The days are going by so quickly already. I am enjoying my summer off with the baby. It's routine, but we occasionally shake things up with a walk to the grocery store or library (SO EXCITING.) My biggest source of panic is how we are going to afford daycare when school starts in the fall. Had we been relocating, Brian would have stayed home and we would have maxed out my student loans to afford it. Now that we are staying in Home City, and I'll be getting a sexy tuition discount as Brian works at the university, I'm starting to worry about the baby being in daycare full time. It will be expensive and I'll worry about her safety and happiness all the time. I know kids are resilient and all, but I'm a mom so I'll worry. There are appeals I can make to try and get my COA (Cost of Attendance) increased so I can borrow more to cover daycare, but I want to borrow as little as possible. I guess I need to crunch the numbers to make myself feel better.
I wonder how other people with kids deal with it?
I can't speak to what's in your area, but there are often more affordable alternatives to daycare. Nanny sharing, or a stay-at-home mom who wants to watch children in her home for extra money, a college student who's an early childhood development major. Those options might be a little more flexible too, because you likely don't need 50 hours + child care, right? Probably depending on your schedule, of course. We did part time daycare for the first year, and worked our schedules around it. Much cheaper that way!
ReplyDeleteI can't say enough great things about our daycare, they're fabulous. My mother's been unemployed for the past year, and honestly, we could have had her watch our kid instead, but she just really does great there and it's really good for her to be around other kids. They have a curriculum, it's more like school than just childcare. She's been there since she was 8 months old, which I think was a really good age to start. That's when they begin to actually care about their surroundings and other people.
As for daycare safety, a lot of daycares are going to the "nanny cam" system these days, maybe there's one in your area that has it? They have online access so you can watch your munchkin. Otherwise, just getting references from other parents was good enough for me.