[winnie]

Help - are there any working mums in HK who are in the same situation?

My 8-month old son is very attached to my maid. As an example, whenever my maid speaks, he would turn to look at her. When she walks past him, he seems to "sense" her and would look up and smile. My husband and I could be playing with him and he would ignore us until she was out of his line of sight or hearing. He does not do the same with us, although he's perfectly happy to play with us.

My husband and I see him for about 3 hours a day whilst he spends the better part of 10 hours with her. We spend all day Sun with him and try to do likewise on Sat.

My husband is not worried about this, I must admit feeling very jealous and to the point that I cannot bear to be in the same room as my maid when my baby is around.

Am I simply over-reacting to this situation?

[aldougie]

Winnie

I have an 8 month old daughter and go through stages where I am very jealous of our helper as she has an excellent relationship with my daughter. My daughter will always look at her when she speaks but will look at anyone else that speaks as well and will follow her movements round the room but I've trained myself not to get stressed out about this as I think it is only natural.

A couple of things that I do to make myself feel more secure:
(1) I'm still breastfeeding so make sure that I feed her before I leave for work in the morning and make sure that I give her the last feed before bed - if you don't do these two feeds then I would highly recommend them.
(2) I am at work between 7 and 7.30 every morning so that I can be home to give her her bath and put her to bed
(3) Once we are home then our helper is off duty - she gives us our dinner once my baby is in bed but once we are there she is out of sight and free to do her own thing.
(4) If you and your husband don't work on Saturdays or could alternate them I would highly recommend that you do and have your son the whole day. Our helper works on Saturdays (her choice we said she could have it off) but she only works in the living areas once we have gone out but doesn't help with our daughter.
(5) We take our daughter to playgroup once a week so we get to spend some time with her during the week which we both love - could you do this? We both take early lunches.

You are over-reacting but I think that is only natural and to be expected (you would be a strange mother if you didn't). Your son obviously has a good relationship with your helper and you should count your blessings for that - would you want it any other way??

I spoke to my helper about how I sometimes felt and we have a very good working relationship now because of this. I count my blessings that she is so good with my child as she has made the very hard return to work very much easier.

I guess my message is you are not alone, your feelings are completely normal and there could be a few things that you could do to make things better but overall be thankful.

One thing - I have a friend whose helper was deliberately distracting her son when she returned from work - his lack of interest in her was really upsetting her until she caught her helper mucking about behind her back - if you think your helper may be deliberately distracting him you should ask very nicely for her not to.

[winnie]

Aldougie,

Thank you so much for sharing your experience!

I am already doing some of the things you mentioned, e.g. My husband and I are the first people my son sees in the morning and the last before he goes to bed at night - so we do his morning and bedtime routines with him. My helper used to "have to" come into his bedroom several times in the morning - it drove me crazy as he would get very distracted simply by her walking into his bedroom - so I had to ask her not to come into the room until I'm done with his morning routine. I know she loves my son and looks after him well but I think I am entitled to have my private moments with him.

Anyway, thanks again for the other tips, I will try them out.

[aldougie]

I think you are definitely doing the right thing by letting her know when your time with your son is and making sure that he doesn't get distracted by her.

I know how hard it is and my heart goes out to you. I don't believe that babies forget who their mum is and the most heart warming thing for me is when I get home my daughter puts up her arms for me to pick her up - she then looks at my helper but I ignore that!

Husbands are great for not worrying about things like this but don't worry you aren't going mad or over-reacting just need some reassurance as all us working mums do at some point or other!

[yvonneheavyside]

Hi Winnie
My heart goes out to you
I fully agree with everything aldougie has already said. It is very hard but Aldougie is right, babies always know their Mums and in a few years when he needs help with his homework or a bit of rough and tumble it won't be the helper he goes to. Try to think how you'd feel if he was clinging on to you every morning before you left for work or looking upset or frightenend when she came into the room. If you feel very incomfortable still you could tell her that you'd like her to pull back a bit and maybe not kiss him or be near him at all if you are in the room. As a teacher of helpers many of them do complain that they really get to love the baby and find it hard not to want to be with them but they have to accept that it's just a job at the end of the day. Sounds hard but true.
From 7 months babies do get clingy to their main carer so it is normal though i realise this is not much comfort to you. It will get better
Yvonne

[ajahncke]

I have an 8-month-old son who is very fond of our maid, especially since I went back to work last month. For me, the fact that he is happy to be left with her when I'm at the office is mostly a blessing. As Yvonne said, it would be much harder if he cried or clung to me when I left the apartment.
I do get the odd pang of envy when I see my son looking lovingly at the maid, or when she tells me she took him to the playground and put him on the baby swing for the first time. But he gives me a big smile when I come home so I don't feel like he's forgetting me. I try to maximize my time with him by doing his morning and evening routines (very important), coming home for an hour during the day to be with him, or working from home occasionally. And the weekends are devoted entirely to him. Before we had a baby, we used to spend much of our weekend time running errands or shopping. We now have the maid do those things for us so that we can spend the time with our son instead.
I think it's important that the maid not try to dominate the baby's attention when the parents are around. If I felt that our maid was infringing on my time with my son, I would ask her to do something else.

[Bzee]

Winnie,

Your situation echoes what is happening in our household. Our 10-month old son is also really attached to our helper and I too get really jealous when he’s always staring at her like she’s the center of his world! My hubby also isn’t bothered at all by the situation so I guess it could be just something with moms and baby. When I get home from work, he is really excited to see me but between squeals of delight, he keeps looking back at our helper. Unfortunately, I think this type of scenario is inevitable for working parents because the baby ends up spending the majority of time with the helper.

What helps our situation is that our helper has never lived-in with us so I’ve always been the “night-shift” person for him. Also, our helper, although quite caring and warm towards our baby, never kisses or displays affectionate behavior towards him. In other words, he gets showered with kisses, cuddles and affection from his parents only. I think this helps a lot in him differentiating the love from his parents and caregiving from the helper.

Lastly, all that being said, I’ve recently decided to work part-time only to enable me to spend more time with him.

[svasbt]

My mom said that when I was 4, I cried for weeks when my nanny left our household. She had been with our family long before I was born. Ask me if I remember her now... NO. not a thing. I hope you can take comfort in knowing that your son's nanny is very good to him, and he is comfortable with her. She however is not his mother and will never be. You are.