Child care

It's never, ever easy to leave your child in the care of someone else. But I think that having a caregiver that you trust is critical to preserving some degree of sanity as a working mom.

I'm lucky that I have one. We're in a nanny share, which means that we share our nanny (Maria) with another family, who has a two-year-old daughter named Dani. Maria also brings her four-year-old daughter, Gali. We alternate days between our house and Dani's house.

Our original thinking on going with a nanny share over a daycare center was that it offered more individual attention for almost the same price. I think individual attention is so important for infants! But most of the daycare centers in our area have a 1:4 caregiver-to-child ratio in the infant room, and often, that actually means two caregivers with 8 infants, or three caregivers with 12 infants. Having just one caregiver with three children, two of whom are older and more independent, is a much different situation. Littles gets showered with attention, not just from Maria but from the older girls as well. And I like that Maria is her only caregiver (other than her dad and me, of course) -- I think it's good for her to form a deep attachment with a single caregiver at this age, rather than being shuffled between two or three caregivers.

If we could have afforded it, I probably would have gone with a nanny just for Littles over a nanny share. I am glad that we couldn't afford it :), because now Littles genuinely loves being around Gali and Dani. She gets a huge smile on her face every morning when she sees them, and I sometimes have to tear her away from playing with them to take her home at night. It's neat to see her social skills develop. I remember when she first started with Maria. She had been home alone with me for her four short months on this planet, and suddenly she was surrounded by two active and loud little girls! She gave me a look that said, "Mom, what on earth is going on here?" Now, she loves being in the middle of the chaos. We visited some friends over Christmas who have three little boys, ages 4, 2, and 5 months -- talk about active and loud! But Littles fit right in and had an absolute blast with all of them. I don't think she would have been that way if she spent her days home alone with a nanny, or home alone with me, for that matter.

Another little side benefit of having a nanny is that Maria cleans while the girls nap. We pay her half of what we used to pay our cleaning service, she does a better job (for example, she puts away dishes and folds clothes), and she does it weekly instead of biweekly. Score.

Downsides? Well, there are goods and bads about having other kids there with Littles. For example, Dani is going through the "terrible two's" right now and has taken to scratching and hitting Littles on occasion, which no one (particularly her parents!) is too thrilled with. Also, when Littles first started with Maria, it was taking 45-60 mins of rocking, back-rubbing, etc. to put her down for a nap. Had she been with a nanny who didn't watch other kids, the nanny could've spent that kind of time alone with her. Had she been at a daycare center, one teacher could've dealt with her while another teacher watched the other kids. Since Maria couldn't do either of those things, she had to let Littles cry to learn how to self-soothe :(. Which actually wasn't so bad. It lasted about two weeks, during which time Littles never cried for more than 20 mins, usually 10 mins or less. Once she learned how to put herself to sleep, her naps and nighttime sleep improved dramatically, and she was less cranky and much happier overall. I wasn't thrilled about doing the "cry it out" thing, but I have to admit that it really worked out well.

And that's perhaps the most important thing I've learned about having someone else care for Littles: Maria will never do things just like I do. And that's OK! As long as she gives Littles lots of love and keeps her safe, which she does, then I trust she's making the right decisions, even if they're not the decisions I would make under the same circumstances.