Is it ironic to anyone else that one of the first things you have to look for when you’re expecting, assuming you haven’t decided that one of you will stay home with the kid(s), is childcare? I mean, you’re going through all that trouble to bake and birth the child and then we have to farm out their care to some degree.
I say this with absolutely no judgment at all, I have never wanted to give up my professional career to stay at home with the kids a day in my life so I know it’s part of the cost of my choice but it sure does feel counterintuitive. I enthusiastically support the idea of Doting Dad PiC staying home if we could swing it but since we’re not quite there yet, sitters and daycare are part of our reality.
Sidebar: I have had friends who chose to stay home after looking over the finances, not because they wanted to do that more, and also SAHP friends who did want to. We have all sorts in our cohort and I respect all those choices equally. /sidebar
The minimum for your bog standard daycare here is a shade under $2000/month for full time, five days a week, maybe including a snack but usually not. They don’t come standard with: diapers and wipes, hot or full meals or snacks, or video monitoring.
You might think I’m nuts expecting that last but it is becoming more common in the LA area and that’s one thing they may be doing right. For my money and sanity, I’m not leaving my kid with strangers without some kind of oversight – I’ve read too many (horror) news stories about abuse. Just the other day there was a 2 month old killed by her sitter’s 11 year old kid. ELEVEN. I nearly threw up reading that and don’t tell me that hormones have anything to do with that reaction other than the hormone of their world will BURN if someone tries to abuse my Little Bean.
Right. Back to the point.
In the Bay Area, full time daycare is bogglingly expensive.
Our mornings are hard enough that I hate the idea and the logistics of dropping LB off at some location with strangers and no video surveillance for the day. This is further reinforced by an unexpectedly strong sense of not wanting to let hir out of my sight. We need other options at least for the first few months that I’m back to work.
We do have some flexibility here in that I can work remotely for a period of time. I initially wanted to hire a couple mother’s helpers but they’re charging nearly or just as much as experienced nannies in this area for very little experience. I’m talking about $18-25/hour for 0-2 years of experience, and $20-45/hour for 10-30 years of experience.
Indeed.com shows that full time nannies in the SF area are typically charging 35% more than the rest of the country’s average and run about $30-40K per year. Obviously, we do not have that kind of Silicon Valley/SF dot com money.
We had a frustrating trial with a mother’s helper who came highly recommended. She’s great with toddlers but had to be told four times in the same day to check LB’s diaper when ze cries on waking from a nap – my patience doesn’t extend to repeating basic instructions several times a day. In the end, we decided that it’d be worth it to try and find someone with more extensive experience. We scoured care.com, urbansitter.com, and sittercity.com for both, and they were all three kind of a crapshoot.
After we interviewed a handful of providers it appears that the people posting profiles use the listed rate ranges like a weird kind of target practice.
You’d see:
* Will take up to 3 kids
* Comfortable with pets/dogs
* Will take care of sick children
* XX years of experience
* Will drive kids to and from school and activities
* Will cook and clean, do laundry
* $15-20/hour
I’d expect that $20/hr would be for more than one kid, with lots of other work thrown in, and $15/hr would be for much less work, which is what we’re looking for. 1 kid, very minimal clean-up, feeding, diapering, and putting down to sleep.
Instead, all were charging $20/hr minimum, with paid sick leave, holidays and 2 weeks of vacation, and are horrified by Seamus. Oh and are utter Awkward Aardvarks with the baby.
If you’ve never seen someone hold a floppy necked infant for the first or second time, it goes something like this:
Here’s the baby! *ginger or wary acceptance* They sort of stick the baby into one side with one arm, bracing as if for impact, while most of the baby remains free. Baby wiggles. Switch to the other side. Then back again. They grimace and adjust their hold. Baby, slipping, flails an arm or a leg. They adjust again. Baby squeaks and writhes indignantly. They start. Baby looks up at them, and their head suddenly flops forward. *thunk* Eyes wide, they return the baby.
It wasn’t quite that bad with the people we met but it was close.
