This post was originally published back in August, but I wanted to republish it now that it has text. I know some of you prefer reading over video, so now you can get the full review of our first time with a non-family overnight babysitter!
We had our first experience using a non-family overnight babysitter earlier this week. This is one of those things that Mal and I have have been on the fence about doing for a while, mostly because we had a lot of questions about how the logistics would work out. I figured if we had questions, then many of you guys might be in the same boat, especially if you have little kids and haven’t done the overnight thing yet.
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One of our biggest dilemmas with taking overnight trips is that we don’t have family nearby to watch Quinn on a regular basis. My amazing, wonderful sister will occasionally take Quinn overnight, but she has two children of her own, so I feel bad always asking her and throwing another kid into the mix. Plus, we were heading towards Nantucket, which is south of the city, and my sister lives further north, so it didn’t really make sense geographically to drive north and drop him off only to turn around and drive south in rush hour to try and make a ferry. There had to be another option – and luckily, there was!
We reached out to our number one, go-to babysitter (she’s watched Quinn since he was very little, definitely younger than a year), to see how she felt about doing an overnight and, thankfully, she was all about it! We’ve known her forever and she’s always been great (she even watches Murphy from time to time), so we definitely felt 100% confident having her spend the night.
She arrived Sunday morning so that we were able to catch an early ferry, and stayed all through Sunday night, dropping Quinn off at camp the next morning. We sent a short email to camp letting them know that someone else would be dropping him off, but to be honest I think they would have cared more had it been someone else picking him up. Quinn ended up having an awesome time on Sunday because she took him to her boyfriend’s family party, where they had a pool and a bunch of kids so it worked out great! She sent us photos throughout the day of Quinn having a blast – he even ended the night eating cake!
As far as keeping the transition as smooth as possible, we pre-packed his lunch and gear for camp and installed his car seat into her car, so all she really had to was drop him off the next day. One area we were a little confused about was payment – how do you pay an overnight babysitter? We ended up polling our friends and decided that hourly didn’t make sense. It would have been nuts with how to account for the time (like, do we pay her while she’s sleeping?), s we decided to just pay her a flat rate for Sunday into Monday, which she was more than happy with!
So that’s our first experience with an overnight babysitter in a nutshell! I’m not going to lie, I was definitely quite the nervous Mumma and had all the racing thoughts about the potential that something bad could happen, but we left our phone numbers and our friends’ phone numbers that live in town so if there was an emergency, she could always contact them. Overall, we had a great experience, Quinn had a blast and it was awesome that she kept us in the loop by sending us photos. It was nice to feel like we weren’t missing out!
Would we hire an overnight babysitter again? You bet ya! Those of you who are married with kids can probably relate to the fact that while a date night is great, sometimes you just need an overnight trip with no kids! We’re very lucky and thankful that we have a babysitter in our life that allows us to do this, especially one whom we can trust with both our babies, pug included! I figured some parents without family nearby might be in the same boat. I hope you find this video about our first experience using a non-family overnight babysitter to be helpful!
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