My Halloween Nightmare: Finding a Daycare

My first slap in the face with shopping for daycare was the cost, anywhere from $100 to $255 a week. That’s right a week, my car payment isn’t that much, heck, at the high end, my rent isn’t that much. But once you get over the initial shock and break it down it’s really not all that much. Even at $255 a week for a five day work week that’s only $51 a day for about 10 continuous hours of care and that’s just over $5 an hour. You would pay the kid down the street twice that to baby-sit for the evening. Still trying to figure out where the hell you are going to come up with an additional $400 to $1000 a month is a little rough. But you come to the conclusion that you will figure it out and go to work shopping for daycare.

I located several daycare facilities near my office to sort of feel out situation. They ranged in price from $95 to $155 per week and started making phone calls. Now you don’t want to bargain shop for child care but you have to try and find something that won’t break you, so I started with the lowest price point. Some were commercial facilities and some were in a person’s home, some charged an enrollment fee some didn’t, some were helpful and some were less than. My heart was lightened when I got off the phone and the woman at the $95 daycare seemed to be the most well informed, helpful, and intelligent of the bunch, even of the commercial facilities. So, I decided to stop by her home/facility last night and my heart is no longer light.

Not that the woman wasn’t well spoken or informed, she knew her stuff and had her licensing all in order and the kids she was watching were as sweet as they can be despite the amount of slang they used. But, oh my G-d, the neighborhood…it was a demilitarized zone, or at least it felt that way. There was a rottweiler or pit bull behind almost every chain link fence, and I don’t have a problem with either breed I love both dogs, I love all dogs. I have a problem with dogs that are so dangerous that they have to be chained with a pincher collar in the center of the yard so they can’t get over the 4 foot fence. There was trash and burnt out cars everywhere and I even saw a couple of houses that had been boarded up. I should have just gone home but when I got to her home with the exception of a few kids toys in the front yard everything looked neat and tidy. Now there were 3 boys in the front yard and even though all the blinds seemed to be down the front door was open, but they were for the most part unsupervised in an only partially fenced yard playing with a stray mutt of some kind, but I figured I’d made it this far, I might as well go in. I should have kept driving. The house was clean enough and the woman was so nice but there was a man sitting on the sofa in a very cramped living room wearing boxers and a sleeveless undershirt and another man doing bench presses in the back room, there was no central air and the wall unit I saw was in the living room. The room where she has the daycare stuff is about 8x8 and used to be the dining room, located in the very center of the house and was stiflingly hot in October, I can’t imaging what it would be like in August. The room she used to infant care was closed and she didn’t volunteer to open it. Every blind and curtain in the home was closed and the air in the home was stale. She did say all the right things and explained how she works with infants using movement, sound and color, her kids were so sweet but I just couldn’t get over the rest of it.

Maybe I’m a snob, I didn’t think I was but maybe I am. I just can’t see leaving my infant in that house. I have crossed the remaining daycares in that neighborhood off my list. I guess we’ll have to try the next price point, how we’re going to afford it I’m not sure, but we’ll find a way.

Come On Now, Really?

I swear to G-d, the next woman that tells me she enjoyed being pregnant I am going to slap right across the face. I mean come on now, really? My mom says she loved being pregnant. Was she on some kind of mind altering drug for the entire nine months, both times? Because, whatever! There must be some kind of hormone that the body creates after a child is born that makes women forget what a pain in the ass it is to be pregnant because otherwise no woman would have more than one child. It’s not that I hate being pregnant, I love that Caleb is in there growing away and that my husband and I have created this life, it’s the side effects I could live without and I’ve had it pretty easy. I didn’t really have any morning sickness and I’m really grateful for that. Once I thought I might be getting sick and my Mom told me to get over it so I did and I didn’t get sick again, thank G-d, and I pretty much get to eat and sleep whenever I want and that’s pretty cool. But the rest of it, quite frankly, sucks.

