A couple of months ago, we finally started Diya back up at daycare after keeping her home for months. She rotated around between me, Gregg, and my mom while she was in her spica cast, but after that, no one had any time off left so it was back to daycare. I struggled a lot with the decision because I just couldn't imagine how she'd do with her brace. I even ended up postponing my return back to work one week because the week after she got her brace was pretty hellish. She was cranky and clearly in pain. We thought the brace would be easier than the cast but it really wasn't at first.
For one thing, she came out of the cast looking disgusting. Big old stains across her legs where poop had collected and we had been unable to reach while she was in the cast. Her legs were infected in places, an area under her knees looked like there might be mold growing. AND to top things off, they cut her with the saw when they removed the cast. She screamed bloody murder the entire time they were removing it and didn't stop for a long long time after. Between the trauma and the scars and the pus, the first week was horrible. Gregg even wished we could get the cast back. The brace was hard to take off for each diaper change. She seemed uncomfortable in it at night and woke up every 45 minutes to an hour. I couldn't bring myself to take her back to daycare like that, so I took off that whole first week.
When she finally did go back, I wasn't much happier. Our daycare, that I'd always had a love-hate relationship with anyway, had grown in our absence. Before we had removed her, it was a brand new daycare with few kids. Diya was actually the first baby in the infant room and had the teacher's attention to herself for a long time. Then two more kids started. One was quite a bit older and spent a chunk of his time with the toddlers in the next room. The other was a mellow, low-maintenance chubby little boy a few months younger than Diya. They got along really well and things still seemed ok. I didn't love the teacher, but she was caring and that seemed to be the most important thing. The things that bugged me -- Diya wouldn't nap there. And anytime she fussed, the teacher seemed to just want to give her a bottle even when it wasn't time to eat. I spent a lot of time working on Diya's routine during my maternity leave and subsequent time off periods. One day back at daycare and it all went frustratingly kaput.
When we came back after Diya's cast had been removed, the problems had magnified because now there were more babies. And the frazzled well-meaning teacher could not keep up. I'd visit during lunch and it would be chaos. Babies would be crying in their playpens, and she'd be running around like a chicken with her head cut off trying to figure out who was up for a bottle. One might be getting fed but the others would just be hanging out by themselves. My child was always in good spirits and seemed perfectly content on her own. But if I hadn't shown up during lunch every single day for a week and put her down myself for her 2nd nap, I kind of doubt she'd have gotten one. Against CA regulations, the daycare was understaffed. There were chunks of time when it'd be just this one teacher to 5 or more kids (1:4 is the required ratio).
It was a stressful time for me. I was trying to get back into the swing of things at work but couldn't focus. I'd come pick Diya up every day and be dismayed to realize she had slept for maybe half hour to an one hour tops. At home, she takes 2 naps, for a total of AT LEAST 3 hours but usually more. Her bottles would have been given to her randomly so there never seemed to be a pattern each day. I'd have to repeat her schedule to them every morning and if I wasn't exact, I'd find things would be done differently (solids first, then milk, nap before anything else, etc). I felt like a micromanager but didn't know what else to do.
So Gregg and I started looking for a nanny. Which brought on its own drama. For one, they are super expensive. And at first, we seemed to be mostly interviewing duds. I called one Indian woman who didn't even speak enough English to talk on the phone, she had to put her teenage daugther on. We interviewed this Vietnamese lady whose English-speaking skills were also pretty poor. But what ended the interview for me was when she said that her last baby had refused to eat anything. I asked her how she'd handled it and she said that she had prayed a lot. One girl told me that she hadn't really worked with infants but "was sure she could figure it out." Another sounded illegal and asked if we would be able to pay in cash. More than a couple were freaked out by dogs. We did though finally manage to narrow it down to a few potential candidates and started debating if we were willing to take on the payroll headache of having a household employee. And then randomly (well, after we had a huge blowout with me going on about Gregg not taking this seriously enough), Gregg stumbled onto this daycare that was a couple of minutes from our house.
We went to visit and I was dubious. They seemed fine but they are a Spanish immersion program. Hmm, I said, I don't even speak Spanish. Am I not going to be able to understand our kid's first words? Or not be able to communicate with her teachers? From past experience, I have a lot to say about how Diya's days go. More than that, all the other kids there are older than Diya. I wondered how that would work with Diya's brace. Would they be careful around her? I visited one morning with Diya but couldn't get a sense of how things would go for her there. It's a small daycare, and I guess they recently relocated. So they're not at capacity yet. Diya would be the only infant (again) at first. So it was hard to know if they'd be any better about Diya's eating and napping schedule than the old place. When I visited, I was struck by the teacher's awesome Spanish-teaching skills but had no idea how the caregiving would work.
