This answer comes from FindHomeHelp.com, a safety-oriented database for temporary in-home child care.

A: Routine temporary nanny care is easy enough to find, whether in home, in hotel or on the road. But finding someone near you is an issue: conventional nanny placement agencies concentrate in urban ares where the demand is greatest. That's why we have launched FindHomeHelp.com, a national roster for temporary child care providers.

Much temp care is live-out, provided by "come-and-go" nannies, some available for short hauls including overnight, or for driving a child to school or to the hospital to visit her mom. The minimum stay is 4 hours.

There are also temporary live-in nannies who will be in your home on a 24-hour basis, although as in any job, you must limit the actual work day to allow for her rest, too.

However, unless you know the dates in advance, finding someone available for the days you want may be tough. Most nanny temps depend on maintaining a regular income and thus cannot work purely on call. For instance, if the birth in question were as a C-section (i.e., scheduled in advance) this mom could schedule her child care and include time to get to know her caregiver as well. Until a date is set, though, it's hard to know who will be available, and thus unlikely to get to know her first.

As for cost, temps are usually paid an hourly or daily rate closely related to the going rate for full time in your area; in St. Louis, where we are based, it starts at $10/hour and increases with the number of children in care.

Besides regular temp nannies, there are also baby nurses, who specialize in newborn care. Although the baby nurse's focus is Mom and newborn -- changing diapers, teaching breastfeeding, covering Mom's naps as she heals, providing overnight care -- she will often help with older children. She typically works for a few days or weeks and up to six weeks, when the newborn is sleeping overnight and Mom is back in shape.

Because she charges more, a baby nurse's schedule may be more flexible. Make no mistake: the genuine baby nurse is a specialist. As such, her normal rate starts around $150-200 a day, and in bigger cities can be considerably higher. If scheduled for 24-hour care, she will work while her employer naps and sleep while her employer works. She's often an essentially retired person and can thus adapt -- at least somewhat -- to the vagaries of baby arrival times.

Whenever you hire temporary child care, remember that even your standard temp nanny is a specialist: make the most of the forms we provide at FHH, which are there to help bring you up to speed. We have worked with hundreds of successful nannies, temporary and permanent, many of who we have placed again and again with continuing success. But before we referred them at all, we interviewed each one individually and checked (and now maintain) all references and criminal and driving records. These tools are the essential basis of a thorough screening for candidates local to you.

In fact, temps require the same processing as full time nannies. We not only offer guidelines and resources for conducting a reliable background check of any nanny temp. Uniquely we also require registrants to adhere to our full disclosure policy, adding one more level of security to our process.

When you need a temporary nanny, visit us first to see if we have candidates in your area; if not, feel free to use the screening helps that we provide. During our startup your registration and referral, as well as all forms and advice, are free of charge.

Note that, while general employment temporary agencies may offer to place their people for child care, this is specialized work for which a well-screened office temp is not necessarily qualified. Even if your candidate comes through a friend or an established nanny agency, you should screen her thoroughly. Speak directly to at least three references, and check criminal and driving records.