Caregiver: Which one to choose?

After managing to resolve the hiring of confinement nanny issue after compromising, we're now facing another important issue - Caregiver.

Initial scenario:
As my mother-in-law will still be working in the afternoons, she can't possibly help to take care of my baby full-time. My father-in-law is also working part-time in the morning, and will also be busy taking care of my niece, Dawn. My mother is both working and taking care of my ailing grandmother, so I can't leave my baby with her too.

So we've decided to look for a babysitter. As we do not have a recommended babysitter, we have to rely on nanny agencies. I can't say I will be 100% reassured to put my baby with a babysitter who is not recommended by own circle of friends/colleagues/relatives, but do we have a choice? I can't possibly stop working and be SAHM.

Recent Happenings:
My friend happens to have a friend whose mother is a babysitter, who's living at the block next to ours (surprise surprise) and she's currently taking care of a Jap boy who's learning-to- walk-age. I am very excited when I knew about this and asked my friend to help me ask if her friend's mother is keen to take up this assignment.

Was really hoping the babysitter will agree to take care another kid. It turned out that she was contemplating to take in another assignment, but have to check with the Jap mother to see if she's comfortable to allow her.

In the end, she finds it reluctant to speak with the Jap mother, so hoping that we put her as "last option". Anyway we got to know that the Jap mother paid her above the market rate, so it will be quite an expensive option to us as well.

Other than the babysitter option, there's another proposal of idea from my in-laws. They were suggesting that I can actually hire a maid at their place, so that the maid can take care of the baby while my in-laws can supervise her. My sis-in-law actually volunteered to co-share the costs of hiring the maid.

With the 2 above options placed in front of me, I had a lot of questions, doubts, advantages, and disadvantages flashing through my mind. I was really unsure which to choose due to the following reasons:

1. I never like to hire a maid as I like to have our own family's privacy and space. So I do not like to have another person staying with us. Even when we go out, I also like to handle our own kids ourselves, and not throw to the maid to handle.
   
2. I've heard many cases whereby the maid is so difficult to be taught (slow, unable to understand and remember instructions) and the maid mishandling the baby due to different cultural practices. (I'm not a very patient person if she keeps getting everything wrong all the time)
3. We've to teach the maid from scratch, despite her having experience or not, as we want to make sure she's able to meet our expectations of hygiene standard. In comparison, I do not need to teach the babysitter what to do as she would already know how. Except that I am not sure if her hygiene standards can meet ours too.
4. On the good side, hiring a maid is relatively cheaper, and she can help to do housework at my in-law's place, and my in-laws can foster closer grandparents-and-grandchild kinship when they spend more time together.

After discussion with hubby, he is more keen on hiring the maid because of the costs, and there are his parents also rotating to look after our baby with the help of the maid. I agree with him after discussing all my uncertainties with him.

Shall start going to apply for one when we are both more free next month.. Hope we will get a good and reliable maid in time. May Baby Yam be blessed