The demand for babysitters in Japan is soaring amid a shortage of public daycare services for preschool children.

"It is very hard to book a good babysitter. It is a hard-fought battle," said a 33-year-old working mother who has used sitters for one and a half years in Yokohama, west of Tokyo.

Her two children, aged 5 and 2, are looked after by a babysitter every Monday night, allowing the mother to balance her work and life.

"I cannot imagine my life without a babysitter," she said.

As of April this year, the number of children waiting to enroll for public daycare in authorized facilities was 26,081 across the country, caused by a lack of facilities and nursing staff.

Babysitters were often considered as only for the wealthy. But they are in great demand nowadays as they are more flexible and can handle urgent requests from working parents who are unexpectedly forced to work overtime.

"Women were often told 'do you really want to bring a stranger home and leave you children with her?'" said Chiho Yoshikawa, 51, the manager at Japan's first babysitter service company, which started its business in Tokyo in 1972.

Poppins Corp., a leading supplier of babysitters employs 30 to 50 new babysitters every month.

"We want to hire more people, but we have to keep the quality of service," said the person in charge of the company's public relations.

Babysitters are now utilized to cover the authorized daycare shortage, with Chiyoda Ward in Tokyo using babysitters for children whose applications to authorized daycare services have been denied.

For four straight years, Chiyoda Ward had no children waiting for daycare service thanks to dispatched babysitters, a service that cost 360 million yen ($3.2 million) in fiscal 2017.

However, the number of users this year has reached the limit of 25 people for the first time. "Other municipalities began to take the same approach (to fill the nursing staff shortage) and we are competing in recruiting nursery staff," said a Chiyoda Ward official.

"(As a result,) we will not be able to accept all applicants to daycare facilities next spring if the current situation goes on."

Websites focused on freelance babysitters are becoming increasingly popular as no certificate is required to be a babysitter in Japan.

But it is not without its problems. In 2014, a 2-year-old boy was suffocated to death by a male babysitter who found his client through a website.

"You have to talk directly to your babysitter and elaborate your requests and concerns beforehand. Do not depend solely on emails when you ask someone to take care of your children for the first time," said Mayumi Nagasaki, 52, the secretary general of All Japan Childcare Services Association.