It’s a common scene on one of the busiest child care nights of the year. Each New Year’s Eve, just after the midnight kisses and sips of bubbly, parents returning home from a night out on the town are met at the door by enterprising baby sitters who were booked months before and paid double the usual rate – sometimes upward of $30 an hour or more.

But could the New Year’s Eve date-night trend of booking sitters early and paying them normal than higher rates be falling away? So says Genevieve Thiers, founder of the Web site sittercity.com, which connects sitters and parents online. Other similar sites offer comparable services, including BabySitters.com, BabysitterExchange.com and CallforSitters.com.

“When you put us all together, we’re a pretty mean force,” Thiers said. “Parents would pay $30 an hour. They would pay $1,000 a night. That just doesn’t happen anymore. This is a trend that exists when you’re having trouble finding care.”

Easing the child-care crunch

With the popularity of these online sitter-finding Web sites, parents no longer have that kind of trouble, according to Thiers, who is a former sitter and a baby-sitting expert on iVillage.com.

Now parents don’t have to plan New Year’s in July, she said. Instead they should consider looking for child care during the first two weeks of December because the last two weeks of December are the busiest.

“People are still planning early, but it’s not as early as they would before the online child care sites launched,” Thiers said. “Back then it was September, October, anything goes. Now it’s a little different. Parents have a little more time.”

Paying those four-figure prices for child care on New Year’s Eve is no longer as common either, Thiers said.

“When you have access to a ton of sitters on the site, they will begin to undercut themselves naturally to get the jobs,” Thiers said. “In the past, parents knew they could just call the next sitter. Now it’s just considered a polite bonus to double the job money. It certainly isn’t anything that would break the bank.”

Thiers said sittercity.com posts special lists of available sitters for New Year’s Eve, but they don’t go up until November. She says the Web site still sees a New Year’s Eve rush, but it doesn’t happen until closer to the actual holiday.

Double pay

At any time, there are between 150,000 and 300,000 sitters nationwide on sittercity.com and about 50,000 parents who pay a fee to peruse the listings, giving the parents lots of choice when it comes to picking a baby sitter.

Brooke Sellen, who works with Nannies of Kansas City in Kansas City, Mo., says the high pay and early booking trend continues and her 30 sitters all have New Year’s Eve jobs already. Requests start in July and August, and pay is double, though Sellen wouldn’t disclose her sitters’ fees for that evening.

“People start saying, ‘Put me down for New Year’s Eve,’ well in advance,” Sellen said. “We start asking our girls as early as October if they want to be on the list.”

Susan Gouveia, vice president of VIP Babysitting Services in Monterey, Calif., has a similar situation on New Year’s Eve. Her sitters also receive double pay on the holiday – $17-$21 an hour – and demand a six-hour minimum.

“We do need to reserve our staff way in advance, pay them extra of course,” she said. “This happens every year. We know we need to send out 50 sitters that night.”

Both Sellen and Gouveia said they think their services book so early because they offer sitters who have been interviewed and have received background checks.

“Some people are going online because they’re trying to save money,” Sellen said, noting, “A majority of the online sites, don’t do background checks, they don’t do a one-on-one interview with a nanny, and they don’t have the one-to-one contact that the agency has.”

Choosing a reliable caregiver

So just how comfortable are parents leaving their children with sitters contacted over the Internet?

“It isn’t so much a question of finding a sitter as much as finding a sitter who you like and you feel you can trust,” says Janet Chan, editor in chief of Parenting magazine.

“Most people find sitters through referrals from friends who have used sitters. Then you need to meet them. You need to check references. Moms tell us they have the best luck and feel more comfortable with hiring people who have been referred by people they trust.”

Sittercity.com offers a four-step screening process that lets parents check references, leave sitter feedback, get tips for interviewing sitters and, for $9.99, run a background check through any sitter’s profile.

All of those organized baby-sitting Web sites aren’t the only place parents are looking online for child care. Thiers says her biggest competition comes from the popular open-posting site craigslist.org, where sitters often post ads letting parents know they’re available to work.

Lately those ads have been mentioning New Year’s Eve. “I’m available to babysit New Year’s Eve,” one potential sitter posted on the craigslist.org page for Raleigh, N.C. “I have my own transportation, and I have great references. Please ask me early before I get booked up!”

Says Chan: “I think there are a number of local and national online baby sitter referral services which make it easier for parents. There are also a growing number of last-minute emergency baby-sitting services, but you’re going to pay a referral fee. Finding childcare on a major holiday like New Year’s Eve can be a major challenge.”