Hi, I would just like to share my bad experience with my nanny from PEM agency. It is over and I am just sharing for other mums, especially first time mums.
Firstly, I would like to commend on the agency's prompt responses every single time I email them with any queries. Be it something very small like to confirm the amount of salary to be given to the nanny, or to even refund the herbal tonic package. I am always very impressed especially when your agents call on a sunday to follow up, being very courteous and pprofessional. It also assured me when there was a follow up call after 1 week into the confinement to find out if everything was okay with the nanny. That, I must commend the service provided by the agency. However, I thought that maybe another call or that call could be done at week 2 when things have settled down. This is usually when things do not go as planned, and this is the case of mine.
As a first time mum, bringing home my little bundle of joy is exciting and overwhelming. The steep learning curve and the raging hormones are what that would affect the mother the most, and the confinement nanny is the best person to bring assurance from her experiences to the mother that both mother and child will be fine.
Let me begin with week 1. On the first 2 days, the nanny requested my husband to buy several items, namely 3 basins, 2 pails, slow cooker, pots and groceries. I shall leave out the groceries because that is what is needed. I personally do cook and have a complete set of 5 Happy Call pots and 3 pans. However, to the nanny, these weren't enough. She needed a slow cooker so that she could boil the soup from morning till evening - reason being she doesnt need to monitor the fire. Thereafter getting her the slow cooker, she only used it once and kept it back into the box and claimed that it was not a good slow cooker with good functions. I must say, I really wasnt pleased with such a request and reason. As for the basins and pails, they were for washing baby's items and if it is really needed, I do hope that PEM could include in the list to prepare new parents in future.
As I did not buy the herbal package but separate herbs, she made a fuss and insisted my husband go buy the packs from the chinese tonic stores, claiming that she doesn't know how to match the herbs. When my mother came down to pack the herbs for her after that, she gave a different story saying that she knows how and that she could do it.
In the second week, my little one started to fuss and as a new mother, I did not want to over feed my child. So I suggested to the nanny to try cup feeding or paced bottle feeding (which were recommended by my lactation consultant). However, the nanny said she knew how to do both, but did not want to do so as "it is a very cruel method to feed the child", leaving me helpless to just follow her suggestion - bottle feed a 90ml to 100ml of milk within 5 minutes. In addition, the break in the afternoon suggested by the agency was at least 2 hours. On her second day, she told me that her break is supposed to be 2pm to 5pm. Considering that she has been helping to take care at night, I did not mind. However, she soon started taking her break as soon as lunch is over, and as early as 12.30pm all the way to 5pm. Do also note that on most days, I am left with the baby to care on my own during the entire afternoon, and even at nights, when the baby needs to be breastfed, she would leave the baby to me and return to sleep, leaving me to coax the little one to bed.
Lastly, it is about what I've discovered after she left. I found that she charred one of the pots and did not clean it properly, or even, inform me about it. After she left, I discovered that many of the crockery and containers were greasy, oily and stained, not well cleaned. Even the stove was all greasy and stained and I had to spend my days right after my confinement to follow up, check and clean all the mess she made. For that, I am really disappointed as I trusted that she would have maintained the standard of cleanliness when she arrived and after she left.