My main message is: if you’re considering having a baby I wouldn’t recommend doing it without Patty.
I had the pleasure of having Patty with me full for the first 6 months of my third daughter’s life. When she arrived, Patty was the 6th baby nurse I had in the house over a 5 year period. She was by far the most skilled in terms of knowledge of babies, curiosity about how to get better and she was a wizard when it came to helping the baby with gas, burping and discomfort. I really felt she was an expert in babies and she truly has a deep passion for babies and constantly learning. She is reading about babies and in baby forums constantly.
Patty was an executive assistant in Brazil at a major global pharmaceutical company. I am a CEO and my schedule is pretty high pressure and she was superbly adaptable and flexible with me if I was late on a call or needed to shift things real time. She is organized, energetic, quick, efficient and insanely reliable. You can set your watch by her.
She worked 6 months straight without a day off and did 18 hours a day. I don’t know how, but she never was tired or grumpy or negative. She is like the energizer bunny. Once we had a really bad travel problem coming back from Hawaii with the whole family and she and I had to completely shift our travel and we went with the baby from Kona to Phoenix overnight, we checked into a hotel where she and the baby slept while I did a conference and 20 hours later we got on a flight and flew home. Patty was completely fine with this. This is just an example of how flexible and calm and collected she is. She is not fussy at all.
I really wish I had had Patty with one of my older daughters who had really bad gas and belly issues as an infant. I know that if Patty had been there with us then, her expertise in burping and baby / GI massage would have lead to much less crying and a more pleasant infanthood for that baby.
One of the things that was most important to me is that despite having had weak supply I really wanted to breastfeed through the first year. Patty was a complete and total partner to me in this and she is the only reason I made it to 9 months. Even though it made her job much harder having to wake me up every few hours, sit with me while I nursed and then bottle feed the baby while I pumped (plus dealing with all the pumping equipment!)— she was totally in, she was a wonderful cheerleader for me and she helped me never feel alone or discouraged. I cannot thank her enough for this and my guess is most baby nurses would never have been so committed, kind and self-sacrificial.
I would be remiss not to mention why I picked Patty after interviewing over 30 baby nurses. The baby nurse business / industry is one I have a love / not love relationship with because when it’s your baby and your home, you want someone there who is working (it’s obviously a job) but also feels a real calling and spiritual connection with the sacredness and preciousness of babies. The first time I met Patty on video during the interview process I knew my search was over because her love for children— her own and others — was so deep and visceral.
Lastly, I would note that although we never let my baby "cry it out" ever (I think that practice is super wrong), my baby was sleeping through the night when Patty left when she was 6 months old.
- K. T. R.