Au Pair

This week has been interesting.  I have planned to post several times.  Each time I think I am ready to post something else occurs and throws me for another loop.

We were so excited last week.  We had been having trouble trying to find an au pair.  We have been looking on and off for several months.  I have been planning to go back to work at some point though I do not have a specific date.  I had been a contractor at my last position but had been hoping to be hired as a full time person.  So far that hasn't occurred.  Of course that means that I don't know what I will do for employment.  I am not 100% sure that I am ready to go back to work anyway.  I want to work but maybe not full time?  The confusion is not clearing up yet.  I am still so tired from not sleeping that I don't even know how to make a decision yet.

The baby has been getting better about sleeping during the night.  He was sleeping from around 8pm till 3 or 4 am.  That 4am has been inching up again and now we are somewhere between 12:30 and 2am.  If I don't go to sleep until around 11 that doesn't leave a very big chunk of time for me.  Also once he wakes up he feeds every hour or 2.  I don't mind, but I am so tired that I am a little fuzzy-brained and maybe not the best decision maker around.

We have been searching for an au pair and not having a lot of luck.  The ones we have liked have not been interested in living so far away from the city.  Finally our coordinator told us about a woman who was not far.  She had been with 2 other families that didn't work out, but the coordinator did not feel that these were necessarily the au pairs fault.  We spoke to her and she seemed very nice.  We also spoke with the family that she was staying with.  This was a different family than the ones she had been with, they were the family of another au pair that allowed her to stay with them.  The mother also didn't feel the girl was at fault, apparently the first family had some issue with domestic violence or something and the girl didn't want to stay there.  Then the next family apparently didn't respect her time and yelled at her a lot. 

The girl is very quiet and apparently the second family have strong personalities.  All this seemed reasonable to us.  So we agreed that she could come join us for a temporary position and then see how things worked out.  The first several days seemed fine, she got along well with the baby and she was very responsive to his needs.  We seemed to get along well also.

Then on Thursday she started crying after dinner.  She said she felt that we didn't like her, that she wasn't good with the baby.  That people were looking at her.  That we talked about her.  It was so weird.  I was floored.  I asked H to come join our conversation because I didn't feel we were communicating.  We talked and never felt that we truly cleared things up.  We tried to explain that until that moment we had been pleased with how things had been going. 

Friday I asked her how she felt, she said fine, but she seemed tense.  I chalked it up to stress after a difficult evening.  I left her a car and took the baby to playgroup.  The next morning she said she wanted to go home to Thailand.  I was shocked but I said fine, of course.  We were out all day and again on Sunday. 

When we finally came home we found that she was gone.  She had packed up and left.  We have no idea where she went. 

I was so upset.  So disappointed.  I can't believe that she would leave the baby.  How could she care for my son for a week and just leave him like that?  I just can't understand it at all.