Wang Ayi helped with our twin girls from July 7th, 2024 to October 14th, 2024, a little over 3 months. She is extremely hardworking and strong willed. From day one she goes to the supermarket and manages your whole kitchen – I did not have to put away a single grocery or think about a single meal while she was here. Her repertoire of dishes she can make ranges from Italian beef noodles to Shanghainese egg wrap sandwiches, traditional Sichuan dishes, fried chicken and much more. She has each day’s meal planned out the day before and starts defrosting/prepping early so when it’s time to prepare the meal, it only takes a moment. Not only is it yummy, but she puts care into the presentation of the meals as well. I think she made us something new every single day! When I had friends over she went above and beyond to make delicious meals for them. I even hosted a 100th day party for 30 people and she made food for about 50 people! She makes tea appropriate for the mommy’s postpartum stage – e.g., recovery from birth and helping with the production of milk.
Besides the food, Wang Ayi is also very good with babies. My twins were premature by 5 weeks, and thus needed some special care in terms of their reflux and digestion. She will always assume to do all the work – you have to ask to help out, which is nice if the mommy needs to rest and recover. I spent a lot of time napping when I could, knowing Wang Ayi was taking care of the babies. I can tell she really loved and cared for my babies as if they were her own. Even when they pooped their diaper for the fourth time in a row she always treated the babies with a big smile and a lot of patience. She taught my husband and I how to be parents - how to hold and feed and burp the babies. She is careful about the babies not developing bad habits like needing to be held to sleep. She can take care of both twins herself, as my husband and I often golfed on the weekends.
My babies were premature and very underweight when they left the hospital. They were only eating about 35-45ml per feeding at the time and Wang Ayi was able to up their feedings to 60-70ml right away, slowly increasing more as they got older and could tolerate it. The babies were able to double their weight while Wang Ayi was with us. She took care of all things related to washing, cleaning, trash, laundry as they related to the babies.
Wang Ayi has a very strong personality that may take a little getting used to at first, but once that happens, she really becomes a mother figure/friend. She helped with various parts of my mental health post-partum; when I had doubts about being a new mother, she talked me through those thoughts; when I was exhausted - she always encouraged me to rest more; and when I was frustrated with breastfeeding/pumping she always told me how amazing it was that I was even able to produce the amount of milk I did and not to put so much pressure on myself. When I had engorgement of my breasts she took the time to help me massage them out multiple times.
Wang Ayi took many photos and videos of the babies and us as a family for us to remember the newborn stage. I still love to look back on all of them now. She is a go-getter and when she thinks of something to do, she does it immediately. She goes above and beyond the normal duties of a confinement nanny, even doing things like helping us rearrange our house to be better suited for the babies, setting up photoshoots for the babies, taking passport photos for the babies, carrying furniture up and down stairs for us, giving me massage when my shoulder pain was really bad, etc. I would highly recommend her to any mom, especially any twin mom. I hope someday she will have another client near me so she can visit and see our family again.