Saturday, September 26, 2015

Week 17: First Month Nannies, Prenatal Yoga, and Baby Names

First Month Nannies

In Chinese tradition, the one month following birth is a critical time for the new mom to recover. The two most critical aspects are getting enough rest and following a specific diet. Hence, Jeff and I have been looking into Chinese first month nannies to help out with these two aspects. Most of them offer pretty standardized services for 26 days (I'm not sure why it's not a full month).

Childcare:
  • Pretty self-explanatory - they sleep in the same room as baby and are in charge of night duty, minus breastfeeding (they can bring the baby to you if/when you need to breastfeed).
Meal preparation:
  • The meals are prepared with ingredients aimed to restore the mom's health and energy post-delivery.
  • You can let her know your food preferences and she will adjust her cooking accordingly.
  • The fees do not cover cost of food. You take the nanny to go food shopping once a week. 
  • They can usually make enough food for everyone in the house, unless your family is unusually large. Most of the nannies we spoke to assumed it was a given that she would prepare enough food for Jeff to eat too.
Thoughts:

These type of nannies are expensive to hire - many moms have told me it's worth the cost though. They're also difficult to find, as they're not exactly listed on care.com or Yelp. You basically have to either get one through a friend's referral or agents / brokers. It's challenging to evaluate them if you don't have a reliable referral, so you are taking a leap of faith when you invite a complete stranger into your home for 26 days. The good ones that have a lot of positive referrals book many many months in advance - people will call to reserve them as soon as they pee on a stick!

Prenatal Yoga

I attended my first prenatal yoga class this week. I really enjoyed the workout - mostly because I haven't done yoga in months so I'm pretty out of shape! I hope I can keep going at least once a week throughout my pregnancy to stay healthy.

Baby Names

While we're not 100% sure on the gender yet, the boy names we like are Lucas, Adam, Jacob, and James (more or less in that order). Boy names are hard!

Fushimi Inari Taisha, Kyoto, August 2015

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