial killers...). They don't understand routines either. The priority for guardians is to feed the baby, change and keep him in a safe place. Values to help him make better decisions in future can be taught at later stages.
• The baby will settle into outside world with time and become more manageable especially at night as their stomach gets larger and they can hold their waste longer in their body. They do not need night nurses or nannies after a while.

The way you refer to your first child is very cold and detached. Do you realise that?

Your wife’s wishes take priority. Drop the night nanny idea.

Newborns do know who is there, its not just about having a person there, they don't even know the concept of them being a separate being from their mother yet.

Like everyone else has suggested, I'd go with bought in help to do everything else. A doula to help care for your wife which would enable her to look after the baby, a housekeeper to cook and clean.

The newborn stage is very intense, but you do sound quite detached from it all, like its just all a bit of a pain to you

OP, can I give you a different perspective.

My husband works 16-20 hour days (finance). He quite often comes home, sleeps for a couple of hours and then goes back to work.

We have two DC. I've done 99% of the care for them from when he went back to work (he was supposedly "off" for two weeks for each but spent around 4-5 hours a day answering emails and dialling into work calls).

I coped. I coped with a newborn. And then I coped with a newborn and a school-age child. And then I coped with 2 children and going back to work part-time.

It has been hard at times and the house has been a tip at times, but at no point would I have wanted someone in my home invading my space on a daily basis.

You know what would have been/has been helpful for us and what I would suggest to you:

• Stock the fridge up each week with good quality microwave meals and "picnic" food that's easy just to grab.
• Get into the habit of putting a wash on when you get in at night. Hang it up/put it on to dry in the morning and put it away when you get in from work, however late. Then put another load in. This takes minutes, soon becomes an ingrained habit and makes a huge dent in the laundry.
• Likewise, get into the habit of clearing the surfaces and putting the dishwasher on at night, and unloading it before you leave in the morning. Again, this makes a huge dent in the mess.
• Have "mess boxes" both upstairs and downstairs and chuck any mess in there for sorting at the weekend.
• Have a cordless hoover somewhere easily accessible so it's easy to deal with any mess as it's created rather than letting it build up.

I get that you have a challenging job, but honestly housework takes up the amount of time you have for it. If you have less time, you lower your standards and find systems to help you cope.

Fwiw, one of my friends had a maternity nurse (her choice) and gave her notice after a couple of weeks (paid, of course). For her, it was awkward and just one more task to manage.

No way I'd have allowed a stranger to care for my newborn over night I'd have rather stayed awake all night

Better off getting a cleaner for the house instead if that concerns you

I think you need to look into a temporary housekeeper, rather than a nanny. Let your wife spend time with the newborn and someone else take care of the running of the house

Unless the mother is physically or mentally unable to feed the baby in the night and the father can not or will not help then I would never contemplate a night nurse. I say mother first because the baby has spent 9 months bonding with the mother, and it is the mother the baby instinctively turns to for food and reassurance in those early days. Night time feeding is hard but it is also an important time for bonding and it is necessary part of parenthood.
Get someone to do the housework, cook the meals etc but not yo care for your child

I really struggled after have my second and my DH really wanted to fix it for me as he, like you, worked very long hours so couldn’t help as much as he wanted.

He ended up hiring a live-in nanny. We then had a live-in nanny for around 10 years as we kept her on when I went back to work.

I would suggest doing this. Our nanny didn’t work overnight, I still did all the nighttime stuff. But the nanny was able to pick up all the slack during the day so I could catch up on some sleep and also look after myself as I wasn’t terribly well.

Even if you don’t go down the live-in route, I would suggest hiring some daytime help in rather than night time help.

My friend had a night nanny with both her children and said it was great.

It wouldn't have worked for me as I was exclusively breastfeeding and struggled to pump and the baby wouldn't take a bottle. Breastfeeding at night is very important for supply.

Sleep wise, my baby slept really well (up to 9hrs a night) around 12 weeks. At five months went back to waking every two hours. Sleep improvements aren't linear.

Newborns absolutely do attach to their main caregiver.

If your wife doesn't want it I'd drop it and consider a cleaner or mother's help in the daytime instead.

I'm assuming English as a second language, which can often come across as very formal.

Agree with this 💯.

I remember my midwife telling me that my baby had grown inside me for 9 months. They know everything there is to know about me. The rhythm of my heart, my emotions, my temperament etc. once they are born it is my turn to now learn everything about them. This is why a baby will often only settle with their mum.

This is crucial bonding time for your partner.

This. Don't get a night nanny, it will reduce the mother's bond with her child. I could absolutely have afforded one, but it would have been over my dead body.
Interestingly, out of my NCT group, only one person got a nanny in (think it was a day and night nanny as far as I could see).... she was the one who then felt less confident with her own child as she had seen someone else handle him 'better', when the rest of us had learnt to know our children and now to care for them best by having to muddle through.