The director seemed good though, and Gregg seemed into the program more than I was. I think he especially felt weird about having a stranger in our house watching our baby. And that part didn't sit that well with me etiher. Plus the thing is, Diya really likes other kids. Not to mention that it would cost us more to hire a nanny for 3 days a week than we'd be paying for a full daycare. So we decided to give it a shot.
And I have to say that I'm HUGELY impressed (Gregg's been crowing about it for weeks now, you know it being his find and all -- never mind that he had to be prodded into looking for it but whatever). From the beginning this daycare has been about finding Diya's routines and encouraging them. I told them on the first day when she generally naps and haven't had to mention it since. They experimented a bit that first week and tweaked a few things. But since then, her daily time sheets read remarkly the same, at least as far as napping and meal times are concerned. And amazingly, she naps at this daycare!! Usually about 45 minutes in the morning and about 2 hours in the afternoon. She's done better at home, but at least this is in the ballpark of what's normal. This is something she never did well at the old daycare, even when she was the only baby there.
She fits in well with the other kids. It's been nice because her schedule going in was almost like what the other kids already did. She's the only one that still takes a morning nap, but otherwise, she eats at around the same time and her second nap coincides with the afternoon nap time. That's a huge plus. She eats breakfast and lunch with everyone and has an afternoon snack when everyone wakes up. Coming at the end of the day to find that she's been all over the place with the bottles and solids is something that's never happened here.
AND, they've been great about working on developmental issues, which is something I couldn't even hope for at the old place. If I mention something, they've already started doing it. For instance, I'm going to be weaning soon and want Diya to be drinking from a sippy cup before I do. Turns out they had already been working on her drinking from one before I brought it up. Diya was constipated and before I said anything, they were pushing her to drink more water and eat more fruits. I love that we're on the same page and they're often ahead of me. I remember a couple of weeks ago, the teacher was telling me that the director is very strict about teaching the kids to feed themselves and drink from sippy cups. I was a little bit worried that day, had this whole picture of them forcing a spoon into her hand and shoving it into her mouth. OMG, what are they going to be doing to my child, I wondered. First, they wanted to deprive her of her toys, and now THIS? But each meal now, Diya has been demonstrating her new skills and it's pretty exciting to see how proud she is of them.
And mostly, I love how much they seem to love her. Maybe it's just for my benefit, but each of the teachers there has mentioned a number of times what a sweetheart she is, how she barely cries, how much she LOVES TO EAT, etc. Clearly she saves the crying for mom, but whatever. When I pick her up or drop her off, the older kids always start screaming her name. I've picked her up a bunch of times now to find that the teachers have done her hair in pigtails. It's been pretty darn cute.
So I guess for now, the nanny search is off.
For one thing, she came out of the cast looking disgusting. Big old stains across her legs where poop had collected and we had been unable to reach while she was in the cast. Her legs were infected in places, an area under her knees looked like there might be mold growing. AND to top things off, they cut her with the saw when they removed the cast. She screamed bloody murder the entire time they were removing it and didn't stop for a long long time after. Between the trauma and the scars and the pus, the first week was horrible. Gregg even wished we could get the cast back. The brace was hard to take off for each diaper change. She seemed uncomfortable in it at night and woke up every 45 minutes to an hour. I couldn't bring myself to take her back to daycare like that, so I took off that whole first week.
When she finally did go back, I wasn't much happier. Our daycare, that I'd always had a love-hate relationship with anyway, had grown in our absence. Before we had removed her, it was a brand new daycare with few kids. Diya was actually the first baby in the infant room and had the teacher's attention to herself for a long time. Then two more kids started. One was quite a bit older and spent a chunk of his time with the toddlers in the next room. The other was a mellow, low-maintenance chubby little boy a few months younger than Diya. They got along really well and things still seemed ok. I didn't love the teacher, but she was caring and that seemed to be the most important thing. The things that bugged me -- Diya wouldn't nap there. And anytime she fussed, the teacher seemed to just want to give her a bottle even when it wasn't time to eat. I spent a lot of time working on Diya's routine during my maternity leave and subsequent time off periods. One day back at daycare and it all went frustratingly kaput.
When we came back after Diya's cast had been removed, the problems had magnified because now there were more babies. And the frazzled well-meaning teacher could not keep up. I'd visit during lunch and it would be chaos. Babies would be crying in their playpens, and she'd be running around like a chicken with her head cut off trying to figure out who was up for a bottle. One might be getting fed but the others would just be hanging out by themselves. My child was always in good spirits and seemed perfectly content on her own. But if I hadn't shown up during lunch every single day for a week and put her down myself for her 2nd nap, I kind of doubt she'd have gotten one. Against CA regulations, the daycare was understaffed. There were chunks of time when it'd be just this one teacher to 5 or more kids (1:4 is the required ratio).
