A Working Mom's Worst Nightmare: When Your Beloved Nanny Quits

Three kids seems to be the magic number that makes people get all serious and ask: "What are you going to do?" They seem to look at our life (two parents working full-time and three kids under four) and figure it isn't sustainable or sane.

Up until last week I would look right back at everyone and say, "We'll be fine!"

Then our nanny quit. And now I just don't know.

I haven't written a ton about Nanny K on here. She is amazing and perfect and in the almost year she has been with us I completely fell in love with her and the relationship she developed with my kids. She never once turned on the tv, enforced boundaries, taught W to put on his own shoes, took the boys to museums and the zoo, keeps her cell phone in her purse, makes sure the kids have hats on, packs lunches and finds free parking even when I give her cash... She is everything I never knew I wanted in a nanny. And now she's leaving us. I'm happy for her, because she has a job that she worked really hard to secure, but I'm devastated for us.

When she told us I started crying. My hormones are totally out of control thanks to pregnancy and I hadn't even prepared myself for the possibility that we could lose her before 2013. But, here we are... Starting a search to replace an irreplaceable nanny in just over a week. After she told us last week I sat on the train all teary-eyed and pregnant and starting reaching out to my network. I started to feel confident that I would quickly find someone just as wonderful. Yes, my well-meaning Twitter pals and their positive vibes really made me believe everything would be fine, but my enthusiasm is melting.

I've set up a number of interviews and already met one candidate (big NO) and had another cancel on me. It was when I made my list of interview questions that I realized we are going to have to find someone really, really, extraordinary. This was the question that freaked me out: You'll have to take our oldest to preschool every morning. How will you manage this with a 4 year old, 20 month old, and an infant?

Who is going to be able to do this and - beyond that - who can give me an answer that will convince me that they can handle this? Because I'm having trouble figuring out how it's going to work.

This is the absolute worst part of being a working mom. I know we'll work it out deep down inside. But, in the mean time, I'm kinda freaking out.