Day Care Dilemma

Last semester, when I returned to school, I was able to do a pretty good job managing my teaching responsibilities and mothering duties thanks to help from Billy and Patti, who watched Nora while I went to campus for lectures and discussion sections.  I kept hoping I’d be able to accomplish more of my own academic work as the semester went on, but I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere.  “I feel like I’m stuck in the mud,” I told one of my mentor professors.  “Your mud will dry, Liz.”  When I asked her what she meant by that, she said “You’re smart enough, but more importantly, you have the self discipline it takes to be successful.”  I had to ask myself: was she still right?  What had happened to my self discipline?  Why, when the clock struck 9 every night, was I crawling into bed instead of cracking open a book?

I kept thinking that once Nora got onto a somewhat regular schedule, I’d be able to manage my time better.  I’ve always gotten a lot of difficult work done because I’m good at forcing myself to do necessary things before allowing myself to do fun things.  That prioritization approach to time management doesn’t work when you have a baby, though.  I can’t put off playing with her or feeding her until I get through another chapter. And though I tried staying up late and waking up early to get my work done, I was just way too tired to do any good, quality work during these periods.

About a month ago, I realized that despite the fact that Nora was finally keeping a fairly reliable schedule, and I was getting quite a bit of work done, that amount of work was nowhere near enough.  Further, I began to realize how impossible it was to do the type of really serious thinking and focused reading my job requires in the one hour chunks that Nora’s schedule allows.  It is remarkable how much more I can accomplish if I can sit down for two uninterrupted hours than if I can sit down for one hour two separate times. 

So we started considering the possibility of finding a day care placement for Nora.  Initially I was hoping to find a part time solution, but that is difficult to secure, and I realized that putting her in full-time care would buy me significantly more time to work.  I was nervous about making the full time suggestion to Billy, but all he said was “If that’s what it will take for you to get your work done, that’s what we will do.”  I should have known.

I spent about two weeks searching the web, making phone calls, and visiting day care facilities.  I was hoping to find a place that was reasonably priced, conveniently located, and made me feel comfortable, but I quickly learned that given the limited availability starting in late August, I wasn’t going to be able to meet all those requirements.  In the end, I feel thankful to have found a place we can afford where I know Nora will flourish, even if it’s farther away than I’d like and costs more than I was hoping to spend. 

One of the facilities upset me: none of the babies or workers seemed happy.  Others seemed fine, and I didn’t think leaving Nora behind there would be too bad.  But the one we chose feels like a place she might actually enjoy attending.  It’s a “school,” so they use education language for everything.  We’ll pay “tuition,” she’ll have two “teachers” who write daily “lesson plans” for their classes, we’ll get a daily “progress report” on how she did, etc.  This choice of words is effective.  Even if they weren’t any different in practice, it would be easier to talk myself into taking Nora to “school” than to gear myself up for leaving her at “day care.”  But I do think this school offers a lot of things she’ll enjoy.  The teachers have backgrounds in early childhood education, so they know how to foster her development. She is fascinated by other babies, so I know she’ll enjoy having the opportunity to socialize.  She takes in new surroundings like a little sponge, so I imagine the curriculum of “pre-ballet,” baby yoga, “tiny tennis,” language lessons in English, Spanish, and sign language, and the like will keep her little brain occupied.  And she’ll even get to keep her own schedule until she starts walking steadily, when she’ll be upgraded into the classroom that attempts to establish a routine for all the kids to follow.

For all of these reasons, taking Nora to “school” for a few days each week actually appeals to me.  It’s the idea of taking her there full time that makes me feel anxious about this impending change in our lifestyle.  When I left her with Patti and Billy for as long as six hours, I didn’t really feel like she missed me.  Even so, I was home with her every other day, so she got plenty of mama time in between babysitting days… and I got plenty of Nora time.  The timing also makes it tough.  I’ve gotten to see all of her milestones so far, and I love watching her learn new things every week, so it makes me sad to think I might miss her first steps or her first real words. 

When I start to feel really anxious or nervous about it, I run through this list of things to remember:

-It’s only going to be for about four months.

-I’ll still get to spend a few hours with her every evening before bed.

-It is a necessary means to an end: leaving her full time for a few months will help me clear this major hurdle in my program, which I hope will mean I can scale back to part-time care in the future without jeopardizing my academic standing.

-Being in graduate school is not costing me time spent with my daughter; it has given me much more time with her.  It’s not fair to think of this change as something I “have” to do because I’m a graduate student.  If I was still teaching high school, Nora would have been in full-time care since she was 12 weeks old, and I would have had to return her to day care after a summer off at the exact same time.

-I get the most work done when I’m under pressure or highly motivated.  If expensive, forced separation from my daughter doesn’t push me to become highly efficient while we’re apart, I’m not going to be able to finish my degree, and I might as well learn that now.

Most of all, though, I try to remind myself how fortunate I am that after I drop Nora off, I get to go do work that I enjoy.  After we made the decision, I actually began looking forward to having the chance to sit down and do some serious work.  The fact that it’s still over a month away means I can try to soak up all the extra time with Nora in the interim.  And in the meantime, I’m trying to finish my syllabus and make all of my lesson plans so that once the semester starts, I can focus the majority of my time and energy on preparing for my exam.

Here goes nothing?

Seriously, how cute is she?  Now that she can stand, it's all she wants to do.