The one touting 30+ years of experience with newborns kept asking us to show her how we hold the baby, adjusting her from one floppy position to another, insisting that my (already incredibly opportunistic) child was unhappy because ze “wants to be held the way hir parents hold hir.” The picture of grace, I managed not to laugh in her face. Yes, of course, ze knows how hir parents hold hir. That’s why ze just rejected me in favor of Grammy who cuddled, rocked AND cooed at hir for a weekend. Don’t tell me what my baby prefers. Ze’ll take the best offer going. And the best offer was NOT that nanny.
One didn’t come near the baby and told me that vitamins are a lie that doctors tell us to make them hyper. The origins or the why of this theory, we’ll never know.
I was starting to think we’d never find anyone but we took a shot with someone who looked less qualified on paper and it was well worth it. She actually holds the baby like she’s met one before and had that parentese down pat. LB was cooing at her in 90 seconds or less. It remains to be seen how well it works out on an ongoing basis but we’re doing a trial with her.
Sleep: the old saw “sleep when the baby sleeps” rarely applies here. Either I couldn’t fall asleep or the sleep cycles were so short I only had time to drop into sleep before being shaken awake by the need to change a diaper or feed hir. Naps felt amazing though, and for a few weeks, every 30 mins of sleep felt like half a night’s rest. After that, it just felt like punishment.
There are moments when ze has been nursing for more than an hour and I haven’t slept in weeks, and my body is beyond the point of crying out in fatigue because it’s too tired to do that even. I look down at hir and ze is just … cute. This is what keeps infants alive, I’m convinced of it.
Babywearing is great. Not for my back but definitely for morale when a distraught LB just needs to be held and my arms simply cannot anymore or I desperately need arms free to do things. It’s strangely comforting and I like being the Kanga to my now detachable Roo. Name change? LB–> Roo?
My first moments of despair thanks to pain and fatigue preventing me from picking up Little Bean struck in week 3, but the second month is when it really came home. I dodged the expected baby blues, but fear of a crippled future just around the corner instead of on the horizon was cause for some serious introspection and a few frustrated tears. PiC and I stayed up a few late nights talking through my worries and his reassurances meant the world to me. It also made me wish even harder that I’d figured out a way we could afford for him to stay home with us on just my earnings because he’s an amazing hands-on dad and genuinely enjoys taking care of LB morning, noon and night.
Ze started smiling at us this month. Ze wasn’t interested in making eye contact with anyone except PiC before. Now, ze will look around, see me, and grin. It’s awesome. Also ze smirks in hir sleep and I love it. It’s like there are good dreams going on in that bitty human brain. Sometimes it’s just because ze just had a great poo though.
Also awesome: baby babble. Ze isn’t forming sounds that are remotely like words but ze is making sounds on purpose and the range has increased to include a variety of tones, volume and interest. We started doing call and response. I leave hir laying on a playmat and holler random noises as I dash around the house trying to wash a bottle or get the laundry going or grab some food. The ones that please hir best get a delighted squeal, the OK sounds get a chirp. After a week of this, ze moved on to just babbling away on hir own at the ceiling, the window or the TV. We do lots of wide range vocabulary talking to hir regularly but when ze is participating, ze is most responsive to fun combinations of sounds so we go with it. Plenty of time to learn words and languages and all that.
I’m working away at Swagbucks to earn Amazon money for household, Little Bean, and dog things we need. Feel free to join using my referral link if you like!
I’m only getting half my normal income in maternity leave benefits and surprisingly this hasn’t wrecked our cash flow. I’m not saving anything, and neither am I setting aside the previously budgeted Little Bean money for the moment but we’re doing OK.
***
Little Bean money: PiC is still contributing to hir fund and ze has received generous Happy Being Born gifts (called lucky money in our cultures). Kid’s making a killing off being born!
Discovery: I still really love Star Trek: Voyager.
From the very first, I loved Janeway. She was tough, she cared about her crew and wanted to hear feedback that she could act on even if it challenged her expectations. She was openminded while maintaining focus.
Over the years, I’ve learned that sometimes you just have to punch your way through. – Captain Janeway
There’s a time for tact, there’s a time for getting shit done. The trick is knowing the difference.
