I went and saw two daycares today. And I have such mixed feelings. They both cost the same.
Daycare 1: Comes highly recommended from a friend who has had both of her kids there. One still goes 2x a week, the other just at summer camp. Friend's husband has known the owner since they were kids. It's been around for 30 years and family owned. They have two buildings: an infant building and a toddler building. There was a miscommunication on my tour time. I swear we agreed on today, but the owner says she had me down for next week. She wasn't there. Since I had SS with me and he was disappointed he wasn't going to see the infant room, I took him by to see in the windows. One of the teachers there opened the door and asked if we were the tour. So, the infant room had known we were coming. She showed us around and told me some of the basics. Overall, I liked them. They have one big room, so the kids are in there from newborn (as early as 6w) till around 2. They will cloth if I provide everything (including a diaper pail). They try and avoid being at max. State limits are 4:1, but they prefer to be closer to 3:1. They have 2 shifts and usually 3-4 teachers. The have a lot of toys, bouncers, cribs etc. I have to provide everything. They jot down all of the feedings, naps, diapers on a paper for you each day.
Daycare 2: I popped in unannounced after the office manager at my chiro recommended them. They have only been around since July of last year. They were unsure of availability in Jan due to current parents pregnant, and you could tell I really threw them off. They have an app where they will update diapers, feedings, naps and will send pics and videos during the day. They have 2 infant rooms, once the baby gets more mobile around 1 yr they advance to the next room. I didn't get a whole lot of info since I was unexpected. They will also cloth (they seemed more receptive to the idea). It looked like they only have 2 teachers most times, they aren't currently at capacity and can hold 12. (they might not have had all their teachers there based on how many kids).
@sammierose464 When it comes to stopping in to see baby during the day, it can be bittersweet. When my son was little I could go in during lunch and nurse him, but after a while, it started getting hard on him for me to stop in during the day. He seemed to do better without the interruption and confusion of why I was leaving again.
Ok so I showed up on the right day for the daycare tour this time. She wants two months down (I thought it was 2 weeks) which is 1640. She also wants infant to be able to hold their own bottle for feeding time. She says her feeding them takes away time from the toddlers. She is aware LO will be 8-12 weeks. Is this a ridiculous request??? First time mom here but that seems early!!! Infants sleep in a separate room alone, supervised on a baby video monitor and checked on every 15 minutes. Seems weird to me????
Ok so I showed up on the right day for the daycare tour this time. She wants two months down (I thought it was 2 weeks) which is 1640. She also wants infant to be able to hold their own bottle for feeding time. She says her feeding them takes away time from the toddlers. She is aware LO will be 8-12 weeks. Is this a ridiculous request??? First time mom here but that seems early!!! Infants sleep in a separate room alone, supervised on a baby video monitor and checked on every 15 minutes. Seems weird to me????
Absolutely not. Bottle propping is a huge NO and so dangerous. An 8-12 week old can't hold a bottle so she's telling you she's going to prop it up. No. No. No.
Yyeeaahh, also a FTM here, but I'm with @kiwi2628 on this one. Of course feeding infants takes away time from the toddlers. That's why there are mandated infant/toddler to caregiver ratios. 2 months down also seems extremely high.
The separate room and video monitor thing would make me a little uneasy when combined with all of the other odd requirements she has. One place we looked at does cribside infant nap checks every 5 minutes. That may be extreme, but given that she doesn't even want to have to feed an 8 week old infant herself, I'd be concerned.
@nayyohme - what everyone else said. One of my friends is working with her 1yo on holding her own bottle. Baby can’t even sit themselves up at 8wks...
Also, while I’d be okay with a separate toom/video monitor thing for naps, infants don’t sleep all the time, and over time will sleep less (yes, I know that is a big “duh”.) I’d have to question the quality of interactions baby would get while awake (tummy time, interaction with other kids, etc)
I wouldn't feel comfortable either. Every facility I've visited has had one room for the kids, they sleep and play in the same room. I can understand a separate room if babies struggle to sleep with noise, but most of the infant rooms I've been in aren't that loud.
@nayyohme - that is terrifying. What if your baby has reflux or other feeding issues? Just prop it up with a pillow until it starts gagging? That sounds dangerous and irresponsible to me. i would avoid that daycare like the plague....
in my experience, the separate nap room seems normal (if done appropriately). Honestly, when they are really tiny they will sleep anywhere anytime, but as they get older, they seem to do better in the separate room without distraction (again, just my experience). At my daycare they had a separate camera for the nap area, and it was a space within the room, but blocked off from noise. It worked well for us and helped develop good sleep habits!
She just flat out won't take an infant if they can't hold their own bottle. She said if they can't hold it by the intended start date then she will postpone the start date. My thoughts are, if you can't discriminate against a child who is not yet potty trained, then you cant discriminate against a 12 week old who can't hold their own bottle.
@nayyohme That sounds like a solid no to me as well. We have only visited one daycare so far and they have an infant room with three devoted teachers for just the infants (I think they normally have 6 at a time between 6wks and 1 year).
