2 Demanding Jobs: Nanny or Daycare?

[1stjohn0666]

hi! i see this question posed here a lot with diff circumstances.. so was hoping to get some advice from people in similar circumstances.

i’m in a senior managerial role in consulting, a demanding but somewhat flexible job and i WFH. my husb is in a surgical residency and works 6a-6p ish M-F and some weekends. w have outsourced a lot of our household labor (cleaning, some laundry, meal prep, someone drives the dog to daycare, etc).

we have an 8.5 mo and have had a nanny since i went back to work at 5 mo. our intention was to put him in daycare after a year or so.

we put ourselves on 2 daycare waitlists, but neither of them i would consider great or ideal (eg, both have 15 min transit times driving). we have looked and looked and the daycare options in our city (we are in the south) just generally don’t seem great. one highly-rated daycare had 30!!!! babies in a room with 5 caretakers, WHAT!

the nanny is good, but not great (eg, she’s not credentialed and doesn’t do structured activities w him… but i’m not sure whether/when that becomes impt anyway?). she has had personal emergencies (she’s a single mom to a 9 yr old boy) for which we’ve had to procure backup care, but overall it’s probably not as much/often as we’d need for daycare illness.

so.. has anyone been in a similar situation, specifically with 2 demanding jobs and not great daycare options? what did/would you do?

please assume money is not an issue. it might be but for purposes of this let’s say it’s not.

 

[reebern]

@1stjohn0666 Absolutely nanny. We were in a similar position (biglaw lawyer and resident) and tried daycare for a month and it almost broke me.

 

[1stjohn0666]

@reebern bc of the time spent picking up/dropping off/getting ready? bc of daycare illnesses? bc of being the only person responsible for these things (bc i assume your partner, like mine, is always at the hospital lol)?

 

[reebern]

@1stjohn0666 Really it’s mostly the last two. Kid was immediately sick, then I was sick and having to both work and take care of kid simultaneously (while sick). Husband is a great partner, but yeah, couldn’t help at all for last minute childcare gaps.

I don’t know what your partner’s specialty is or how much longer residency is, but for us, things improved a ton after residency. Husband is now an attending and we’ve had a second kid. This time, he worked 4 days a week when I went back to work after mat leave. And we have a lot more money to throw at any problems.

 

[christianbikerg]

@1stjohn0666 30 babies in a room is pretty bonkers.

Have you asked the nanny to do structured activities with him? Would she be open to you saying "hey, we'd love for you to take him to Little Gym [or music class or whatever] on Tuesdays at X time"? That might be something she's not into, but maybe she just needs a nudge. She might appreciate getting out and about as well.

I wouldn't get off the waitlists yet but if you can work with the nanny I would do that. Not sure what you're looking for as far as credentialing... but you could offer to pay for infant CPR or first aid or one of those classes, since you say money isn't an issue.

 

[1stjohn0666]

@christianbikerg oh yes we looked at little gym (her suggestion actually) and plan to enroll him when cold/flu season winds down! i mean structured activities like i imagine they do in daycare? learning colors/shapes, circle time?? or you know anything that resembles an actual learning environment (as opposed to just watching over him). i’m not sure how impt this is/when it becomes impt, i don’t think it’s now at 8.5 mo, but when i’ve seen others advocating for daycare this seems to be a reason.

by not credentialed i mean no education/training in early childhood learning, in contrast to (some?) daycare workers. again, not sure how impt this is. as for safety training, we are both doing an infant CPR class next month and i’m paying for it!

 

[monicajoy44]

@1stjohn0666 At this point it’s mostly learning through exploration and observation, it’s okay to not have any “structured” activities like cutesy art projects etc. that you see at daycares (i am all about cutesy art projects but it’s not developmentally necessary for a baby/young toddler). I know this might be a little more work for you, but maybe you could map out some routines to help her out?

