Adventures in child care

I can tell within seconds of meeting a potential caregiver whether or not s/he will work out. When we first met Maria, she immediately got a big smile on her face and reached out to hold Littles. I knew right away that she would be great. Same thing with Kay, the first backup care provider that we had a few weeks ago, when Maria was unable to come one day. Littles was having a fussy morning (teething!), yet Kay was not fazed at all. She took Littles into her room and within minutes, I heard no more crying, just the sound of Kay quietly reading a book as she rocked with Littles.

Unfortunately, I had the opposite reaction to Littles' backup care provider yesterday.

First, she was about 15 minutes late. Now, I'm chronically late as well, but when I first meet someone, I do try my best to be on time, at least that one time!

Then, she just seemed... well, uninterested and apathetic. Very much like she was doing this as a job, not because she genuinely loved children.

But she seemed nice enough and normal, so I didn't fear for Littles' safety or anything. I left, thought about Littles all day, and hoped that my first impression was wrong.

Unfortunately, when I returned in the evening, I still felt like things weren't right. She told me that Littles had been really upset for an hour in the afternoon after waking up from her second nap, which is very much unlike Littles. OK, maybe it was teething... but then, after she left, I noticed that she had completely messed up with the milk I left, by using refrigerated milk first, rather than frozen milk. Since frozen milk has to be used within 24 hours of thawing, that meant I had to dump all 8 oz of frozen milk. She also left the bag of frozen peas for Littles' lunch out on the counter, so they completely thawed and had to be tossed as well. Silly little things? Yeah. But if she was careless about the frozen peas, what else was she careless about?

I just couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right. So I called back Work Options Group (the organization that contracts with my company to provide care) and asked them to assign me someone new for tomorrow and Wednesday. I really felt awful about it. Especially when the woman from yesterday called me this morning to let me know she was running late (again!). When I asked for the reassignment, I also specifically asked to make sure someone would call to tell her not to come today, but my requests have to filter through a couple of layers (me -> Work Options Group -> the local nanny service that they work with -> the caregiver herself) and I guess this request didn't make it all the way down. I lied, and told her we no longer needed care. I didn't want to get into it with her.

Anyway, I instantly felt at ease with the new caregiver and feel much better about the whole situation. I just feel really badly for the other woman. But it's my child, my baby. I need to know she's in good hands.