Haha wow. My 1 year old refuses to hold her own cup and will sit there with her mouth open like a baby bird until I do it for her. But she may just be a brat. I can't imagine an 8 week old baby doing it at all.
Ok so I showed up on the right day for the daycare tour this time. She wants two months down (I thought it was 2 weeks) which is 1640. She also wants infant to be able to hold their own bottle for feeding time. She says her feeding them takes away time from the toddlers. She is aware LO will be 8-12 weeks. Is this a ridiculous request??? First time mom here but that seems early!!! Infants sleep in a separate room alone, supervised on a baby video monitor and checked on every 15 minutes. Seems weird to me????
@nayy@nayyohme That all sounds very weird to me. I can't remember when my LO started holding his own bottle, but it certainly wasn't that early. Also, when is she going to have time to bond, snuggle, and build their trust if she doesn't have time to feed them? Personally all of this would be a major red flag and I would go elsewhere.
@nayyohme hard no on that place. Sounds like they are not flexible and can't handle too much if they are expecting all of that. Most accredited places I've looked at had to have the babies sleeping in the same room without walls. One place I looked at actually told me that they cannot be accredited because the cribs were in a separate room where they monitored w/ a baby monitor. They said it's too expensive to tear down the wall. It's dangerous which is why it's an accreditation no.
My baby was able to hold his own bottle at 12 weeks but not very well. He couldn't tip it all the way near the end to get everything (used Dr Brown bottles). What they expect from you is crazy!!!!!
@nayyohme that’s ridiculous! A good day person can have the toddlers play while she feeds the baby. Also when DS was an infant he often slept in the swing at daycare while the kids played in the room. Every baby is different, some need silence, but still.
Yeah, two of the babies I nanny for are 5 months, and they will *sometimes* hold their own bottle...if they feel like it...and the milk is the perfect temp...and it tastes just right...and they're hungry enough...and all the stars align...
So, I’m week 15 today. I just looked at The Bump’s to-do list, and it suggests that I start estimating the cost of childcare and researching options in my area. Maybe this should be in the WTF? thread, but really, WTF?
Half the places I called back when I was 8weeks already had a waiting list for when I would be starting...
I started looking into daycare for DS and the only affordable one near me was going to be able to start him within the next few weeks for at least a day or two. That's really all I need or want. But she said to call back and schedule a tour after spring break. We called back when she said and now the wait list is over a year long because a family who's already in the center is expecting again. My mother currently watches DS and I don't want her to watch both full time, so that was incredibly frustrating. Every other center nearby is almost twice as much per day. Idk how people afford this, I'm so thankful to have my mother's help!
I have to confess, I've done an absolutely horrible job of actually solidifying a daycare center. From what I've heard, our area isn't as hard to get into, but this all could totally end up biting me in the ass
Getting yours set at our top 3 choices and getting something buckled down is on my to do list for the next week.
I didn't think we needed to worry about day care for a while since my SO has been out if work for a long time now due to an injury he got at work a few years back. Seems like he may be going back (out of financial necessity) and now I have to look at day care for both kids. I knew it was expensive but I guess I didn't know how expensive!
DH and I are both off work today, so we stopped stopped into the day care that's my #1. We just peeked in so I could show him the infant building. They were working on a few things with the little ones and it reassured my choice. I'm excited to have that decided on!
Any suggestions for questions to ask daycare while touring? I looked at a few articles and found some good lists but thought I’d ask here to... FTM and I’ve never set foot in one, so this is very new for me. My husband was the opposite, went to daycare/aftercare from 6 weeks - 12 years old.
@lolo_0924 - I compiled a list of questions from about a half dozen different lists. (I like RFPs!!!). I’m also a FTM.
That said- a lot of it is pretty redundant, and, especially the larger facilities, seem to have very similar policies/practices. I would think about the things that are important to you and tailor your questions around that. Answers to most of the common questions will be on their website or volunteered on the tour.
I also picked some from questions I found online. I’d say important ones for me were how many adults to babies in a room and cpr/first aid training of staff. Also a FTM so once I actually have a baby in a day care I may think differently.
Also on the topic of day cares I feel so limited in my area! I’ve gottem to 2 I could live with. The one I prefer has a wait list. They said Check around September for a better idea. The other one has spaces and said I should be able to wait until end of summer to decide and once I do they would need a non refundable deposit. Here’s to hoping the timing works out. Mind you this was in March for January 2019. I thought I was ahead of the game.
I also picked some from questions I found online. I’d say important ones for me were how many adults to babies in a room and cpr/first aid training of staff.
This is actually part of the reason people may want to check state requirements. My state actually has a requirement, and none of the daycares I looked at were doing a lower ratio than the requirement (4:1 for infants in MO; if it was significantly higher, I would think it was important to ask about). What was more useful to me was asking about how they covered breaks and teacher absences.
I actually figured out what was important to me by reading the different day care websites, and blog posts from Moms about their experiences. But also, I didn’t realize how much of that I had done unconsciously until I started touring day care centers.
