When our second child was born in April 2005, I was well used to the ‘Irish’ way of having children and raising children. It certainly did not mean 3-4 years of maternity leave! I knew right from the start of the pregnancy that in order to keep my job (which I really enjoyed) I have to return back to work six months after the birth. I have truly enjoyed the first six months of our son’s life with him at home.

We were extremely lucky then to have my mother to move over from the Czech Republic for 6 months to help us to raise George till he was one year old. We are really grateful to my mum for deciding to take an early retirement and coming over to help us and to spend time with her grandchildren. It gave us great comfort to know that the first year of our son’s childhood was spent within a very close family circle. The question was: “What to do next?”

As both of us work full time, it was hard to decide what kind of child care to choose next as the one thing we knew for sure was that we did not want George to go to a crèche for 9 hours a day 4-5 days a week. We wanted George to get a lot of one to one attention in a familiar setting till he was at least two years old and despite how well a crèche is run, the opportunities for one to one interaction are limited. The price of full time care in a crèche and also having to secure minder for our then seven year old daughter was also a big factor.

We have looked at various options. Finding one of the local childminders that look after children in their homes was one option. These childminders are usually women with their own young or teenage children or older ladies that have raised their family and now want some extra income or/and something to do and maybe to have company too! The problem with this was that we did not know anyone suitable and it was also not the cheapest option (which is fair because these people deserve to be paid appropriately for the responsible and sometimes stressful job). And it was also not going to help us with one more ‘problem’ we had and that was that occasionally I have to travel abroad on business and my husband works a few evenings a week. We needed someone reliable who was able to stay in our home some evenings. The most favourable choice was to get a ‘live-in’ help and hosting an au pair fitted this requirement quite well. As I have been an au pair myself, I knew what being an au pair involves and now I was about to discover what it is like to be at the other side.

A friend of my sister was interested in learning English and spending a year abroad and she liked children too and that’s how we got our first au pair Jana.