Tell me about your day/baby care plans

charlotte99999

Hi ladies. I'm a first time mom and def. have to go back to work after the baby. We checked out our first day care place today. It was nice, but biology kicked in and I just thought - I don't want to have to hand my baby over!

I don't really have a choice. I make a bit more than DH. Plus he has been at his job forever so he has much more vacation/personal leave than I do. So I think he is going to take a month off after I go back to work (somewhere 8-12 weeks) and he will get to be the one to stay home with them on snow days, hurricane days, etc. 

I'm jealous. It totally made me want to switch jobs. At least something more flexible, like where I could partly work from home. I'm pretty driven and uber competitive at work, so I wasn't expecting to feel this way. I just didn't expect it to feel hard - esp before I even had the baby!

What is your story? What are you going to do with this one?

GuppyAmy

I work for a school and I have enough leave with maternity, disability, and FLMA that as long as everything goes according to schedule I won't have to go back until September. In September we'll send the LO to daycare. There is a chain around here that caters to teachers, discount and everything, so I'm going to check them out and if they are as good as everyone says they are, that's where the LO will go. 

slocke07

I'm only going to take about 6 weeks off after LO comes. I'm a teacher though, so either we will start daycare and see if they will let me pull LO out for the summer (why pay for daycare when I am home everyday for 10+ weeks on summer break?) or DH is considering working PT from home and having MIL help us out  for the rest of the school year after I go back to work (DH would keep LO in the AM while working at home and MIL in PM so DH can go into work for a couple of hours). MIL only works part time in the mornings. My mom works full time but is talking about working four 10 hour days and taking Fridays off to take LO for the day. If we do this, then LO will start daycare in late August. 

I'm sure no matter when we finally decide to send LO to daycare, it will be hard either way to hand the baby over!  

FinallyMrsBMW

I'm a teacher so I'm hoping to not have to go back to work until baby is 5.5 months old in the fall. 

My husband and I both teach and it's really not financially reasonable for me to stay home.  I do love teaching though so at least I am happy with what I am doing at work.  

I personally think that we have one of the best situations I could possibly ask for.  My MIL runs an in-home daycare out of her home about a mile away from us.  She has been doing this since DH was a baby.  So our DD and LO will be going there. DD gets the socialization of a "daycare" and the love an attention from her grandma and all the rest of the family that is in and out of her house on a daily basis.  It's wonderful!  Oh, and it's a mile away from my school as well.

I would really have a hard time working if it wasn't for our situation.  It is hard enough to have to drop my DD off every morning. =( 

LowGan379

phancykat:

Currently my plan is to throw a great big cry baby hissy fit until SO tells me I don't have to go back to work.

I think I'm going to have to work on a better plan.

 

THIS!

BabyBear12

I get 6 weeks of paid time off, then back to work. There is a subsidized daycare facility near by that I plan on using. I'm not thrilled about daycare (in general, nothing against this one in particular), but my husband is a student and will graduate (Master's deg) next June, maybe after he lands a full time job I will quit working. I really like my career field and it's in a growing field with lots of opportunities, so it would be hard to give up. I dunno. I go back and forth on what to do. Part of me would love to stay home, but I think I might kind of go bonkers after awhile! 

psychgirl33

I am in education, too (school psychologist--no, not the counselor, it's different ) and I was hoping to not have to go back until next August.  However, I have been on sick leave since I injured my back a couple weeks ago, so I don't think I'll be able to take the rest of the year off after all.  I'll have to go back for all of May I'm pretty sure.  I guess we'll just see what we can work out for May.  MIL is a SAHW and takes care of SIL's baby a lot, so she might be able to help out some.  I'm definitely not paying for daycare all summer since we don't need it, though!

sleeping5beauty

I'll be taking 12 weeks off. Then my baby will be with my son (Orion is amost 2) at my MIL's. She is retired so it works great for us. My husband will get 6 weeks of FLMA, I don't know when or if he will take it all. I will be having a C-Section again so I know the recovery time is 6-8 weeks before I'll be able to lift my 2 year old. It will be nice to have someone home with me, but we haven't talked about the details yet.

With Orion I was at at new job and only got 8 weeks. It was really hard to go back to work with him being so little. I'm glad the new baby will be 3 months old went I go back.

vanillacourage

charlotte99999:

I'm jealous. It totally made me want to switch jobs. At least something more flexible, like where I could partly work from home.

Even if you worked from home, you'd still need childcare for those days.

I'll return to work with the same schedule (4 days/week).  The only thing that will suck is that we need to move DS as his daycare doesn't take infants and we don't want to deal with the kids being in two separate places.  The place they'll end up is farther away from our house and more expensive, so now we're struggling to decide when to move him (it would be great to postpone the hassle and extra money until we HAD to, but we also don't want him to associate kid #2 with leaving his friends & teachers so maybe we should move him a few months before this baby is born).  Ugh.

kiarstin

I am taking 12-16 weeks off work.  Then my husband is going to fmla one xtra day every week and I am going to go back to work for 3 days a week.  Then after about a month I am going to swap to strictly am and then my husband and I will only need child care for an hour or two

gibbonlove

We're going with a center as soon as I can get back on my feet. I'm also the breadwinner, so it's a non-issue about me going back, but I also love my job and there is no way I would ever quit. I want to make the transition as seamless as possible, so I'm hoping not to prolong any of that anxiety. The daycare we might have chosen is right behind my office, anyway!

 Of course, if someone paid me to be a SAHM, I'd have to consider it!

LuckyMarley

LowGan379:

phancykat:

Currently my plan is to throw a great big cry baby hissy fit until SO tells me I don't have to go back to work.

I think I'm going to have to work on a better plan.

 

THIS!

 

Me too! I hope it works!!

metzy144

I run an in-home daycare so I will be going back to work, but I am lucky that I don't have to drop my kids off at daycare to do it. I am going to take 5 weeks off and then reopen the daycare.

Babymamawithdrama

I will probably take off about 8 weeks, I took 10 off with my son, and short term disability pay sucks compared to my normal salary, then #2 will join my son at daycare (separate classrooms), the earliest we can enroll is 6 weeks, last time we enrolled my son at 8 weeks as a trial run a few hours.... it wasn't't as bad as I imagined..... I don't think I could ever be a full time SAHM.... but could lighten my work load