Randomly firing synapses within a pregnant mind
Dreams
Been having a lot of them lately. Most of them rather mundane - from shopping for and inspecting a crib to ensure baby girl's head wouldn't get stuck in the slates and the sides wouldn't fall down - to the comical. Here was my most recent favourite.
I arrive home from work as I do every day. Oblivious to the fact that I am no longer sporting my pregnant belly. Walk in the front door to find Tim standing there with a big grin on his face. He's holding something. I look down in his hands and he's grasping the handle of the baby carrier we bought at Babies R Us and inside is a cute, teeny weeny snuggly happy looking baby girl fast asleep. I look back up at Tim. He says in an excited but hushed voice, "Guess what! The baby came while you were at work! See? Isn't she adorable?" as he extends the carrier towards me for me to get a closer look. "Oh my god! That's amazing! I didn't think it happened like that" I reply. Then I wake up.
Note - I've had MANY dreams at this point about life after the baby is born. I've had none about the actual process of giving birth. For which I am grateful. I'm quite happy for that to remain a mystery until "it's time". Kinda like planning to run a marathon. I'd go as far as 20 miles during training but no further - not really wanting to know what 26.2 felt like before "it's time" ;-)
The Ironies of Child Care
Before I launch into the ironies of child care, let me give you some background :-)
It is a fact of life that we are a two-income family. This is even more true given the house we are building and the baby we are having. I wish with all my heart we could afford for either me or Tim (or both, ideally ;-)) to stay home to care for our daughter when she is born - full time or part time - but wishing does not make it so. If it did, we'd have won the fifty million dollar lottery 10 times over by now, and I'd be writing an entirely different blog entry right now. From the Italian Riviera.
On the plus side, I love my job - it's awesome, rewarding and challenging. And my employer provides for a number of weeks of paid leave as well as additional unpaid leave, with guarantee that I'l come back to a job. So I'll be taking 16 weeks off. But I'm already heartbroken at the prospect of having to go back to work after that and be away from our baby girl, and she isn't even born yet. (Some of you more experienced moms may want to tell me that I feel that way now, but I'll actually find that I'll be glad to have a "break" and something other than baby caring to do. You can try, but I won't believe you. You can say I told you so later but I probably won't remember ;-)).
So given that child care is going to have to be a reality for us, we've started researching the options. In-home nanny? Family Child Care Home? Child Care Center? Found some excellent resources online which I thought worth sharing (feel free to skip ahead if you're not interested in the resources ;-))
Child Care Resources is a not-for-profit child care resource and referral agency serving King County Washington. They have what appears to be a pretty extensive database of Family Child Care Homes and Child Care Centers along with current information on capacity, rates, contact information, etc. $40.00 for a 6 month subscription to unlimited access of their database.
I was actually led to the Child Care Resources web site when I came across their 10th Anniversary Whitepaper they published in 2000 on Child Care accessibility, affordability and quality changes between 1990 and 2000.
I also found an interesting and helpful Working Parents forum.
The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) organization web site proved to be informative and useful and I learned about their accreditation program.
The National Child Care Information Center is a national clearinghouse and technical assistance center that links parents, providers, policy-makers, researchers, and the public to early care and education information
The National Network for Child Care is an informative source of information relating to child care
The National Resource Center for Health and Safety in Child Care also provides resources for parents to help in choosing a quality care child program,links to all fifty states' licensing requirements which providers should be complying with, along with links to your state child care licensing agency for researching facilities, checking to see if there have been any complaints on facilities you are considering, etc.
Child Care Aware is a non-profit initiative committed to helping parents find the best information on locating quality child care and child care resources in their community. has a resource referral line (1-800-424-2246) which provides access to a database of all local daycare options, along with detailed information including licensing and accreditation for each.
The American Academy of Pediatrics publishes a free brochure "Child Care: What's Best for your Family, Guidelines for Parents" which includes a detailed checklist for assessing each facility. You can request the brochure by sending a self-addressed, stamped envelope to 'Child Care Brochure', The American Academy of Pediatrics, Dept. C, P.O. Box 927, Elk Grove Village, Illinois, 60009-0927.
