We are very pleased with our experience with sister Han as our confinement nanny for our first child. As new parents, we were not sure what to expect when raising a newborn, but having her knowledge and guidance helped us a lot. The first two months were smooth and our baby grew healthy and happy. What we valued most from having sister Han with us:
1. Her experience. Anytime our baby was crying she knew right away what needed to be done to help him. She quickly noticed when he was too hot, or when his nose needed to be suctioned, or even when he stopped liking a certain type of bottle. Because of her, our baby never spent too much time crying and we as parents learned how to read what our baby needed.
2. She really loves babies. Sister Han is a naturally bubbly and caring person, but you can really see this clearly when she cares for the baby. We appreciated all the time she spent holding him, talking to him, and playing with him to make sure he develops well. Her care for our baby was clear because by the end of two months he would often smile at her and talk to her when she held him.
3. She is very good at keeping a schedule and also working around our schedules. Having a schedule was very important for breastfeeding and building good sleep habits for the baby. She did a good job to make sure we stayed on the best schedule for the baby. At the same time, if we had visitors or had plans outside the house, she was always very accommodating. For example, she would cook early if we had to leave the house early. Or she would make sure the baby was well fed and also pooped before we leave the house so he would not fuss too much outside.
4. She is a good cook. She puts a lot of care and effort into her dishes and we enjoyed them very much. She also was very accommodating with our food preferences. She would cook what we wanted how we wanted and when she saw we liked certain things she would make sure to cook them for us, including making buns from scratch! My milk supply was enough to exclusively feed breast milk and our baby grew from 7lbs to 14lbs in two months because of all the nutritious food she cooked!
Overall, we are very grateful for her guidance in this time of raising our first child. We appreciated that she took the job very seriously, making sure we were eating the right things and staying on schedule, but she was also very flexible, making accommodations for our preferences and way of doing things. Because we are American born and our Chinese is not very good, we were a little worried about the language barrier and the cultural differences, but with Sister Han we did not have any problems at all. We would love to have her back with us when we have our next child!