It’s been a rough day. I’ll start chronologically, as the second part I think deserves its own post.

This morning, when Allie was napping, I opened my emails as usual, and what I read there put me in a total state of shock. I was stunned and a half-eaten apple stayed on the computer table for half a day as a bookmark in time to show when everything froze for me.

Nanny Susanne and I had been corresponding via email and sometimes via text through the month as she was working for the other family on a temporary, “emergency” basis. We made plans. I wrote her to tell her about Allie’s first tooth. She wrote back tips and encouragement, gave a lot of comfort. I said I can’t wait for her to come onboard in April. She said she’s excited to work for us and will be here every day from April on, smiley-face. We agreed for her to come over on Sunday, to hang out, get to know our house and the environment, we were taking her to lunch and to the lake. We were going to go shopping with Allie to a nearby mall she’d never been to (she loves shopping). And then:

Hi Cindy,
I hope everything is going well and you guys are good. Well over here everything is going well too. Remember I told you that I was working this month for someone else, it appeared that they also would like me to stay on a long term basis. I gave it some consideration and measured the two options that I have and I would really like to stay with the ones I am working for right now. This was not an easy choice but after weighting both sides I really prefer it that way. I hope you still have the chance to find someone else… I know you interviewed others too, maybe one of them could take my place… Sorry for the inconvenience.

Hope everything will work out

Are you KIDDING me? Despite being stunned, I wrote back:

Hi Susanne,

Wow. Okay. I interviewed one other person but like I told you, we preferred you over her by quite a margin. Since I thought we had an agreement, I stopped interviewing and have trusted that everything will be okay because we trusted you and thought you would be the perfect fit for us. I have been very at peace ever since you told me you agree to be Allie’s nanny. I’ve even extended my maternity leave so that I can accommodate the other family you are with, because that was how much I wanted you to work out with us. I am no longer a member of that website, because I didn’t think I’d need it anymore. Right now, with only a couple of weeks between now and the time I have to return to work, I’m left with very rushed and few options.

Thank you for your help over email the past few weeks, I’ve appreciated your feedback. If anything changes with that family, please let me know ASAP. We would still love to have the original arrangement in place. I really, really wish it could’ve worked out.

She’s been online since then, as I’ve seen her “active” on chat, but she didn’t write back. I don’t know what she could say. She KNOWS she’s screwing us because she knows I have 2 weeks until I have to return to work; and she’d called to tell me she was taking our offer, and yet emails to tell me she was backing out. She didn’t want to face me. I never saw this coming; she was beyond ethical, or so I thought. I don’t know how she could in good conscience accept another job when she has already committed to us. She wasn’t available to take that other job. I was being nice in saying it was okay for her to help this family out, even tho she was supposed to be with us part-time this month already. I was being nice to extend my maternity leave a week so that she could stay on the full month with them and then have a week to acclimate to us. And what the other family ended up doing with my being accommodating was steal our nanny. I get the sense, and Rebecca said the same thing, that they offered her more money. Mr. W considers this a “career choice” of hers; stay with someone familiar and get possibly more money, or do something new with strangers. He obviously doesn’t take it personally. But I am so stunned, and hurt, and bewildered. I feel betrayed. She and I had a friendship beginning, I thought. I could not imagine doing this to someone, and I would feel good about myself at turning down something that seems tempting, to maintain my own integrity. When I say I will do something for someone, I take my own word very seriously, often more seriously than the person I’d made the promise to.

The nanny search has to begin again. I’d let my membership on the nanny site expire, thinking we had someone, and it’ll be another $100 to sign up again. I called Nanny Fernanda, the other girl we’d interviewed, just to see if she’s available. It went to voice mail and I didn’t leave a message. She had disappeared from the nanny site shortly after I’d told her we were going with someone else, so she may have picked up a nanny job and is working. I also called a local-ish older woman we had planned to interview, but canceled the interview after Susanne agreed to be our nanny. The line was always busy. So it seems those avenues are deliberately closed to me. I’m so burnt-out. Ironically, that was something I’d written to Susanne a week ago and she’d responded for me not to stress because Allie will pick up on it, and that she will be here to help me soon, in April, and every day after that, smiley-face.

I know everything happens for a reason. I have faith that the “right” nanny we’re “supposed to” have is out there somewhere, her situation arranging itself so that she could be available to us soon. Rebecca said that the same source of abundance from God that provides us with what we need still continues to provide for us, through different avenues, so if Susanne is no longer a viable avenue, another one will come. Susanne may have exercised free will to back out, but God won’t let something go away on us without providing us another way, she says. All my friends say it’s a good thing this happened now, as I have 2 weeks to find someone else; it would be more disastrous if Susanne took another job for more money or other reasons a few weeks into working with us, and Allie’s now attached to her, and I’m back at work.

That’s what my head agrees with. Emotionally, I’m messed up. When I went to get Allie after her morning nap, I took one look at her beautiful trusting little face, and thought, “How could anyone not want to be here with you?” and started crying. I KNOW it’s not about HER, of all things. But I feel like SHE was abandoned, too. Mr. W took the afternoon off and met us at the fertility doctor’s office at lunchtime, then we went to True Food Kitchen for a late lunch. I’m glad I have such a present husband.