Get a cleaner, get someone who can do meal prep, or get meals delivered or bring home ready meals.
Don't try and 'fix things' which aren't broken, if your wife is happy as things are.

Also babies aren't machines which suddenly behave differently when they hit the 12 week mark. It's ebbs and flows and babies are different.

Just hold on for the next couple of weeks, take it week by week, and you will see that by the time you go back things will be different already.

I think you are focusing on the wrong things.

If you are seriously out of the house for 17-18 hours a day and your partner has no family support, my biggest concern would be her emotional wellbeing. It sounds like she will be very isolated with a newborn baby, which is a recipe for poor post-natal mental health.

If you have money to throw at the problem, then a mother's help for a few hours a day is a better place to start. Someone who can either do light domestic tasks while your partner focuses on caring for her baby, or who can watch the baby while your partner rests and looks after herself. All the while providing some gentle support and reducing the sense of terror that can come with being in sole charge of a whole new person who is utterly dependant on you.

Kindly, stop treating this as a problem to be solved in the way you think fit.

Then what you need is a house keeper or doula. Some one to look after the house and your partner so she can look after the baby.

The tone of this gives me the creeps. Why are you so detached from your baby and why haven’t you looked into infant attachment and development? Nighttime feeding is an important part of feeding, it keeps the mum’s supply up and can help the mum and baby go back to sleep quicker. Baby’s don’t know a lot early doors but they do know why their mother is.

The baby at this stage does not see or comprehend emotional attachments or bonds the same way as we do (these seem to me advanced concepts which need to be learned over time and not given innately.

OP where on earth did you get this from.
My granddaughter screamed every time my daughter left the room more or less from birth. And if anyone else was holding her she turned towards her mother's voice. A newborn doesn't just have extremely strong emotional attachments from birth they think they are part of the mother. Read up about the 4th trimester.

If she doesn't want a night nanny then instead get a housekeeper to do all chores during the day so that she can sleep when baby sleeps?. If there is someone there to do all chores during the day then you can be allowed to sleep during the night on Sunday to Thursday without any disturbance?. I hope your wife will be amenable to that. Also you sound kind of detached from your baby.

You don’t need a night nurse, especially because your partner does not want one! We have managed perfectly fine with our baby with the following schedule - I do nights on weekdays (and because I am on maternity leave I can nap when the baby naps during the day to make up for lost sleep) and then my husband does Friday & Saturday night and I catch up on sleep on those nights. In the early days we slept in separate rooms so that the off duty parent could actually sleep.

Now that baby mostly sleeps through the night, we try to make it so that my husband gets one sleep in day a week. So he usually does Thursday and Friday night on duty (Friday at work is pretty quiet for him) and then I do Saturday night so that he gets a lie in on Sunday.

I strongly disagree that baby isn’t aware of who is with it during the night - those nights with my newborn were such a treasured time together and were lovely bonding moments.

That’s not to say having a night nurse will negatively impact the mother baby bond if a woman wants that support, but it should never be forced on her!

Agree with PP that you should pay for a housekeeper/cook in the day if you are concerned about chores and dinner being made. I think you’ll find that your wife will manage just fine though, once you emerge from the initial hazy blur of very young newborn you are able to manage cooking and vacuuming etc while wearing baby. You also just adjust your house/food standards for a while!

Your partner doesn’t want a night nurse so drop it.

Out source other things that aren’t related to the baby. Hire a cleaner, sign up to meal plans, send out washing etc.

Make sure you’re doing what you can to help and do your part when you’re home. Not just for the baby but for your partner. Take the lead on doing things without being asked. Check the fridge before you leave for work and note if it needs topping up with milk etc on your way home.

Communicate with your partner every day. Ask her how she’s doing, what you can do to help, is there anything that needs changing in daily life?

Or take a career break. Presumably you have savings to fall back on?

This. A cook/housekeeper.

Yes to the last bit - I was up with my almost 2 year old for 3 hours in the night, a regular occurrence. 12 weeks means absolutely nothing.

I second pp who suggest daytime help if your partner doesn’t want a nighttime nanny. It’s much easier to cope with disrupted nights if some of the daytime load is removed and you can just snuggle your newborn :)

This post nails it for me, the tone of the OP is bizarre and like the child is a bit of an inconvenience quite frankly!!

My DH works very long days on shift hours and we have a baby and young child…he’s survived without outside help as most other men do!!! If your wife doesn’t want a nanny then stop pushing it on her!

You speak about your partner and child as though they are just characters in your life. Very odd.
She doesn't want a night nanny, you don't get a night nanny. Why not suggest a housekeeper, or cleaner and some sort of meal service?
It's not about you at this point, prioritise the new human being and the woman who produced him for a while. Good grief.