Custom Nannies

Custom nannies
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Perfectly tailored child care can be on the way: Full time, temp, special-needs-trained, newborn specialist. Nannies are going niche.
By Anndee Hochman

For The Inquirer

Folona Stuart's workday - or rather, her worknight - is charted in diaper changes, foot-tickling, and occasional bouts of hiccups.

Last night was a good one. "Ms. Harper slept like crazy. This is her second power feeding," she reports, nodding toward six-day-old Harper Woolley and her mother, Katie Cameron, who are nursing placidly on the living-room couch.

Troy Woolley, otherwise known as Harper's father, sits nearby. Though it is 6 a.m. and their daughter is less than a week old, neither Cameron nor Woolley looks particularly haggard, and both are able to form coherent sentences. They credit their rest and clarity to Stuart, the newborn-specialist nanny they hired to hold vigil every other night for the first two weeks after Harper's birth.

Stuart, also trained as a doula and lactation consultant, is part of a growing trend in the nanny business. While the fictional Mary Poppins may have been able to handle any situation with panache and a bit of magic, real-life nannies - like real-life families - are not one-size-fits-all.

There are nannies, like Stuart, certified to care for newborns. Other nannies take over when Mom and Dad head for Istanbul without the kids. Some nannies have expertise with triplets or with kids who have autism; others work with divorced families.

"This is a very hot trend right now. Nannies are specializing and finding their niche," says Sue Downey, a founding board member of the National Association for Nanny Care and an organizer of the annual Nannypalooza conference in Philadelphia. The conference, held Oct. 4 and 5, will feature a panel on specialty nannies.

"As the [nanny] industry has matured, so have the experiences of people working in it," explains Wendy Sachs, owner of the Philadelphia Nanny Network, a 25-year-old placement agency. "Twenty-five years ago, you would hardly find someone with nanny experience, let alone experience in a specialized situation."

Woolley, 29, had never even heard of a newborn specialist. Then again, there was a lot he didn't know about babies: how to hold one, how to change a diaper. Despite the seven-hour class in infant care that he and Cameron took at Pennsylvania Hospital, he still worried. "When we walk in the door from the hospital, what do we do?"

Stuart arrived two days after Harper's birth. She coached Cameron, 27, on breast-feeding and taught Woolley how to swaddle his 7-pound daughter in a receiving blanket. All night long, she listens for Harper on the nursery monitor. When the baby stirs, Stuart wakes Cameron and sits with her in the living room during the hour or so it takes to nurse.

"Then Folona changes her diaper, reswaddles her and puts her back to bed," Cameron says. "I understand that sleep deprivation is part of the deal, but it's nice to limit it as much as one can."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says 1.4 million people were employed as at-home child-care workers in 2006 - a group that includes nannies. The field is poised to grow 14 to 20 percent over the next eight years, and nannies have gotten the message. Nannies now have their own support groups and conferences; there's a move by two nanny associations to develop a national credential. What's more, a 2006 survey by the International Nanny Association showed that not all nanny jobs are created equal: While the majority of the 1,120 respondents were employed full-time, about 20 percent worked in part-time or temporary positions.

Temporary nannies may jump in for a day - when a child wakes with a fever, Dad has a deadline, Mom is out of town - or longer, filling in while their employers take child-free vacations or travel for business.

Three or four times a year, Sharon Anderson, 54, becomes surrogate mom to the Grahovec kids of Kennett Square - Stephanie, 17; Michelle, 15; and Sacha, 12. Stephanie thinks she and her siblings could manage alone when their parents decamp to Italy or Palm Springs, but Diane Grahovec feels calmer knowing an actual grown-up is in charge: someone who will enforce the family rules - no text-messaging at the dinner table - and remain calm during the unexpected crisis, such as the time, during an ice-hockey game, when another player skated over Sacha's hand.

"It was nothing," Anderson says of the incident. She drove Sacha to a nearby walk-in clinic, where she cracked jokes to distract him until a doctor could suture the gash.

The Grahovec kids have taught Anderson to navigate a cell phone; she has introduced them to her favorite oldies station, WOGL 98. "I've worked for the Delaware DMV. I drove a school bus for six years," she says. "Of all the jobs I've had, this is the most rewarding."

For specialty nannies, that reward can come in the paycheck, as well. Depending on the particulars - one child or three, overnights or daytime stints, the severity of a child's disability - specialty nannies can earn 20 to 50 percent more than their typical all-around counterparts.

That's especially true for nannies who work with special-needs children. "A generation ago, women with kids who had special needs would stay home because it was scarier and harder to find the right person to take care of your child," says Susan Davis, coauthor of Searching for Mary Poppins, an anthology of essays about the relationship between mothers and nannies. Now more people are aware of autism and similar disorders, and nannies can pursue targeted training by working as special-ed classroom aides, studying at community colleges, or taking workshops at national nanny conventions.

There are even two agencies - one in northern Virginia and one in the San Francisco Bay area - founded specifically to locate nannies for the growing number of kids diagnosed with autism, attention-deficit disorders, and other problems.

When Lindsay Gallagher was a student at Cardinal Dougherty High School in Northeast Philly, she did art projects with kids in the special-ed class. Later, while attending Community College of Philadelphia, she saw an ad seeking in-home therapists for twin boys with autism.

That led to a 21/2-year relationship with Mikey and Eddie Tuckerman, now 10. Gallagher jumped with them on the backyard trampoline and used their passions to help teach math and reading. "They loved the Wiggles, so I'd say, 'The five Wiggles are playing; two of them walk away, so how many are left?' "

Sue Tuckerman, mother of the twins and their younger brother, Tim, remembers that "Mikey didn't have a whole lot of language back then. I'd see him communicating with Lindsay, and I knew it was a really good match."

While Gallagher, 23, was never a nanny to the boys, she gained experience that, along with her studies of educational psychology, allows her to market herself as a nanny to special-needs children. She recently began a part-time job as nanny to a 7-year-old boy with autism, and she plans to start a master's program in occupational therapy at Philadelphia University.

Anie Tandler, owner of Special Care Nannies in McLean, Va., says some of her nanny candidates come with formal training or previous jobs working with special-needs children. Others bring their life experience - a younger brother with Asperger's, a niece with Down syndrome.

Personal experience is part of Kellie Geres' resume as well, though her niche as a nanny is not special-needs kids but the delicate balancing act of working with a divorced family. Geres, whose own parents divorced when she was 25, is currently with a family outside Washington: two parents, both lawyers; two stepparents; a 12-year-old girl; and a 14-year-old boy.

She keeps everyone's schedules - graduation practice, soccer games, school trips, business travel - in sync on her BlackBerry. Though Geres lives with the mother, she accompanies the kids to their father's house on nights they sleep there, to supervise their homework and start their dinner.

In a divorced family, Geres says, "the nanny is the one stable thing the kids have, the person who they see pretty much every day. . . . One night at 10:30 I went to bed, and the parent still wasn't home. This is not a 9-to-5 job."

Folona Stuart knows that, too. The sun is up in Center City, and she borrows the baby from Cameron for one final cuddle. "Hey, Mamacita," she murmurs, her hands cradling Harper's tiny head. She reminds Cameron to dab the baby's umbilicus with rubbing alcohol - her cord fell off just an hour ago.

"Want to go over and see Daddy?" she croons. "He's your buddy at this hour of the morning." This hour being 7 a.m. - time for Woolley to maneuver his daughter into a white T-shirt dotted with yellow ducks, time for Cameron to take a shower, and time for Stuart to clock out, because a long night of nannying is over, and all is well.