Debra Pickett

He was absolutely right.

Although many factors would have seemed to point to the need for professional help in organizing our wedding (primary among them the fact that we got married just a few months after getting engaged and each of us spent at least a few weeks of that 4-month period outside the country; also the whole both-of-us-holding-full-time-jobs thing), it was quickly obvious to us, as we listened to this woman's pitch, that we could not bring ourselves to pay big money (I think the basic planning package was $1000) to have someone do for us work that we were perfectly capable of doing on our own.

She showed us pie charts for budget tracking and spreadsheets for keeping track of tasks. She had pre-made to do lists and all kinds of research databases.

These are the sorts of things that we do recreationally. (OK, R. tends to make the spreadsheets and I tend to make the to do lists.)

The combined force of his capacity for analysis and research (apparently, this is what management consultants "do") and my ridiculously anal-retentive love for making lists and then crossing items off of them, was several levels beyond what any wedding planner could offer. Not to mention the fact that $1000 was a pretty significant chunk of our total wedding budget. And we wanted to spend that money on food and wine.

Somehow, though, that experience was buried far enough back in my subconscious that faced with the daunting task of bringing home a newborn baby -- Me: "I can't believe they're going to let us bring a kid home from the hospital." Him: "They're pretty much going to require us to." -- I decided, once again, that we needed to find a professional.

"We need a baby nurse," I told R.

After all, neither of us has much experience with infants. And our families don't live in Chicago. And we're both committed to doing some work even while on leave from our jobs.

These arguments were convincing enough (or I, in my hugely pregnant state, am formidible enough) that he didn't even put up a fight.

We invited the first candidate over for an interview.

Her rates ($135 for a six hour day shift) seemed high, given that the kid will mostly be sleeping or being fed (by me, since this can't really be effectively outsourced) during that time. But we didn't blink.

Instead, we stupidly confessed that we didn't really know WHAT we wanted her to actually do; we just had the general sense of being clueless and needing expert help.

That, apparently, is just the sort of thing a baby nurse likes to hear. She explained that (for a fee, of course), she would show up at the hospital and, from the first moment, fully take charge of the baby's care. And, once we were home, she'd show up there and handle the kid's laundry, feeding schedule, diaper supply, etc.

Pretty much all I would have to do was feed the kid when she told me to. And R. wouldn't have to do much of anything.

This should have been appealing.

But, instead, it was just kind of off-putting. Because, utter cluelessness notwithstanding, we do like to think of ourselves as basically competent, non-neurotic people.

People throughout history and all around the world have babies everyday without hiring a baby nurse. Surely we should be able to handle this.

But, so far, neither of us has been willing to definitively say that we are not baby nurse people. Because, really, how are you supposed to know?