Did you ever consider allowing the Ocampa to care for themselves? … Children have to grow up … It’s the challenge of surviving on their own that allows them to evolve. – Captain Janeway
This is the fight I’d had with my parents since I was 14. I don’t pretend to have all, or most, of the answers when it comes to parenting but when it came to my sibling, I was pretty sure I knew what was more likely to work with him. In the few years that they stepped back and left the handling of him to me? He came closest to being an adult, earning some kind of living, and not being a complete utter leech.
He soon reverted to form, though, so maybe I don’t know anything.
Misery loves company, Tuvok.
A thing we would do well to remember when miserable people are dragging you down with them.
“A daughter? I don’t have anything to teach a daughter.” – Neelix
“Why would it be any different for a daughter than a son? … I have three sons and one daughter. I can assure you she benefits as much from my presence and guidance as my sons do.” – Tuvok
I don’t unequivocally love the newborn phase, it’s so much work and exhaustion it’s hard to remember your own name. But this is an amazingly cuddly period, punctuated by the squeaks, peeps, squawks, whirs and chirps that are precursors to speech. There’s almost nothing so simultaneously heartwarming and terrifying as looking down into those almond shaped grey-black eyes of your own child. Who is clearly, by that unblinking stare, awake again.
Some things are universal
They come with teeny fingers and toes, and correspondingly bitty nails which are terrifying to cut.
Some help is essential if you’re anything like me and need 7-8 solid hours of sleep but are lucky to string together 4 hours in one-hour increments. It revives your ability to gaze at the microface with compassion and amusement as you rock the warm bundlet back to sleep at 3 am, again.
The world seems cold and cruel after the 16th diaper change and 10th hour of feeding in 23 hours.
In a month you go from having a bread loaf sized critter to a tiny person whose actual tears express astonishment and dismay at your lack of mental acuity, you heartless and negligent parent! Feed me, dammit! (How did ze turn into a teenager so quickly?)
Breast is best, the hospital chants. And they’re quite good at supporting with lactation consultants but it also supplying formula upon request if you hit a tough patch and eating hasn’t happened in too many hours. It’s a bit surprising when the delivery method (breastfeeding) gets prioritized over the actual eating. In my book: feed the baby! Worry about “how” only when you have the luxury to, not if the kid’s wasting away, 2 days old and five hours since the last feed.
Formula is expensive, running 50¢ to $1+ per ounce, depending on the sort you get. When you need at least 2oz per feeding every 2-3 hours, you’re pretty DARN motivated to breastfeed. Plus it’s good for hir. I didn’t work this hard at having hir to give up now. (Give up= quit without trying. I know plenty of people who can’t/couldn’t BF and I have all the empathy: that could have been me. But I have to give it a real try before stopping.) As with most things, it’s an exercise in loving bonding and serious pain. LB is a vengeance angry nurser. Sure, take your time figuring out that’s a hungry cry, go on. Ze will clamp down in a punishment latch like a terrier capturing prey and shaking it to death for a minute before settling into a proper one. “Well,” you’d gasp through clenched teeth “I deserved that.”
PiC is supportive, of course, buying armloads of lactation teas (confusing the hell out of the cashier at Sprouts), brewing a cuppa nonstop, refilling the water bottle, making sure I’m eating. Grimacing with empathy when Angry Latch happens.
Costs
Formula, $35
Bottles (we like glass, used for both formula and pumped milk), $22
Breast pump, covered by insurance
Recovery and healing
I don’t know how one does this but surely it should involve less pain?? At some point? But not without loads of pain meds so far.
It was a rather traumatic delivery and my body didn’t cope well with it. On that note, f*ck episiotomies and scar tissue.
PiC literally did all the heavy lifting as I’m not allowed to lift more than LB. We were incredibly grateful to dear friends and family who came to the rescue, covering baby butt patting shifts so PiC could leave us for more than four consecutive minutes. Just born and the kid was already attached to him. Poor guy. He had a newborn and basically invalid wife and we didn’t know up from down from right or left.
My will is strong but my core is weak. No wonder my back hurts so much. I’m not allowed to work out yet but strengthening the core and my arm muscles lest all the fingers in my hands dislocate are priorities one and two. I need those squeezy ball things you use for hand exercises. (Any recommendations?)
Favorite moments
Waking up to chirps rather than crying for the first time. I was so confused I thought ze had to have been crying.
