Ummmmmm, holy crap, is it expensive to have your kid taken care of. Chris and I are trying to figure out what's going to happen when my maternity leave is over. Ideally, I would be staying home with the little man, but at this point, we don't really think that's a feasible option. So the next option would be having someone else take care of him...either an in home day care, our own full time babysitter, or daycare. I don't know anyone near us for in home day care, so that kind of makes me nervous. We may have a couple options for a babysitter, but then the question is how much to pay them...I really don't know what's fair. Plus, would an infant 5 days a week be too much for someone who isn't his parent? And then there is daycare. OMG, let's talk about that. I called a couple of them to get some ideas of prices....one was $1596 a month...that's like $400 a week (I know, I have mad math skills)!!! Are they going to teach my baby to pee in a toilet and read by 6 months or something? Have his times tables down by a year? Because something fantastic better be happening for that much money. Suffice it to say, that one is sooooo off the list of possibilities. I found a couple others that are more reasonable and have good reviews, but it's still a lot of money. And then we'd still have to have our dog walker come for Daisy (whom I love...Bonnie, do you want to watch Johnny, too?).
Any advice? It's kind of stressing me out. I was totally cool about it before, all, oh yeah, it'll all work out...but now I'm kind of freaking out.
Hey! Michelle here! Saw your post about childcare. It's insane how expensive it is. In my neighborhood in SF the going rate is $2,000/month! My good friend at work (in Chicago) is paying about $1,850/month in the city. If you guys can't afford that much (I don't understand how some people can!), or just don't want to pay that much out of principle (I like your examples of times tables :-), you should check out doing a nanny share. You share a nanny with one or two other families - it's much more economical. There are lots of websites where you can sign up and network with other families in your area.
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