Advice to Mothers

Moms work. It is a fact of life. Some moms are lucky enough that they get to work from home, and so don’t need day care. Some moms have family close by and use them for day care. For the rest of us working moms, we have to pick a day care.

You have a few options: you can do a day care center (commerical) or a home day care center. You can also use a nanny, nanny service, au pair, or a babysitter. What option you choose depends on what you want for your child.

The nanny/nanny service/au pair/baby sitter is the most expensive. I know, I looked. Many people charge (starting) $20/hour to be your nanny. Nanny services charge more. The services are great - they pay the taxes and you pay them. The service will also provide a nanny if yours goes on vacation or is sick - because if you use your own nanny you have to take vacation at those times. Getting an au pair is also expensive because with this situation you usually pay someone to come from another country and stay with you. And pay them while they work with you. However, you do get the knowledge of the one-on-one interaction (or however many kids you have). I didn’t have the money to do this, so I had to choose the day care center option.

At this point, you get to make 2 choices. Do you go with a commerical center or an in-home center? I looked at commercial centers. I was scared that my son would get lost in there. They have so many kids, what would my son mean to them? Would he still be sweet when he had to deal with the center? Also - they were seriouslly expensive for an infant. It didn’t matter that I was looking for part-time care for an infant. The prices for part-time and full-time care were the same (for an infant - under 2years). So I decided to go the in-home route.

In California, in-home centers have to be licensed if they take more than a certain number of kids. I tried and tried to find someplace I liked. I spent 2 months looking. I gave up. So I put an ad on Craig’s List and figured that people would contact me.

I got a TON of contacts. In one day I had 20 people contact me. I had a standard list of questions I asked before I would schedule a visit.

My Questions:

1) Do you have other children there? How many? What ages?

2) Do you smoke? I was not going to have a smoker care for my child.

3) Is there a pool? Is it fenced so a child cannot fall in?

4) Are there animals?

5) Can you accomodate a nut allergy? This is important for me. I have a severe nut allergy, and my son might have one too. So we have to stay away from nuts.

6) Are you married? I wanted someone to be married if they were taking care of my children. You don’t have to want the same thing, but I did.

7) What other languages are spoken in the home?

Do you know infant CPR and First Aid?

9) How much do you charge?

10) Are you planning on having other infants in the house?

Those were my 10 initial screening questions. If I got satisfactory answers, I scheduled a home visit. I went on 5 visits before I found the lady we use now.

She has a baby who is 1 month younger than my son. She promised that they would be the only infants, so he was getting personalized attention. And most of all, when we went to visit, she greeted me AND my son. She immediately showed an interest in my son, which meant she would care about him. I looked in her bathrooms to make sure they were clean. I spent some time there, with her, to make sure I liked her and didn’t get any weird feelings about her. This is THE MOST IMPORTANT part of the home visit. If your gut is telling you something is wrong, it probably is.

We did two trial runs before I went back to work. It worked wonderfully.

And now he loves her. In the morning he practically dives out of my arms into hers. It is somewhat sad to me, but it is a good thing. It means he likes her.

So I am satisfied with my decision. I hope you are satisfied with yours.

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