Life Update + Tips for Choosing Child Care

A while back I wrote a blog post about being a Self Employed/Entrepreneur Mom and Working from Home with a Baby. I’ve never knew how much love that would get. As fun as it was having her at home (seven days a week with me)- I know that she was getting bored and it was requiring me to take a lot of time out of my schedule to play/entertain her. Which is fine some days BUT when you have deadlines!! Not ideal. I always felt horrible having to have the TV on in the background at times.

After extensive research and moving houses- I decided to get "help". Making sure that she was with the best care. How extensive are we speaking? I mean going to four of the best day cares in my city within 48 hours. Which was insane but literally allowed me to compare them with fresh eyes. We decided on one which was completely out of my traditional ideas of a daycare but she loves it.

HOW did I do it?

I literally got on those Facebook mom groups and asked! I noticed that a few names kept on popping up. After that, I did a search to find out which were the top five with reviews. 

What was important to me on my search?

Atmosphere
How do you feel when you walk in there? I’m sorry to say this but some of them felt like a jail. I just did not get that loving caring atmosphere which is SUPER important to me.

Staff
How are the individuals who would be closely working with your child? I know you’re not able to interview/see everybody on that one time visit but it’s still good to know who some of the staff are within the daycare. When we got there there was a lady who literally took my daughter and put her at the table to sit with the little the other children to socialize while we took a tour. Ava didn’t make a sound- she didn’t complain- she didn’t cry and for me that was it. I knew that would be the place.

Distance
A lot of people don’t think about this but when the weather is extremely horrible- nobody wants to be driving up to an hour to get there. The location we chose is about 4-5 minutes away from our house. I’m able to pick her up and come back home quickly!

Food
Maybe this is just something I generally didn’t know but a lot of these daycares actually provide food for your child. I loved that when I came into the building- I was able to see the menu and see what my baby would be eating on the day she would be in daycare.

As a self-employed mom in Canada, the first thing I felt was major mom guilt. It’s kind a like... "Hey, you’re home. You should have the baby! what’s the point of having her out there if you are already home.. This will give me the opportunity to do things like clean, cook, the most important thing do my work and meet deadlines and also go to the gym. All before she comes home. Probably not everything all in one day... but you get what I mean. I know she's only there part-time but I'm so excited to see her make friends and grow.