Leaving Your Baby With a Helper: What to Ask First

Salary and start dates are the easy questions to ask.

The harder one is this: how do I know she is safe with my baby?

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Infant care is a job by itself

This is the part most first-time parents do not plan for. It is not something added on top of the housework.

Her main work is taking care of the baby. The housework gets done while the baby sleeps.

Have a schedule for the helper, and take over when you get home. A helper who is on duty from the morning through to bedtime with no handover will be exhausted, and an exhausted helper cannot do this job well.

Keep the cooking simple while the baby is small, because the day is already full. Agree early what that means, and some families pack food back on the busier days.

It is different if there is a grandmother at home, or other help in the house. Then there is enough cover for her to get through the housework and the cooking as well.

And she has to be comfortable with your family. This is close, constant work, and it does not go well if she is not settled.

What a helper trained in infant care actually does

• Feeding and milk preparation
• Sterilising
• Bathing and changing a newborn safely, which is more technique than most people expect
• Settling naps and protecting sleep
• Keeping the routine steady on the days you are at work, so your baby is not living two different lives depending on who is home

At Unistarr, infant care is a core module at our own training centres, not an add-on. For helpers who come through our overseas centres, that is a minimum of one month before she arrives, and those centres also check her background and the experience she has stated.

Before the baby, or after

Hire before the baby comes	Hire after
What most parents do. It gives you time to get the rooms ready, and she learns the routines, how you want the cleaning done, and your cooking style, all before the baby arrives.	For families who already have enough help from a confinement nanny or the grandparents. The trade-off is that she comes into a household already running to a routine, so you have to orientate her and give her time to adapt to how you do things.

Night feeds

Work out before you interview whether you need her to help with night feeds on working days.

Then say it at the interview, not after she arrives.

If she is doing night feeds during the week, let her sleep in the day while the baby naps. Plan for that rather than treating her daytime rest as time she is not working.

At weekends, give her, her 8 hours and take the night feeds yourself.

Be clear about what she is not

She is not a nurse, and she is not a confinement nanny. Those are different roles with different training, and any agency that blurs the line is not doing you any favours.

If your baby has a medical need, say so early and we will tell you honestly whether a helper is the right support or whether you need something else alongside her.

A helper is an extra pair of hands, not a replacement for you. You rather spend the hours you have with your baby instead of the chores.

What actually makes her good with a newborn

A helper who has her own children and raised them herself can usually handle a newborn. That counts, even though it does not show up as work experience on a biodata.

One who has looked after other people's babies as well is an asset.

Neither is a guarantee. Every household is different and there is no one helper who fits every home.

Three questions worth asking

Both count. A six-week-old is a different job from a toddler.

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Anyone can write experience on a form. Ask who verified it, and how.

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Ask before you sign, not after. With a baby in the house it matters more than anywhere else.

How long it takes to find her

Infant care experience does not cost more. What it costs is time, because the right match takes longer to find than most people expect.

Newborn care is demanding, and helpers who have done it often prefer a different jobscope next time. So the pool willing to take on a newborn is smaller than the pool qualified to, which is worth knowing before you fix a start date.

Tell us early what the job really is, including whether there is cooking, so we are looking for the right person from the start.

Being fair about the first few weeks

Even a well matched helper is a stranger in your home at the start. Expect a settling period of a few weeks where you are still hovering. That is normal, not a warning sign.

What shortens it is being specific. Show her how you want the milk made, when the nap starts, what you do when the crying will not stop. The clearer you are, the less she has to guess.

And the guilt

Getting help is not stepping back from your baby. It is handing over the sterilising, the laundry and the endless tidying so that the extra time you have now goes to your family time.

Unistarr Employment Pte Ltd · MOM EA Licence 15C7448
As featured on CNA + 8world, June 2026