With a baby, toddler and an unruly four-year-old all under one roof, I decided in an attempt to stay sane and emerge from my house minus mashed potato in my hair that I needed some help in the form of a childminder or au pair after the birth of my third child.But oh, how wrong was I? Throughout the last eight years, it has often felt like I've been left babysitting another child instead of some blessed childcare relief.One long-standing nanny of ours who we had on an adhoc basis for several years messaged me a few years ago with a photo of her on her birthday at the pub wearing all my old designer clothes. I had wondered where they had all gone! Dressed in my Ralph Lauren jeans and pretty silk top from Pom Lampson, I couldn't believe my eyes and suddenly recalled my mother-in-law saying that I should really check the childminder's bulging backpack when she left our house.It had never crossed my mind and I would have been far too embarrassed to ask her - but it turns out my mother-in-law was right and I should have done exactly that.We had another babysitter who ran off with my father-in-law's butler when she was meant to be looking after the baby and one who ran out of the house screaming when the iron exploded - leaving the sleeping children inside in the smoke. Another trained nanny accidentally dropped my three-month-old in a bath, shut a toddler's head in the front door and another grabbed my son's dummies from him and threw them in his face in a rage when he wouldn't take them out of his mouth, I later discovered.I had another childminder who instead of owning up, broke an expensive vase that we were given for our wedding and pieced it back together by hand - without glue - so that when I touched it it fell apart. Sybilla Hart and husband Charlie with their children Isaac, Beatrice, Florence, Celestia and Benjamin at their home in EssexAt this point, it all felt a bit like being in a Laurel and Hardy comedy set with the finest slapstick humour. Admittedly, my first choice of childminder had been a Norland Nanny trainee from the elite Bath school where royals and millionaires hire their nannies - but perhaps unsurprisingly she picked another family over ours as they had offered her gluten free cupcakes on a Tuesday and use of a Porsche at weekends, as well as her own interior designed decorated flat.Standing in my galley kitchen, with bathrooms that featured way too much chrome, and ghastly old decorative Buddhas in the garden left over from the previous owner, I couldn't quite compete. This Norland Nanny also wanted to be in sole charge of my three children, yet I was going to be at home all day as I was breastfeeding my newborn.This clearly didn't fit with her plans, but what was I meant to do? Magic my own highfalutin company out of nowhere and dutifully breast pump all day in an office with no aircon? I think that was what she desired but it just wasn't our reality.Then there was the 17-year-old au pair who was so homesick she cried for our entire two-week holiday in Cornwall - despite my husband Charlie cooking her a three course dinner and putting Fawlty Towers on the TV every evening for her in an attempt to jolly her up.When my aunt saw her at the bus stop in Polzeath she wrongly assumed that she was going shopping on her day off, not flying back to Eastern Europe on the next flight home.There was also the temporary nanny who was even less domesticated than me and tried to cut a carrot with a blunt knife until I showed her how it was done - though she did make a mean banana bread. Sybilla (pictured) said: 'With a baby, toddler and an unruly four-year-old all under one roof, I decided in an attempt to stay sane and emerge from my house minus mashed potato in my hair that I needed some help in the form of a childminder or au pair after the birth of my third child'After all this, I wondered whether looking on Gumtree was where I was going wrong so I phoned up a frightfully posh staffing agency and asked them to find me a nanny.The price for this upmarket nanny finding service was an eye watering £3,000 so before I handed over the cash I thought I'd better do my own due diligence. Good job I did, as I found the babysitter they'd suggested on Facebook in a compromising, risqué photo. The worst bit about it was that the staffing agency said what a peculiar way to vet people I had - I resisted the urge to comment.Unfortunately, our nanny woes didn't end in London, they continued once we moved out to rural Essex. On one occasion our children took umbrage at the babysitter whilst we were out at my husband's book launch Skymeadow: Notes From An English Gardener. The nanny had apparently sat staring straight out the window when our youngest child had tripped on a wooden brick and hurt herself on a toy box. Apparently the childminder did nothing to help or soothe the tot who was only about two or three at the time. Deeming the babysitter 'unsafe' the older children took their pillows and duvets and took refuge in the climbing frame. Safe to say we got the shock of our life when we got home and saw figures asleep in the garden.After around eight years of trying with nannies I gave up - it felt like a comedy of errors, and at one point I even contemplated writing a book about it all.But then Lynn entered our lives. She quickly became our babysitter of choice, as nothing seemed to faze her.Sadly, she's since moved from Colchester to Kings Lynn and though she has sometimes braved the depths (and deer) of Thetford Forest at midnight, it seems selfish to ask someone to drive 70 odd miles to babysit a bunch of unruly children.More recently, I have come to the conclusion that instead of bothering with the professionals who are trained in childcare, you are better off hiring someone who has a day-to-day job in the likes of demolition, for instance.The last time my husband and I went out there was an unplanned power cut, the dogs escaped and one of the children had a persistent nose bleed. When I got home and asked our new babysitter Pam - who works in demolition - how everything had gone she said it was fine. She had sorted the fuse board, biked to the bottom of the garden to retrieve the dogs who were barking at a badger and best of all there was silence as everyone was asleep. As she had trained as a paramedic the nose bleed had been child's play and I imagine one word from her about bed and they would have disappeared upstairs in a flash.It's made me realise I've clearly been looking in the wrong places for our babysitters this past decade. It's a small wonder my husband and I have ever been able to put our feet out the door. Some names have been changed.