Friday, January 16, 2009
The Fake Yaya
Location: HELL
Day 1.
We come home from the hospital. Maxine sleeps and eats, eats and sleeps. She's swaddled in her blanket, she wriggles out of it. I ask the yaya to do it again. She can't. Night comes and she's put in her crib in the nursery. i wake to breastfeed, I wake to find her angry. I ignore the Yaya. I wake again at 7am and she's still there angry. The yaya is angry. I find her angry at the baby, bec the baby didnt sleep last night, from 12am til 7am. The yaya says that the baby didnt sleep at all. Which is impossible bec they do get tired easily. they can't not sleep from 12 til 7am. So there's the yaya shouting at the baby. She's angry at her bec she couldn't sleep also bec the baby didnt want to sleep. Genius in the making.
Day 2.
Maxine came home with slight jaundis. The Pedia specifically told the yaya to lay the baby on the bed for 15 mins n her back and another 15 mins on her front by the window. The pedia also said that there doesnt need to be a strong amount of sunlight hitting the window. 7am i wake up and check, she doesn't want to do it. She says there's no sunlight coming in thru the windows in the nursery and that she wants to do it in my room. I tell her that the sun is the same in my room and the nursery's at that time. and my window is less than half the size of the nursery. She just doesnt want to do it. She knows better than the doctor. She has a PHD i didn't know about.
Day 3.
I askd the Yaya to wake me up for feedings. Tonight she barges in the room at 2am, telling me the baby is hungry. i get up and try to feed, i wonder why she's so cranky and doesnt want to eat. She just keeps on crying. I check her diapers... their soiled. I tell the yaya, you check first if her diaper is clean before you wake me up, she's not crying because she's hungry, she's crying bec she's dirty!" 4am the yaya wakes me up again. She hands me the diaper and cotton balls, she wakes me to change the baby's diapers. Nice.
Day 4.
New Year's Eve. Husband and I decide to put baby in our room til the fireworks die down bec our room is more quiet. She's trying to sleep but she gets jumpy when the fire crackers go from time to time. We go to the nursery to watch the fireworks at midnight, the yaya wakes up, i ask her to watch the baby in the other room. She stands there by the window beside me and my husband. Watching the fireworks. I stare at her for 10seconds. In disbelief. I tell her again to go watch the baby. She mutters something and is annoyed she cannot watch the fireworks. Winner.
Day 5.
She moves things from the 1st floor to the 2nd floor. She thinks she's the boss of everyone. She tells the cook how to cook , the driver how to fix things and the other maids how to clean the house. When she herself is doing a lousy ass job of her own job. She washed mittens and booties i was going to give as a gift to a friend. They were on a cabinet far away from the hamper. They had their tags on them and were in a christmas paper bag. When i asked her why she washed them she said because she found them in the hamper, i said are you sure? She said no, but why make the baby use them with washing them first. I said this isn't for the baby, this was supposed to be a gift. She mutters again. She's always right. She's not the yaya, she's my boss.
Day 6.
Hiccups, babies get hiccups alot. Its normal. How do you stop it? You dont, you wait for it to stop. She pulls a strand from the towel, bib, bed sheet, anything within reach and dips it in water and puts the strand on the baby's forehead. WOW. Note: the hiccups dont stop.
The baby is crying, i have the baby monitor on. i wait for the yaya to do something. i hear her on the phone. i hear her complaining that the baby is crying and is so noisy but she's not doing anything about it. She expects the baby to maybe change her own diaper?
Day 7.
Visitors are here. My cousin's kids and yayas are here saying hello to the baby. The nurse my aunt has with her sees the baby crying and asks me if its okay if she tries something. She swaddles the baby, meaning she wraps her up in a blanket, they way they did in the hospital. The baby immediately falls asleep. The nurse wants to teach the yaya how to do it. The yaya says she knows how. The nurse shows her anyways, the yaya looks away and walks out the room. The yaya is better than the nurse. because the yaya is better than everyone else.
Day 8.
The carpenter is here to make me a cabinet. The yaya is downstairs having a one sided conversation with him. He doesn't reply to her. I ask her to stay with the baby bec the carpenter is making alot of pounding noises and the baby might wake. She stays in the nursery for 2 mins, then runs off to the carpenter. I call for her again and ask her to stay with the baby, she stays for less than a minute and runs off to chat with the carpenter. Maybe she wants to be a cabinet.
Other things the yaya did...
She's so noisy all the time. This yaya cannot do anything without letting the whole house know she's doing something. When she's in the kitchen she bangs pots and pans. When shes in the laundry she drops the whole pail. She's always in places where she doesn't have to be, doing things nobody asked her to. Baby is crying. Why? When a moment ago i just saw her sleeping. Bec the yaya was cleaning her room and she drops the ipod on the floor and wakes the baby I just put to sleep.
The yaya has been with me since Dec 2, she's been sitting on her ass doing nothing but its okay bec i want her to be ready when i give birth. Since Dec 2 i have been waiting for her to give me the xray of her lungs. I even brought her with me to have her xray taken but she says she just had one done. Its now the new year and she still can't give me her xray.
She doesn't even know how to clean the umbilical stump. My friend's yaya came over to show me how to bathe the baby. We did not trust the fake yaya to know how to do it. I watched her give the baby a sponge bath and how to clean her. It was so different with how the fake yaya cleaned the stump. I was stupefied, so thats why the stump still hasn't fallen off yet, bec she wasn't cleaning it properly.
Lesson of the Story:
When hiring a yaya, TEST HER. There are a lot of fake ones out there. This yaya made my life hell. Because of her i wasn't able to rest. life would have been better if i didnt have her in the house. I had to work doubly hard to make sure she didnt do any harm to my baby. She lasted 7 and a half days with me as The Yaya. The Fake Yaya. The Yaya From Hell. Now i have a new yaya and she's wonderful. Not only is she a real yaya but she really knows how to take care of a newborn and my baby is sleeping soundly day and night.
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