The daycare conundrum.

Today is another OB appointment. 

And I’d like to know: when exactly did my appointments become… well… commonplace?

The exciting thing that’s happening today is my one hour glucose screening. I don’t need to fast for it, but my doctor told me to “avoid having anything overly sweet” in the morning before the test. Which, I expect, means my usual pumpernickel bagel with cream cheese as well, since carbs will probably throw off the results too.

I am looking forward to hearing Squishy’s heartbeat again, but given the level of activity inside me I’ve been experiencing the past couple of days, I’m thinking that s/he is just fine.

I hope.

(Because, you know, we wouldn’t want to jinx anything.)

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Now that we’re past the holidays, I’ve been trying to tell myself that I need to make some calls to daycares. You know, because now we’re getting down to 3 months before we expect to bring Squishy home. And I do need to work – full time – once s/he is born.

I have had a listing of 10 local daycares – mostly in-home, though there’s one center listed - for weeks now.

I can’t bring myself to call.

I have no idea why.

I know that I need to get on it. I have to work – I can’t stay at home with Squishy. Even if we COULD afford for me to stay at home, I’m not sure I would want to. (For a lot of reasons. But mostly because I have two master degrees, and staying home with the baby, as much as I might enjoy it, would inflate the guilt of not doing my part to pay our student loan debt down.)

And many people have told me that finding good child care is hard. When you DO find one that you love, chances are that there might be a waiting list. My girlfriend D told me that the one regret she had was that she didn’t start her daycare search earlier. (In fact, I think the first thing she told me when I told her I got my BFP was that I should start looking for daycares!)

But I think about calling. And asking questions like “How many children do you work with? What ages? How many children who are full-time? What would a typical day for my child look like? Do the children spend part of each day outside, even in cold weather? How long have you been watching children? Do you have any references? What do you do if a child is upset or having a temper tantrum? How do you handle disagreements between children? Do you have any pets?” Et. cetera. 

And then having to arrange to SEE them and meet the people who run it. With J, of course, because it’s his kid too, and I want him to be involved with the process. I have no idea when we’ll be able to carve time out to do that. Weekends? Nights? Busy season is coming up for me – 16 hour days and probably a lot of weekends too.

I might have time in March to tour a few places, but well, isn’t that cutting it close? We’ll need him or her in July, when I go back to work.

Meh.

I think the simplest answer is that I just need to get off my butt and make a couple of calls. This is our child we’re talking about, right? And I don’t want to end up with a caregiver who is a last resort.

But man. It would be so.much.easier if Mary Poppins just showed up at my door in July.