Hiring a night nurse a couple days a week

lmydogally

I need to interview a couple of people.  For those of you who had a night nurse, what questions did you ask?  How long did you use them for?  

I kept thinking the girls were going to start sleeping more than 3 hours at a time but I was wrong and now that my H is gone 6 days a week, I need help. 

ashes1010

We had one from the time the girls were 3 days old. We had her for 3 nights per week for the first 6 weeks and then 2 nights for another 6 weeks. 

Get someone who also specializes in sleep training. Our night nurse was like a lactation consultant (all the courses but not the certification) and she was a sleep doula. If your babies are past the age of having to wake them to eat every 3 hours, then ask her for advice on getting them to sleeping for longer stretches. How will she deal with the babies waking up? Will she feed them or help them stretch longer? Our night nurse was a wealth of info in this department. Also, when it comes to soothing them overnight. Will she pick them up and rock them or soothe them in other ways? We were big into teaching them to self-soothe. When they woke overnight but didn't need to eat, we would soothe them by not picking them up. While this was painful and time-consuming, it was well worth it because our girls are amazing sleepers and soothe themselves to sleep easily. 

lrrb

We have a live in nanny that was orginally going to stay 10-12 weeks and is still here (the babies are 4 months old haha).  Honestly, I couldn't have done it without her.  She is leaving for good at the end of April when the babies are 6 months old and I'm already freaking out (I have 2, 4-year-olds as well).  I think having someone at night made ALL the difference in the transition for our family.  I'm SO thankful we have her and I know how blessed we are to be able to have her.  I got her though an agency - shes a "baby nurse"

emma12210

We didn't really know how to go about finding someone, so we used a L&D nurse that MH knew from work. It worked out really well, but since she was sort of a "friend" and doing us a favor, we weren't really strict on having her stick w/ the babies' schedules.

She came 3 nights a week for the first 3-4 weeks, then twice a week, and we stopped using her just this week at 7 weeks old. My babies are now going 4-5 hours thanks to rice cereal MH can't help me at night b/c he's either at work or needs to sleep, so I know how you feel!

For me, the most important question would be how they will help you with sleep training/getting babies on a schedule. GL!