Sneak attack diaper changes- when LB is in deep enough sleep to overlook the wet diaper (almost never) I try to change the diaper without waking hir. Then do a victory jig when it works.
When I think ze is done eating: eyes are closed, all movement seems to have stopped, breathing is slow and steady. Then ze opens hir eyes and looks directly at me like FOOLED YOU.
We don’t lullaby
We can’t remember the lyrics to kid’s songs so we just improvise unless an old song crops up.
Edelweiss
The Halls of Montezuma
The Heart of Texas
Once Upon a Time in China
I have countless birth announcement emails from friends. They’re all cuddling their freshly born babies, sleek hair framing a tired but smiling face (is that MAKEUP??), painted nails, even classy jewelry.
Me? If I wasn’t already flattened I’d have collapsed into a pile of jelly legged oh my GOD is that over, really? face haloed by a wild nest of hair that could substitute for Medusa’s wig. Hands clasping the new LB that had been too swollen to wear my rings for months. Elegant, not so much. But realistic.
~~~
Our whole experience was surreal. Normal people race to the hospital when they’re told to come in. Us? Panic-repack and take hours to leave the house. Our hospital bag was already 95% completed the week before but going into labor triggered a squirrel-like need to have everything. In the end we hauled enough stuff to camp for five days and barely touched any of it.
Our doctor was right, we only needed one change of clothes each. There was no time or brain or energy to shower or change daily, and no point. We weren’t getting visitors and I had nowhere to be presentable. My job was recovering/pain management and taking care of Little Bean. I lived in hospital gowns and PiC was in charge of everything I couldn’t do: making phone calls, walk-soothing LB, changing diapers, leaving the room ever.
We went in exhausted and hungry so the conditions were sub-optimal. We did have a birth plan but only stuck to maybe 10% of it. That wasn’t a bad thing, they warn that might happen, but it was a little unsettling.
I wanted to manage without an epidural because frankly a needle in the spine and holding still during contractions just sounds like a recipe for disaster but the progression of labor was 0 to 60 once things got started so that intention went out the window. Never mind, I live in enough pain daily not to need to justify myself taking any pain management as needed, so I did, and I think it’s what enabled us to make it to the end, safely.
There were lots of times we felt like we were improvising throughout the long hours in an unfamiliar place and with only each other to lean on. In the end, I still think that was a good thing. I don’t like feeling crowded or too much unsolicited input, it often gets in the way of my best decisions and work. I needed everyone but PiC to just shut up with their “encouragement” during actual labor and I hurt one person’s feelings a bit asking her to not cheerlead because it was so distracting.
After many hours of pain and work, Little Bean joined us in the outside world, rather grumpily. Little did ze know that further indignities were to come: a bath, medications, ID bracelet, the works.
~~~
Hospital Costs: delivery, $150
We have an HMO which is considered either bottom or middle tier insurance from our employer, but I was really happy with it for prenatal and labor& delivery care. This isn’t the case for everyone, I’ve heard so many bad birth stories I was rather nervous, so we’re really grateful how it all turned out.
Our copay covered a three day stay in the hospital, all my meals, a celebratory meal for PiC, and all the medication and medical supplies I or Little Bean needed. Also diapers, wipes, a few other odds and ends.
I shared most meals with PiC as it was a pain for him to leave our room often. I ordered the maximum calories allowed and supplemented with our own snacks. Our nurses brought us extra food and drink as well because it seemed like I was always hungry or thirsty at odd hours even though I hadn’t begun breastfeeding in earnest.
The staff were pretty great. The residents mainly stayed out of the way and treated us like actual people, the nurses were on top of just about everything we needed. One nurse was kind of a jerk but that was at the end of her shift so we didn’t have time to care. Despite arriving at a hospital we’d never had time to tour, we felt it was the best stay we could have asked for.
Discharge costs: meds and supplies, ~$300
Our last nurse loaded us up with all the supplies we could ask for but the projected 4-6 weeks of recovery meant we still had to get refills of everything. Damn good thing I figured out the FSA thing.
Some of the stuff that was covered:
Prescription pain meds,
Maxi pads,
cold compresses,
A donut cushion for my traumatized underside,
Topical witch hazel spray and pads.
