Choosing Childcare

One of the "burdens" put upon a us recently has been choosing childcare for our baby girl. Unfortunately, I will have to go back to work when she is only 4 months old. I have never been more jealous of my Canadian friends than I have been as I was researching day cares while I'm still pregnant. I'm sure that feeling will be multiplied by a billion on the first day I have to drop her off and leave her with someone other than me.

Considering that the maternity leave here is really shitty, there are not many childcare centers (in my area, at least) that accept infants. Most take children 1 year and older. After calling every childcare center I could track down in my zipcode, I found ONE that accepts infants. ONE. It is convenient to our house (less than a 5 minute drive), so I went to check it out last week. I was a little intimidated by it. It was much bigger than I hoped and expected, though the baby room is nice, clean, quiet, and small. The weekly/monthly fee ($155/$620 for babies under 1 year old) is a little more than I hoped for, but from what I could gather, it's pretty standard.

They only keep 7 babies at a time, and right now, they are full, but they have two openings in July, right before we'll need child care. Feeling pressured, I paid a $50 deposit to reserve our spot for August. EIGHT MONTHS in advance, and I've paid a registration fee for child care. How depressing.

Anyway, 2 days ago, I went with my best friend to her day care to pick up her 3 year old. I absolutely LOVE this day care. It's smaller, always looks and smells clean, and it has never felt chaotic when I have visited. However, like many others, they only accept children 1 year and older. The owner of the day care is wonderful, and she's already told me that she will make sure there is a spot for my little one once she is either 1 year old or able to walk, which ever comes first!

Here's the best part, though. When I shared with her my anxiety about the day care center I felt forced into, she came to the rescue. She has a friend who runs a small in-home center practically in my back yard! Brad and I were really interested in finding an in-home care situation, but I wasn't having any luck locating them. They are much harder to find than the big centers. She said she felt so strongly about us not taking our 4 month old to a big center, that if she needed to, SHE would give us back our $50 registration fee out of HER pocket if we were interested in the small, in-home center with her friend.

I went to visit yesterday, and seriously, my heart is still singing. "Miss Tracy" has been doing childcare in her home for 7 years. Her whole downstairs of her tri-level home is the day care. She never keeps more than 7 children total, and she has 2 people who help her out part-time. I stopped by on 5 minutes notice, and the place was sparkling clean, and the 3 kids who were there were happily playing in their PJs, excitedly waiting to start baking gingerbread men for their Christmas party. Her weekly/monthly fee is MUCH less ($125/$500), which will save us $120 a month! Score!

I'm not going to accept the $50 back from my friend's day care provider, even if the big center we registered for won't refund us. We'll have made that $50 back in just 2 weeks with Miss Tracy. I also figure that it doesn't hurt to hold our spot for a little while just in case something falls through with Tracy. (I can't imagine it would, but you never know.)

I have to admit, this is a huge burden off my shoulders that I wasn't feeling when I paid the registration to the big center. While it is going to be incredibly hard to leave my 4 month old baby and go back to work, I feel like we have found the best possible place for her under the circumstances.