What would you do...

Sclines2595

I am going to be returning to work in about 6 weeks. DH and I have a couple of options about child care

To start off - my mom is going to keep LO on her days off (Monday and Friday) so we don't need child care on those days. I work monday-Friday 8-4:30. DH is a police officer and works 2nd shift 4p-2a and his days off rotate on a weekly basis. 

 

Dh wants to get a set schedule so that he is off every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday and work every other day consistently --this means he would never have a weekend off. Weekends (that he would have off every now and again) would be ou time together. He wants to do it this way because we wouldn't have to pay for child care (he is frugal if you haven't already notice from my posts). I didnt necessarily like this option because everything goes on on weekends and he would never get to do anything with me and LO.

My option was to put LO in daycare on the Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday's that DH works. (if he Is off work---we wouldn't use the daycare). The part time rate for the daycare is $30 a day. So we are looking at anywhere up to $360 per month. DH does not like this idea

 We actually got into a big argument this morning abou this. I'm half tempted to just give in and tell DH to take the mid-weekdays off to keep LO. 

What would you ladies do? 

katieh1017

How about if he works one weekend day and off one weekend day? explain to him to him what you just did about spending time together, a day for all of you to be together. 

jeffsjayme

Can you compromise? Sounds like he wants to be home every Tu/We/Thu.  Can he be home just Wednesday and do the daycare thing Tu & Th?  That gives you most of your weekends, but not all his free time is without you.

Course, you could just let him try it and see if it works.  It might completely overwhelm him to be home alone with LO 3 days in a row.

sometimesalwayschaotic

I guess to me it would come down what you can afford.  Can you afford to pay out over $300 a month on daycare?  Are there things you could cut out of your budget to make up that amount?  He might feel better if you did something to cut down your budget by the amount daycare would cost.  For instance you could get rid of cable, lessen your cell plans, cloth diaper.  Then perhaps he'd feel more comfortable sending the baby to daycare and still having some days off.  If the budget doesn't add up, without your husband watching the baby, then you'll have to do that.  I am not sure what I'd do personally.  I think I'd rather my husband watch the baby but I would hate to hardly have any time with my husband.  It's a tough one!

SteelCity44

I'm sorry that I don't have advice, but good luck with this difficult decision. MH used to work 3p-12a every day but Sundays and Wednesdays. When I was at work, he was at home and vise versa. We saw each other Sundays during the day and Wednesday evenings. It sucked. He ended up taking a different job with a big pay cut so we could see each other more. We were going crazy. He still works every weekend (retail), so it's difficult to do things with other people, but at least we can see each other.

More importantly: I can't get the Nickelodeon theme song out of my head for "What Would You Do?" What...what, what,..What, ..... 

RichInLove

Is it really a money issue, or is it something else?

Not having any family time together is going to be really hard and really sad, especially since it's something you don't have to do.

The other thing I would be concerned with is having so many different people watching LO. You're going to need to be really diligent about discussion sleep schedules with everyone.