I read through a whitepaper published by Washington State DSHS on Licensed Child Care in Washington State 2002 (published June 2004)
And finally, I read through, in depth, the Washington State Licensing Standards for DayCare Centers and Family DayCare to familiarize myself with state requirements and standards and arm myself with information in preparation for touring daycare facilities and family child care homes.
You can now anticipate that after conducting all of this research I also came up with 5 pages of detailed questions for when we meet with, tour, and interview various care facilities and family child care homes. Would you expect anything less? :-) I'll publish the questions later.
I also came across a national Nanny referral web site that left me feeling even more anxious than I was already about the prospect of going with the in-home nanny option. While there are definitely pros and cons to in-home nannies vs family home care and day care facilities that warrant thorough investigation into each, I was rather depressed after reading through the nanny-for-hire pages on this web site. An 18-year old "Christian girl who helped raise her two little brothers, loves to play with babies, and has 6 years of experience taking care of infants" is NOT exactly instilling me with a lot of confidence. There were 5 pages of such "qualified" candidates for our area. I'm going to have to do a lot more research and find some local nanny referral agencies to get a better sense of what is available in our area.
Anyway, it was during the course of all of this research and question compilation - qualifications, training, background and education and in early childhood development and education, years of experience, First aid and CPR certification, ratios of staff to infants, employee health benefits and turnover rates, etc - that the irony slowly revealed itself to me. Neither Tim nor I have degrees in early childhood development and education. Neither Tim nor I have "years" of experience caring for infants or children beyond babysitting our younger siblings as teens, neither of us are certified in First Aid or Infant CPR. We aren't accredited by a national agency, nor did we have to be licensed with the state to actually have the child. Aside from being filled with love, having some good sense, and being financially stable, we have NO IDEA WHAT THE HELL WE ARE DOING when it comes to raising a baby (we're a tad nervous about that too ;-)). Yet it never occurred to us to turn over responsibility of caring for our child for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, to anyone outside our family who doesn't meet these requirements and have a great, kind, loving, nurturing, responsible personality to boot.
The second irony is that if you calculate the typical day care center costs at least in our area, it amounts to anywhere between $10,000 - $13,000 a year for one child. According to what I've read so far on the rates of family child care homes, they tend to run a bit cheaper - say $7,000 - $10,000 per year. Nanny rates can vary widely depending on experience, responsibilities etc, but there are Nannies available within that price range as well which is not a significant amount of income for an individual considering that if they are nannying full time, there's not a whole lotta time in there for them to be doing something else that is making them money. I guess the thing that strikes me is that if you asked me to put a price on years of experience, professional education/training, first aid/CPR certification, a loving, nurturing, responsible personality, and a secure yet warm and friendly environment, I'd say it's worth a hell of a lot more than $10K a year. Yet it can still feel daunting.
The final irony that revealed itself to me was the fact that as I was learning the current family home care and day care facility costs in our area, it became apparent that in order to AFFORD day care, we both have to be working. However on the flip side, if only one of us were to work, we can't afford to have the other stay home to care for our baby. So we both work, so we can afford to put our child through day care, which is necessary because we both work (and can't afford not to). This is a fact of life for most American families, but it really just sorta hit me as I was going through and doing the math, that we are now such a family. I always knew it to be true, but the math kinda made it real.
In the end
It's all going to work out. Somehow. Other families make it all work. We will have a baby (although I suspect it will involve me going to the hospital and giving birth, rather than just coming home from work one day to find the baby has arrived ;-)) and we will pay our mortgage, and we will find the right child care for our daughter, and we will work hard, and we will provide for her, and love her and cherish her and raise her well and send her off to college, and... well... it will all be ok. I didn't say it would be EASY - I'm no fool, but it will all work out in the end, and it will be infinitely rewarding :-)