The insanity that ensued during my first trimester was ridiculous, what was worse was that I knew it was ridiculous and was powerless to do anything about it. The worst of that is over (I think/hope) but sometimes the lunacy still overcomes me and I completely over react to the simplest things. For instance, I forgot to write something down in my checkbook and of course bounced a check, not that it was returned but I was charged overdraft fees, stupid I know but not the end of the world right? Yeah, not so much, I became hysterical. I cried until I couldn’t breathe because how am I going to be a good Mommy if I can’t even keep my checkbook straight? After about an hour and a half of hysterics I finally calmed down and looking back on it now I’m more than a little embarrassed.

Recently I have really started to gain some girth around the midsection and things that I never really thought about before are really becoming difficult. I used to be able to get up off the couch with relative ease, not any more. Getting out of bed may be worse. Forget trying to bend over to pick anything up or get the dishes out of the dishwasher. Not only is there a basketball in the way but I get a mild case of vertigo. And that’s only going to get worse.

I’m tired from not being able to find a comfortable position in bed and from getting up every 45 minutes to pee. I’m out of breath after climbing up the 14 stairs it takes to get to our bedroom. And all I want to do is eat some ice cream and go to sleep, but despite all of this I can’t wait to meet this little person who is causing such a big cramp in my style. I can’t wait to hold our li’l tadpole in my arms and hear him cry and watch him learn and grow. His heartbeat is still the sweetest music I’ve ever heard and I imagine that he will be my greatest accomplishment. Maybe that's it. Maybe in comparison to the greatest thing you ever accomplish the pain in the ass stuff is just insignificant. Huh.

Does Everyone Have to Touch My Belly

That Crazy Umbilical Cord

On October 2nd we had a sonogram as part of my 2nd trimester testing and to find out the sex of the baby (as you may have guessed by my post “It’s a Boy!”, it’s a boy). We were in the room with on sonographer and it seemed as though she was having difficulty visualizing something and sent for a doctor. I didn’t think twice about it until the sonograher said something about the umbilical cord to the doctor and left the room. This made me a little nervous but the doc seemed so calm that I soon got over my fears and became enraptured with how much the li’l tadpole seemed to be moving in there. She asked me if we wanted to know the sex and without any hesitation she told us that it’s a boy at which point I forgot all about my worries. She took so measurements of his head and abdomen looked at the heart and kidneys and everything looked just perfect. She printed off some pictures for us and showed me where his little penis is; thank G-d because I sure wouldn’t have been able to tell what the speck was. Then she starts explaining that an umbilical cord usually has two arteries and one vein and asks me if I’ve had my 2nd trimester blood work done yet. I hadn’t, that was scheduled for the next day and I told her so. She tells me it’s really nothing to worry about because my first trimester testing was good and because the li’l guy is the right size and his heart and kidneys are functioning well but he only has one of the two arteries in his umbilical cord. She told us that unless the 2nd trimester testing comes back and there are concerns about the results that he should be right as rain and that because the 1st trimester testing was so positive that she doesn’t see any reason for us to worry, we’ll just need to monitor his growth very closely.

So we go to the doctor for the blood work the following day and my OB also seems to think that there is nothing to worry about, that we can just do a sono every other appointment to make sure he’s growing on schedule. They take my blood and tell me to call back in a week for the results. Because my OB wasn’t worried and because of the lack of urgency in getting my test results back my husband and I decide that there is nothing to worry about. Of course you can’t help but worry a little bit, that doubt can creep up on you so fast, but we kept the anxiety to a minimum (something I am very proud of).

A week later I call for my test results and the lady who answers the phone tells me to hold on while she goes to pull my file. I’m thinking cool she’ll be back to tell me that everything is okay in just a minute. But nooooooo…she gets back on the phone and tells me that the nurse is going to have to call me back. Well what the hell are you doing answering the line for test results if you can’t give them to me!? And now the panic sets in. I called my husband and told him what happened and put him in a panic, though he seemed pretty calm to me. It was a mess, I was a mess. It seemed like it took the nurse years to call back but it was probably no more than an hour and as it turns out I was all freaked out over nothing. The tests came back negative and the baby is growing perfectly and all is well with the world. Thank G-d!

