Into the Care of Others

We first put Molly on the waiting list for a daycare last August. Yep, four months before she was born.

We have since visited, researched, and talked to countless other childcare facilities, from big daycares to in-home settings to nanny sharing possibilities. Molly was accepted into and then registered for our top choice daycare, only to have my teaching schedule conflict with their part-time only hours for infants. Since then, two other viable options have come and gone for various reasons.

And the facility Molly was wait-listed for last August? When I called a couple of weeks ago, she was still 120th on the list.

So please believe me when I tell you that I seriously thought the increasingly-more-desperate search for childcare was going to give me an ulcer in the very near future.

:::

We have always known that Molly would go to daycare part-time. My long-held belief that I could never be a stay-at-home mom because I am simply meant to work (that's how I'm happiest, most fulfilled) meant that I never even considered not putting Molly in daycare.

Our current situation is such that, while I don't have to be at a specified location for more than 7 or 8 hours a week (at most), my work is continuous; there is always something work-related I should be doing. So I knew that I would need to be able to give myself dedicated baby-free hours to successfully get things done. And because graduate teaching assistants are woefully underpaid, Dave is by far the primary wage earner in our household, so his staying home was never a possibility (though I have always joked that he would be the more likely of the two of us to want to stay home).

When we first became pregnant and realized what our timeline would be, it became clear that I would be staying at home for at least a semester. Colleges don't hire substitutes, so because I couldn't/wouldn't teach at the beginning of the spring semester, I wouldn't be teaching at the end of it either. This gave me four solid months at home with Molly, which seemed like the perfect amount of time. She'd be old enough to be less susceptible to those nasty colds and coughs babies get from large crowds, and I would have gotten to spend a generous chunk of time with her before doing some summer teaching and dissertation work.

Then one thing led to another and I opted out of teaching a summer class at my university and decided that it was more practical and cost-effective for me to stay at home with Molly until July or August, at which point I would definitely need to be able to carve out some weekday work time.

But as July and August drew closer and closer, two things happened. One was that I was becoming convinced that we would never find a viable childcare option. Admittedly, our criteria, or rather our wants, were slightly unusual. She was already excluded from the majority of daycares that I found because of her age; you'd be shocked how few places accept infants. We also wanted a part-time daycare (because I didn't want Molly to be in daycare 5 days a week if she didn't have to be), ideally keeping Molly every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (though we understood we would probably have to be flexible on the part-time schedule). I just couldn't concede paying for full-time if we didn't need or want it. This, unfortunately, ruled out almost every in-home (as in someone else's home) option, or at least every one I had been given a recommendation about. The quality of larger childcare facilities in town vary greatly, as does they price, and very few that we found offered part-time for infants. The search was beginning to look bleak.

The other thing that happened as time clicked down was that I began to dread actually finding a daycare for Molly. There have been days that I was insanely jealous of David's ability to leave the house and work among adults who provide actual conversation. And I did long to be able to make a plan without having to work around a naptime schedule. But that was only sometimes. Most of the time I have been thrilled to spend so much time with Molly. Even on days when she woke me up at four in the morning, I have loved being with her. I delight in the fact that I am the one that gets to introduce her to new solids and help her learn how to sit and crawl. As much as I thought I could never be a stay-at-home mom, and as much as I know that I do need fulfillment through work, I began to dread the thought of handing her off the complete strangers to be cared for.

:::

Yesterday, in a bout of desperation, I called a daycare facility I had talked to a couple of months ago. They hadn't expected to have any openings, but I decided to give it a shot just in case. After a few phone calls back and forth, Molly was in!

But, I was brokenhearted about it.

The daycare's part-time infant program offers either Monday, Wednesday, and Friday care or Tuesday and Thursday. Because I teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays this fall, that's what Molly will be in. But I expressed my worries about Molly experiencing separation anxiety (which she has already shown signs of, aka freaking out at the gym) and the daycare employee admitted to me that the Tuesday/Thursday schedule can often be difficult for infants to adjust to since there is such a large gap between the Thursday and the Tuesday. Which makes sense. So David and I decided to enroll her for Monday/Wednesday/Friday in July, so that she can adjust to being in daycare, and then transition to Tuesday/Thursday in August.

This schedule works perfectly for us. Molly will still be home more than she's not. The daycare is very flexible; I can take her in the morning, pick her up for a few hours midday; and take her back for the afternoon if I want. I can even drop her off for a few hours on her off-days occasionally if I need to. I can stop by to breastfeed her, have lunch with her, or just watch her play in their "parent viewing room." Hell, they even offer Saturday night babysitting for enrolled kids once-a-month.

So to say we're pleased with our choice is a major understatement.

And yet my heart hurts. For so very many reasons, I know that it is good for Molly to go to daycare. I already worry that she doesn't spend enough time with people (because we're homebodies who live far away from our families), let alone children (we have very few friends in town with kids); this will help her with socialization and allow her to become comfortable with occasionally being cared for by others. It's also incredibly beneficial, even necessary, for me. I need to work on my dissertation so I can graduate and stop being a student and start being an out-of-work college professor.

My head tells me that this is the smart thing to do. And I am an extremely rational person. When my head makes a decision based on careful consideration, I go with it. But this time I'd much rather stay still than go anywhere.

:::

Molly is going to have a great time at daycare.

I, however, am going to have a tough few weeks.