Hi there! My name is Erika, and I am a mom to two little ones and blog over at The Linden Life. Today I am talking about sending my little guy to daycare, which is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.In Canada, working mamas are lucky to receive a year of paid maternity leave. I always knew I would return to work after the year was over, but I was still unprepared when the time actually came. For months I had searched for daycares, and dreaded the day when my son would actually have to go. I couldn't imagine someone else spending more time with him than I did - it just didn't seem natural.
Daycare centres have very few infant spots, so even though my name had been on waiting lists since I was six months pregnant, I didn't get any calls. I started looking at home daycares, and scoured various websites daily looking for one that seemed to be a good fit for our family. Finally, I came across a woman running a small home daycare just a block away from our house. She was in her late forties with two grown children of her own, and she had a calm, gentle demeanour. Her home was small but cozy, and she had been running a home daycare for years.
After a few visits we decided to go for it, and my son was scheduled to start going when he was 11.5 months. Honestly, for the three weeks leading up to it I cried every day. I was a mess, and couldn't imagine how I would get through my days without him. But we needed my income, and knew that this daycare was the next best thing to me staying home.
The first day was way, way better than I had expected. Then the second day was even better, and the day after that almost 'good'. We all got used to the new routine. It helped that the daycare provider would send me texts and pictures throughout the day, letting me feel included in what they were up to. My son seemed like his normal happy self, and started eating a variety of new foods that I had never thought to give to him. I was shocked to hear that he loved tofu, hummus, and snap peas!
If there are a few things I could recommend for sending your little ones to daycare, they would be:
- Ask a ton of questions. What foods will be served? Are they closed holidays? Do you have to pay for sick days? How do they handle discipline, for instance if one of the children is a biter?
- Get recommendations from other families. For us, we knew the other family that was going to the daycare. That helped a TON. If they liked it, chances were we would too.
- Do your research. I googled the names of daycare providers before I met them, looked them up on Facebook, etc. I was also pretty thorough with checking their resumes. If they ran a home daycare for a few years, then took a few years off, WHY did they do this? How much notice did the other families receive? Who else will be in the house - husbands/boyfriends/kids… check their backgrounds too.
- Visit at least twice. How does the daycare feel? Are other kids crying or upset while you are there? How does the daycare provider handle it? How clean is it? Is there a TV in site? We looked at a handful of daycares before choosing the one we did, and none of the others 'felt' right. Sometimes I couldn't put my finger on it… but something was off.
- Trust yourself. At a later date, my son was in a center daycare and I hated it. He was there for less than two months before we made the difficult decision to pull him out and hire a nanny. Which is a whole other topic…
I've mostly talked about my experience with a positive home daycare, but over the year and a half my son was in daycare we had experiences with two home daycares, a center daycare, and then a nanny. I'm happy to answer any questions on any of them. Trusting others with your baby is super hard, but if it's the right person, it can bring extra love into your child's life.
Do you have a story about sending your little one to daycare? We would love for you to share your experiences below!