~~~
We came home exhausted and elated, with a month of leave planned together with our newest family member, and looking forward to introducing hir to our second “baby”.
Is that it’s rarely ever useful to anyone unless maybe you’re a supervillain who relies on manipulating people and jealousy is a great blinder of common sense and makes people somewhat predictable. That’s not often the case, though, is it?
Lately I’ve been treated to a litany of “I’m so jealous!” from an acquaintance about the pregnancy and then arrival of Little Bean and it’s exasperating.
LB’s pretty cute, sure, but that’s not what the acquaintance, let’s call her A, was talking about. She was talking about the fact that we made the decision to conceive and it happened. But she can’t honestly think we got pregnant to spite her, can she?
I don’t even know what to say in response that wouldn’t be rude and snarky, and for once, “cutting” isn’t what I want to go for here. (Tonya’s perfectionism post suggests an answer though: no one’s life is perfect, so this comes at its own cost …)
Mind, I’m aware I’m incredibly lucky in some respects. Fantastic husband. Some wonderfully supportive friends. A few amazing family members. Seamus is the Mary Poppins of dogs: practically perfect in every way. And now a cute baby.
This doesn’t exist in a vacuum though. I didn’t just fall into a good-luck pit and come up Milhouse. I came by this honestly and worked hard, making the most of whatever luck came about, good or bad. I take nothing for granted. It chafes to keep hearing “you’re so lucky”. Yes, there’s joy but it’s 98% work and sacrifice. It’s weird enough being lectured by every parent off the street about how wonderful parenting is, it’s even stranger to hear about the magic of having kids from someone who doesn’t have them yet because she’s ” not ready to get fat and deal with the stuff you did”. (I promise that “getting fat” was the least of my pregnancy problems!)
My husband is naturally head and shoulders above the average husband in my estimation but he also has to be. He has to pick up the slack created by my chronic diseases that strike as and when it pleases. He has to accept that much of the time I’ll function at 40% of the capacity of normal people. He has to work around my inability to ask for or accept help like a normal human sometimes and not resent my turning into a resentful prickly cactus when I’m feeling extra useless and worthless for not being able to feed myself or stand up under my own power.
My closest friends understand me, misanthropic introvertness and all, and are wonderful company but none of them are in the Bay Area. None could drop by to lend a hand when I’m bedridden, I can’t run over to give them a hug on a bad day or bring them food or keep them company when they’re lonely. At best we’re an 8 hour drive or a 5 hour flight away from each other so the usual to and fro of friendship has to be adapted to long distance.
Cute child? Yep, I think ze is adorable. But LB hardly sleeps and screams like a pair of dueling banshees. I love the kid but no one would mistake hir for a fashion accessory or this experience a walk in the park. Ze has strong opinions and well developed lungs with which to express them.
And this person is familiar with the severity of my health issues, the huge toll I pay for this otherwise enjoyable life. My professional skills and personal wealth aren’t worth much in the face of debilitating illness. You can’t buy the absence of pain, you can’t negotiate away crap health. You don’t get to cherry pick the good stuff in life and leave the bad so what’s the point of envying the one thing in isolation?
Maybe this acquaintance is just trying to (awkwardly!!) pay some sort of compliment suggesting that my life too is worthy of envy, passing over some validation to the hermit like a communal pipe around the campfire. In a odd way, that could make sense as she’s an extremely fit semi-jetsetter type who travels internationally regularly and on a whim. Her life adventures are neat, they’re things I couldn’t do anymore or maybe wouldn’t choose to do (snorkeling? never again!),. But I don’t need to covet cool things to admire them and especially don’t seek validation.
The only thing anyone has that I’d want is great health. For anything else, I could get off my duff and do something about getting some of that awesome for myself.
As I write this, Seamus is sitting on my foot soliciting attention, offering a pawshake in exchange for a real scratch. We know to ask for what we want in this family.
Bottom line: I’m happy enough with my lot in life and what I’m doing that I can be happy for others and their good fortune. That takes nothing away from anyone.
Is this a familiar phenomenon to anyone else? Do you have an envious friend or acquaintance?
