Crappy situation

shannjohnston

Our daycare provider called this morning - her dad is in the hospital back home (Middle East) and she is flying out to be with him. She won't be back until December 24. Totally understandable, but that leaves us in a not-so-great position.

She works as an in-home provider under a larger province-wide corporation. We have a contract with the corporation until the holidays (six more weeks), and it stipulates they have to provide us with another provider for back-up. Awesome, but...we have no choice with who they send us to if we want immediate coverage. If we want to be selective, we would have to go through the same interview process we went through when we first found our current provider. That process took almost 3 weeks of multiple interviews, and it was during the summer when I was on vacation and could book interviews during the day. If we were to go through that interview process again, only interviewing on weekends, and transition DS into care (as opposed to just dropping him off one day and waving goodbye), we might be close to the end of our contract regardless. And we still would still be daycare-less during the whole process.

Luckily, it looks like we can get out of the financial and legal ties to the contract because of the extenuating circumstances. However, that leaves us without ANY guaranteed daycare.

We figure if DH can work from home one day a week, and if I take sick days on the days of my OB appointments, and then try to rely on family to fill in the gaps...maybe we can make the next six weeks work. Maybe I can start my mat leave early, but I need to meet with my union rep (I'm a teacher) to discuss the implications. Maybe my MIL will stop trying to save face pretending she's busier than she really is (deeper issues that stem from her failed business) and will actually help us out...

This is a very crappy situation and I'm trying not to let it stress me out.

Pips09

That really puts you in a bind. Can you try to find a nanny for the short term? That might only take a week or two.

sfgiantsgamerbabe

I don't have any advice but I'm sorry about the crappy situtation. I'm sure something will work out. FX!

shannjohnston

DH is being very helpful keeping me calm. He is reminding me that there really isn't much that can be done on a Saturday night. He has already confirmed he take Monday off, I can take Tuesday off and my parents have offered to take DS on Friday, so that almost covers this week. We can make more phone calls and send more emails tomorrow, but for now, just take a deep breath and then another.

honeybeee3

I'm sorry, that's such a bummer. I can imagine you must be pretty stressed. I hope you are able to work things out as quickly as possible. Sending you good thoughts and hugs!!

Sixfeetabove

Good luck! Everything does workout.

shannjohnston

@TRexsMum‌ - I'm in Ontario. The company is Wee Watch.

Our concern with going with a random backup provider is two-fold:
1) DS is at a stage when he is very anxious around strangers (even family he doesn't see often). It took almost two weeks before he was fully comfortable with our current provider.
2) When we did our initial interviews, we met a lot of...how to put this nicely...not good fits. Though the company registers, licences, audits and insures the in-home providers, each provider has a wide berth to run their home the way they see fit. There were many ladies we were just not comfortable leaving our kid with - licenced or not.

I'm going to look into other options today, nanny services or drop-in programs. Our family has been pretty open so far (apart from MIL) and are very supportive. Hopefully I can get the next week or two figured out today to settle my type A scheduler brain.

amandad715

I totally feel you! Our DCP just needed 9 days off due to two separate medical issues, and we were scrambling!! Luckily, between some retired family members, DH and myself we've covered 7 days. Tomorrow and Tuesday are it. And I have Vereran's Day off this week. I cannot imagine 6 weeks!
I teach too and it's not easy being gone from work. Sending lots of luck your way.