Hi everyone,
I am here to ask for some advices on hiring a nanny or other alternatives in Zurich as I'm getting a bit desperate, any help welcome!
Here is our situation:
We are expecting our second baby around the end of this year.
My husband works a lot and, as a temporary arrangement, I am a full-time mom already taking care of our hyperactive 1yo daughter.
Now, being at the first stage of pregnancy, I am suffering a lot from nausea and feeling weak Life has become a bit stressful after chasing around our little monster and dealing with the housework, so we decided to search for help.
We would like to have someone who can help with taking care of the baby part-time, say 1-3 days per week, maybe just in the morning, so not a full-time service.
We noticed that there are services like nanny, tagesmutter... but would appreciate some advices from you.
What is better for us? What services and prices should we expect? Any reference or recommendation?
Thanks a lot for any useful help!
I am in a very similar situation (a couple of months ahead) and am still looking for a nanny, am not happy with the solutions I found so far. There will probably better advices from people who have had more experience but some of the resources:
- there are lots of professional agencies like profawo, 42h/w end up around 5500-6000 CHF per month
- many people get less qualified help for 4000-5000 (heard of anecdotal happy stories)
- babysitting24.ch lets you to search for babysitters/nannies/tagesmutter of varying qualifications, salary expectation but you can also filter for the location or language. some have formal education, some partial. some do only child care some also help with household work or cooking (which you may need also as your pregnancy progresses)
- au pair
- live-in nannies, also a number of agencies - I was given some contact numbers bur never contacted as I don't feel comfortable with someone unknown being around us so often
the last two options are usually more cost effective but you are giving up some of your freedom
I personally would never opt for tagesmutter. If you already consider that it is probably safer to have the baby in a nursery. But still Tagesmutter is usually the cheaper option and the budget available is a very important factor.
It also depends on your or child's luck. Someone having qualifications is no guarantee they are the right person for the job (not a personality match, lacking empathy, different values to what you'd prefer are only some of the issues you may encounter.) It is more likely that a random qualified person is better suited for the job than the random unqualified one but does not have to be. I've heard of people doing a really good job by knowing how to address various issues a child may face but there are also those who blindly follow what they think is true without much analysis.
I am personally experimenting with a mix of having someone for cleaning/cooking and someone else for playing with the kid for a couple of hours some days of the week. I don't think it will be enough for when the baby no 2 is there but is OK for now. But I am also still working part-time.