His Girls

It’s intimidating being involved with a man who has 2 teenage daughters. It was really intimidating when we first started seeing each other. His oldest seemed to be happy for us but was very cautious, and the more time we spent together the less she seemed to like me. I don’t mean to say that she didn’t or doesn’t like me, to be quite honest I really can’t tell. Sometimes I think she hates me and sometimes I think she likes me, it’s really difficult to judge, 19 is such a moody age. The younger one had her doubts about me at first but I know (at least I hope) she likes me, we seem to get along very well, but sometimes I think she feels like I’m trying to take her daddy away from her. I’m not; I’d like him/us to spend more time with both the girls. But I don’t think they realize that, I feel like they think I’m the reason they don’t spend as much time with their father as they used to.

When we got engaged neither one of them was too pleased and then when he told them I was pregnant I felt like both of them wanted to kill me. I don’t think they can’t stand the idea of their father having another child and I understand that they don’t get to spend very much time with him and that they feel like this new baby is going to take up even more of that time. What I don’t think they realize is that for the most part they don’t spend very much time with their dad because they are busy. The oldest has been much better about making time to spend with him but she can be a little fickle, if she feels like she has to work while she at our house she doesn’t really want to stay for very long, but she is making an effort and it’s nice to have her around. The younger one is just so busy with school that she has no time to spend and lately when she has events that we can go to we have had previous engagements. I miss her and I know her father misses her terribly. It’s my hope that having this baby will make us all a little more family oriented, but I don’t know.

I thought that the girls would have an easier time with all of this if we had a boy, so I was even more excited when I found out that we are. But now I’m beginning to think that it doesn’t really matter if it’s a boy or a girl, they still don’t like it. We all have MySpace accounts and the older daughter wrote a bulletin laced with sarcasm, something like, “…oh, great, it’s a boy.” I can’t remember exactly, but it hurt me to read it. I want us to be a family, not that I’m trying to replace their mother, I could never do that, but I’d still like all of us to be a family or at least familyish. My biggest fear is that they are going to resent their baby brother so much that they will avoid making him a part of their lives and that they will spend even less time with their dad because of it. I’m terrified and I don’t know how to handle it. I keep trying to tell myself that once they see their brother in the flesh that they will love him, but what if they don’t? I’m so scared and I feel so terrible that they think I’d try to take their father away from them. I never knew my father so it is important to me that they are as much a part of our lives as they can be. I hope they know how much I care about them, how much I love them.

It's a Boy!

It’s a BOY! Caleb Stephen is the name we choose. We’re both so excited, I think my hubby is especially so since he already has two girls. Though I hate to admit that I had a preference but I was really hoping for a boy. I don’t know why. Maybe I remember what a pain in the ass I was growing up and I think a boy will be easier, probably not, probably just a different kind of pain in the ass. It will certainly make avoiding the cutesy wootsie stuff easier. All I know is that I couldn’t be happier.

I Could Get Used to This

We got married on Saturday, now the man that was my fiancée is my husband, and I really couldn’t be happier. It’s strange, I didn’t think I’d feel any differently but I do. I don’t love him any more or less, but there seems to be a stronger bond between us that has nothing to do with the child I’m carrying. A strength that’s just about us and nothing else. I guess that’s what a marriage is about, a bond you just can’t have with any other human being. It certainly took me a long time to figure that out, but I guess I wouldn’t have figured it out otherwise. But I’m happy now, happier than I think I’ve ever been. Happy seems to be a foreign emotion to me, but I think I could get used to it. I’m not saying that I have to one perfect relationship in the universe. We have bad days just like everyone else, but isn’t it the bad days that make the good days sweeter? Happy. Yeah, I could get used to this.