poll: child care

Meegs10.13.06

I'd love to hear about what kind of child care you use or are planning to use for your little ones. Also, how did you find/chose that childcare?
[Poll]

2brides

Having 2,  it was only slightly more expensive to have a nanny come to the house than have 2 infants in daycare and INFINITELY easier not having to get 2 babies packed up and out of the house. Now that I am doing it with preschoolers, my hat goes off to parents of multiple infants.

We found our first nanny through Craigslist. It seems so odd to find a care giver for your child on Craigslist - but it worked out wonderfully for us.  Our second nanny (of 5 whole weeks!) came from a nanny website that we had to join.

And now we found their full time preschool by posting a message on another board asking for suggestions in the location we needed.  We checked them out and it was perfect (location, openings, price, curriculum, and staff.)

Duchess1

I was out of work when we got the girls so I ended up being a SAHM, which is what I always wanted anyway. It's tough in this economy but if I went back to work my salary would cover childcare and not much else.

 I have been looking into evening or work from home jobs. A little extra income never hurts, especially with the holidays approaching!

ctbride08

In order to get a daycare stipend, foster children must be in an accredited daycare center.  Fortunately my mom is a daycare teacher at a Kinder.care in the town in which Andrea works so our hope is that they'll have an opening when we have a placement.

When we have our own (and are paying 100% OOP for daycare), we'll probably look for a smaller home day care or part time nanny share.  although, really, the not-so-secret hope is that my mom will watch the LO part time and A will drop down to working part time.

JoySeattle

Our plan is to have enough in savings to cover me being off for about 3 months. At that point I will probably begin teaching childbirth ed one night a week while C's home and look for another another family with one baby/toddler to do part-time (maybe full-time) childcare for. I've worked with twins a lot so I think this is doable. At some point I hope to transition back to postpartum doula work instead of nannying, which will most likely be overnights once our baby is STTN with C at home. Doing births would depend on nursing, on-call childcare and my back-up. I'm optimistic it will all work out, but I wish my family wasn't 1.5 hours away because they would love to babysit more often than they'll be able to with the distance.

Meegs10.13.06

Right now we're looking at daycares and in-home daycares. It all depends on cost and what feels most comfortable for us with leaving our little one. I want to be sure they are getting lots of attention, but also that the place is safe and regulated.

My mom is still hoping to win the lottery before the babe gets here, so that she can be our nanny.  :-) 

Two*True

Meegs10.13.06:

Right now we're looking at daycares and in-home daycares. It all depends on cost and what feels most comfortable for us with leaving our little one. I want to be sure they are getting lots of attention, but also that the place is safe and regulated.

My mom is still hoping to win the lottery before the babe gets here, so that she can be our nanny.  :-) 

So cute about your mom! The lots of attention thing was important for me too, particularly having worked in daycare.  The class I just enrolled our blob in is limited to 8 infants so I feel pretty good about that.  And the director told me that as soon as I am "out" at work I should start hanging out in the baby room on my lunch breaks just to make me more comfortable with everything when the baby is actually here.

Mrs._F

Two*True:

And the director told me that as soon as I am "out" at work I should start hanging out in the baby room on my lunch breaks just to make me more comfortable with everything when the baby is actually here.

That's a really great opportunity!

msjcordova

For the first year or so DW will stay home with our LO. After the year LO will come to work with me ( Im a preschool teacher) and be enrolled at the center I work at.

thiswillbe

We're hoping/planning to do back-to-back maternity leaves, which would get us to 6 months (3 months me, then 3 months S). After that we will either get a nanny or use the daycare at work.

I would love to have them at work with me so I can go visit them and nurse them (though I'd probably only really be able to go once a day at lunch-- it's a good half hour walk away), but the daycare cost for two here at work is over $3,000 a month. I don't know how much a nanny for two runs (we haven't started looking into it yet), but I'm hopeful that we might be able to find a solution that is less than $3k/month. If not, I might try to talk S into being a SAHM.

2brides

TWB - a nanny is going to run you about $2500-$3300/mo for twins in this area if you are paying taxes (which you have to do if either you or S have security clearance - and really ethically should do.)  You could also look at the Greenwood School (in Hyattsville) - they give preference for gov't and they get gov't subsidies making their prices cheaper $1110/per child.  It is an awesome facility and where the our kids will be going once we get space.

cymru

I changed my shift at the hospital so that I am home during the day with Annie, Carol gets evenings when I nap and overnights while I work. Since she pretty much is STTN its not that big a deal. Ideal .... no. But it was important to me to have one of us with our baby all the time rather than daycare.

~Kennedy