Can't remember if this has been said, but if you know people who have used the daycare before, ask their opinions. My boss (female), and my boss's boss (male), have both used the daycare at work and they told me they loved it. Perks that ultimately outweigh going to a location closer to our house: it's on my work campus, the tuition alone is much cheaper than where I live (like a couple hundred a month cheaper), the food is free (some make you pay per meal), and they supply diapers (I'd love for them to be the super sensitive/organic/hippy ones I will use at home, but alas, free is free, and if there isn't an issue with them rash wise, I'll save my money and use it other places), also I can *probably* get in in January. For those reasons, it's worth it to my husband to suck it up and spend an extra 2 hours a day driving to the opposite side of town for daycare if I'm ever offshore for work or out of town.
4:1 ratio is also the requirement in TX, and they can do 10:2, but I believe most places I saw only did 8:2.
Re: Day Care
Daycare 1: Comes highly recommended from a friend who has had both of her kids there. One still goes 2x a week, the other just at summer camp. Friend's husband has known the owner since they were kids. It's been around for 30 years and family owned. They have two buildings: an infant building and a toddler building. There was a miscommunication on my tour time. I swear we agreed on today, but the owner says she had me down for next week. She wasn't there. Since I had SS with me and he was disappointed he wasn't going to see the infant room, I took him by to see in the windows. One of the teachers there opened the door and asked if we were the tour. So, the infant room had known we were coming. She showed us around and told me some of the basics. Overall, I liked them. They have one big room, so the kids are in there from newborn (as early as 6w) till around 2. They will cloth if I provide everything (including a diaper pail). They try and avoid being at max. State limits are 4:1, but they prefer to be closer to 3:1. They have 2 shifts and usually 3-4 teachers. The have a lot of toys, bouncers, cribs etc. I have to provide everything. They jot down all of the feedings, naps, diapers on a paper for you each day.
Daycare 2: I popped in unannounced after the office manager at my chiro recommended them. They have only been around since July of last year. They were unsure of availability in Jan due to current parents pregnant, and you could tell I really threw them off. They have an app where they will update diapers, feedings, naps and will send pics and videos during the day. They have 2 infant rooms, once the baby gets more mobile around 1 yr they advance to the next room. I didn't get a whole lot of info since I was unexpected. They will also cloth (they seemed more receptive to the idea). It looked like they only have 2 teachers most times, they aren't currently at capacity and can hold 12. (they might not have had all their teachers there based on how many kids).
She wants two months down (I thought it was 2 weeks) which is 1640.
She also wants infant to be able to hold their own bottle for feeding time. She says her feeding them takes away time from the toddlers. She is aware LO will be 8-12 weeks. Is this a ridiculous request??? First time mom here but that seems early!!!
Infants sleep in a separate room alone, supervised on a baby video monitor and checked on every 15 minutes. Seems weird to me????
The separate room and video monitor thing would make me a little uneasy when combined with all of the other odd requirements she has. One place we looked at does cribside infant nap checks every 5 minutes. That may be extreme, but given that she doesn't even want to have to feed an 8 week old infant herself, I'd be concerned.
Also, while I’d be okay with a separate toom/video monitor thing for naps, infants don’t sleep all the time, and over time will sleep less (yes, I know that is a big “duh”.) I’d have to question the quality of interactions baby would get while awake (tummy time, interaction with other kids, etc)
in my experience, the separate nap room seems normal (if done appropriately). Honestly, when they are really tiny they will sleep anywhere anytime, but as they get older, they seem to do better in the separate room without distraction (again, just my experience). At my daycare they had a separate camera for the nap area, and it was a space within the room, but blocked off from noise. It worked well for us and helped develop good sleep habits!
My thoughts are, if you can't discriminate against a child who is not yet potty trained, then you cant discriminate against a 12 week old who can't hold their own bottle.
My baby was able to hold his own bottle at 12 weeks but not very well. He couldn't tip it all the way near the end to get everything (used Dr Brown bottles). What they expect from you is crazy!!!!!
Half the places I called back when I was 8weeks already had a waiting list for when I would be starting...
I started looking into daycare for DS and the only affordable one near me was going to be able to start him within the next few weeks for at least a day or two. That's really all I need or want. But she said to call back and schedule a tour after spring break. We called back when she said and now the wait list is over a year long because a family who's already in the center is expecting again. My mother currently watches DS and I don't want her to watch both full time, so that was incredibly frustrating. Every other center nearby is almost twice as much per day. Idk how people afford this, I'm so thankful to have my mother's help!
Getting yours set at our top 3 choices and getting something buckled down is on my to do list for the next week.
That said- a lot of it is pretty redundant, and, especially the larger facilities, seem to have very similar policies/practices. I would think about the things that are important to you and tailor your questions around that. Answers to most of the common questions will be on their website or volunteered on the tour.
I actually figured out what was important to me by reading the different day care websites, and blog posts from Moms about their experiences. But also, I didn’t realize how much of that I had done unconsciously until I started touring day care centers.
4:1 ratio is also the requirement in TX, and they can do 10:2, but I believe most places I saw only did 8:2.