13w1d

Today was a good day as far as symptoms go. I didn't feel sick at all and I was able to eat pretty much anything I wanted. For me, not feeling ill makes all the difference. Since I was feeling so well, I decided to start researching daycare centers.

My friend Danette was going to watch the baby, and still might, but last week as her and I were discussing it she mentioned that some mom's prefer a daycare center because they don't have to take days off of work if the babysitter is sick or her kids are sick. So she just thought it would be a good idea for me to put my name on a list and then if we end up not using it, fine.

At first, I was kind of taken back by this thought. I had just assumed, based on all of the conversations that we had that I would just be bringing the baby to her. However, the more time I have spent with this idea the more I am beginning to like it. Danette likes to travel a lot to visit family and some of the trips are kind of on short notice. With us being good friends, I'm afraid I would begin to be annoyed if I had to take several days off during the summer because she was out of town and I really don't want our friendship to suffer.

The major problem that I am facing, however, is that most of the centers have year long waiting lists. So basically, to get my child in at 6 weeks I would have had to register before I was even pregnant.

Today I made a list of all of the centers in our area. Then I called the one that we thought we would like the most. It is about 2 miles from our house and right on my way to work. Since I only live 15 miles from work and no daycare downtown is what I would call "up to my standard" we had decided that we would prefer one close to home. That way if the child was to get sick, either one of us could go, or my parents or his in a pinch. (We all live within 15 miles of eachother)

Now in West Des Moines I know that daycare centers can run between $180-220 per week for an infant. I realize that in parts of the country that is dirt cheap but here that is pretty expensive. The center that I called today is $165 per week but they told me they didn't know how long the waiting list would be. The director wasn't in so I left my name and number and was told someone would call me back. Since it was 3:30, I didn't expect it to be today.

So now that I've gotten the ball rolling I really sat down and looked at how much this was going to cost us. How do people do this again? I'm going to need to do some very creative budgeting in the next 6 months, that's all I know right now.