The first few months of Sophie’s life were really tough for us – she wasn’t sleeping, we weren’t sleeping, and as I’ve mentioned before, sleep is important! So, with Maggie’s arrival, we knew that we couldn’t just hope for the best as far as sleep went. We were going to need help. Since both our families live hundreds of miles away, we would have to “outsource” it.
Betsy took the initiative, and found two nurses who could stay overnight and take care of Maggie. How? Did she use an outside service, one that prescreened candidates and made sure they were worthy of the job? No….she went through craigslist, that earthy-cunchy classified ads website better known for listing broken toasters and counterfeit Red Sox tickets.
She waded through the responses and found someone who also had a friend who needed some extra hours. I don’t know how Betsy did it, but we got really lucky with Marianna and Lesley. They take great care of Maggie and Sophie, and give us the chance to get a full nights sleep two (or three) times per week. They’re not just night nurses, not just babysitters….I guess they’re special members of Team Patrick working on Operation Maggs.
The best thing I have been able to do over the last several weeks is pop some Ambien and turn off the monitor, knowing that we have lefty Maggie in skilled hands. Marianna and Lesley are helpful not just at night, but also during the day. I suspect that they like taking care of Sophie, since it gives them an excuse to go on the boat into town and walk through Fanueil Hall.
To give you an idea of how much a party of our family they have become, they were the only two non-family member invited to Maggie’s baptism. In addition, before one of Lesley’s dates, she had the guy pick her up at our house – we had the opportunity to meet him before her own parents did. It was also a good chance for me to work on my “bad-boy sense” to weed out the rotten ones. I think I still need to work on it, since I didn’t pick up any bad vibes with this one.
While they are very professional, and take excellent care of our two little ones, I didn’t want you to think that they were boring, stay-at-home types. So I also grabbed a photo from one of their recent nights off…down at the Redline in Cambridge. You go girls!