It was a stressful time for me. I was trying to get back into the swing of things at work but couldn't focus. I'd come pick Diya up every day and be dismayed to realize she had slept for maybe half hour to an one hour tops. At home, she takes 2 naps, for a total of AT LEAST 3 hours but usually more. Her bottles would have been given to her randomly so there never seemed to be a pattern each day. I'd have to repeat her schedule to them every morning and if I wasn't exact, I'd find things would be done differently (solids first, then milk, nap before anything else, etc). I felt like a micromanager but didn't know what else to do.
So Gregg and I started looking for a nanny. Which brought on its own drama. For one, they are super expensive. And at first, we seemed to be mostly interviewing duds. I called one Indian woman who didn't even speak enough English to talk on the phone, she had to put her teenage daugther on. We interviewed this Vietnamese lady whose English-speaking skills were also pretty poor. But what ended the interview for me was when she said that her last baby had refused to eat anything. I asked her how she'd handled it and she said that she had prayed a lot. One girl told me that she hadn't really worked with infants but "was sure she could figure it out." Another sounded illegal and asked if we would be able to pay in cash. More than a couple were freaked out by dogs. We did though finally manage to narrow it down to a few potential candidates and started debating if we were willing to take on the payroll headache of having a household employee. And then randomly (well, after we had a huge blowout with me going on about Gregg not taking this seriously enough), Gregg stumbled onto this daycare that was a couple of minutes from our house.
We went to visit and I was dubious. They seemed fine but they are a Spanish immersion program. Hmm, I said, I don't even speak Spanish. Am I not going to be able to understand our kid's first words? Or not be able to communicate with her teachers? From past experience, I have a lot to say about how Diya's days go. More than that, all the other kids there are older than Diya. I wondered how that would work with Diya's brace. Would they be careful around her? I visited one morning with Diya but couldn't get a sense of how things would go for her there. It's a small daycare, and I guess they recently relocated. So they're not at capacity yet. Diya would be the only infant (again) at first. So it was hard to know if they'd be any better about Diya's eating and napping schedule than the old place. When I visited, I was struck by the teacher's awesome Spanish-teaching skills but had no idea how the caregiving would work.
The director seemed good though, and Gregg seemed into the program more than I was. I think he especially felt weird about having a stranger in our house watching our baby. And that part didn't sit that well with me etiher. Plus the thing is, Diya really likes other kids. Not to mention that it would cost us more to hire a nanny for 3 days a week than we'd be paying for a full daycare. So we decided to give it a shot.
And I have to say that I'm HUGELY impressed (Gregg's been crowing about it for weeks now, you know it being his find and all -- never mind that he had to be prodded into looking for it but whatever). From the beginning this daycare has been about finding Diya's routines and encouraging them. I told them on the first day when she generally naps and haven't had to mention it since. They experimented a bit that first week and tweaked a few things. But since then, her daily time sheets read remarkly the same, at least as far as napping and meal times are concerned. And amazingly, she naps at this daycare!! Usually about 45 minutes in the morning and about 2 hours in the afternoon. She's done better at home, but at least this is in the ballpark of what's normal. This is something she never did well at the old daycare, even when she was the only baby there.
She fits in well with the other kids. It's been nice because her schedule going in was almost like what the other kids already did. She's the only one that still takes a morning nap, but otherwise, she eats at around the same time and her second nap coincides with the afternoon nap time. That's a huge plus. She eats breakfast and lunch with everyone and has an afternoon snack when everyone wakes up. Coming at the end of the day to find that she's been all over the place with the bottles and solids is something that's never happened here.
AND, they've been great about working on developmental issues, which is something I couldn't even hope for at the old place. If I mention something, they've already started doing it. For instance, I'm going to be weaning soon and want Diya to be drinking from a sippy cup before I do. Turns out they had already been working on her drinking from one before I brought it up. Diya was constipated and before I said anything, they were pushing her to drink more water and eat more fruits. I love that we're on the same page and they're often ahead of me. I remember a couple of weeks ago, the teacher was telling me that the director is very strict about teaching the kids to feed themselves and drink from sippy cups. I was a little bit worried that day, had this whole picture of them forcing a spoon into her hand and shoving it into her mouth. OMG, what are they going to be doing to my child, I wondered. First, they wanted to deprive her of her toys, and now THIS? But each meal now, Diya has been demonstrating her new skills and it's pretty exciting to see how proud she is of them.
And mostly, I love how much they seem to love her. Maybe it's just for my benefit, but each of the teachers there has mentioned a number of times what a sweetheart she is, how she barely cries, how much she LOVES TO EAT, etc. Clearly she saves the crying for mom, but whatever. When I pick her up or drop her off, the older kids always start screaming her name. I've picked her up a bunch of times now to find that the teachers have done her hair in pigtails. It's been pretty darn cute.
So I guess for now, the nanny search is off.
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