As a SAHM at that point(with an ECE background), with a 2 nap schedule, our days looked like: wake up and nurse, books and snuggle time, breakfast, indoor play, nap, nurse, library/swim lesson/some kind of activity, lunch, nap, nurse, outside play (like a walk or go to a park), snack, then my husband would get home from work and we’d do our dinner/evening routine. That’s mostly what they’d get in daycare - more routines and socialization, and that’s a pretty easy problem to solve. I hope that this helps!

 

[mh86]

@1stjohn0666 Those daycares sound rough. A lot open up with the toddler rooms. I wouldn’t switch for less than a fantastic daycare. They really don’t need social interaction with their peers until like 3. We’re switching from a meh nanny to a daycare we really love when he’s 2. Money played a big factor for us. I picked one of the most expensive daycares in our area and it’s still less than half the cost of the nanny.

 

[spacecadet3767]

@1stjohn0666 Stick with your nanny. I’m all about daycare but you already have a reservations, and your nanny sounds reliable.

 

[glorytothefather2245]

@1stjohn0666 I vote for nanny, but one that does outings for socialization and can provide structure. A daycare is fine, but that's a lot of kids. Plus, getting a kid ready and out of the house and then back at the end of the day takes a lot time and commuting. With a nanny, you have more time to get ready and a safer less stressed commute

 

[love1989]

@1stjohn0666 Absolutely nanny. Find the best and most reliable one you can comfortably afford.

My husband and I have a very similar situation - he works 12+ hour days, fully in-office with zero flexibility. I work from home (also consulting) and have a demanding but more flexible job. That means that ANY time we have a lapse in care, it falls to me, so we needed a nanny whose personal life was not going to require substantial flexibility other than routine doctor’s appts, etc. and we were up front about that.

Our nanny also handles all the kids’ laundry, toy organization, packs their lunches and takes them to school, cooks them delicious and healthy food, etc. It helps alleviate a lot of the guilt I feel for being unavailable and exhausted a lot of the time to know that this other person who they love is doing so much to care for them.

 

[matt21]

@1stjohn0666 I’d look for a new nanny

 

[cins]

@1stjohn0666 My husband and I both have a demanding jobs, and it seems that most of my coworkers have spouses who also have demanding jobs (lots of attorney, physician, engineer, consultant, accountant combos) Most of my younger coworkers with babies and toddlers have opted for daycare. The first year is rough, but if you can weather it, then it gets much better. We went with daycare (and this is the same general consensus from others I have talked to) is that’s it’s simply more reliable and less expensive, and no one wants to spend more money and be scrambling for backup care just as often. There are good daycares in my area though, so if there weren’t, this may be different.

However, many of my older coworkers (people in 40s/50s) have said that they pretty much all eventually ended up with a nanny, whether it was after having multiple kids, which made daycare more expensive, or once their kid started pre-k/kindergarten, and the hours/calendar no longer aligned like daycare does.

Ultimately, both have downsides and upsides, but if you already have a nanny that you like and find to be generally reliable, then it doesn’t seem like there is a need to change.

 

[emmanuelkagie]

@1stjohn0666 Just chiming in to say that a 15 min drive each way doesn't sound that bad for daycare. With traffic ours can take about 20 minutes and that's a 7 mile drive. We did not want an in home childcare situation and that's all that was available in our town. There were 3 big chains and a few independent centers the next town over so we went with one of them. It's on my way to and home from work so we figured it was worth the time in the car, which has actually been great for our now 9 month old as she is so much better in the car than she was when we started thanks to all the time spent in there.

 

[1stjohn0666]

@emmanuelkagie 15 min is not terrible! just not great for us. we don’t commute so it’s 15 min there & back 2x per day, plus transition time. AND i would be the only one to do pickups/dropoffs. so that’s 1.5 hours of my time that could be spent working.

 

[emmanuelkagie]

@1stjohn0666 I see. I work from home 2x a week myself so I still bring her in regular time and run errands on the way home. Maybe you could make it a little more than just a drive for daycare?

 

[liuy]

@1stjohn0666 We did both. We hired part time nanny to do the morning routine for us and took them to daycare. The person who did the morning routine would wake them up, get them ready, fed, make their lunch and get them to daycare. It was fabulous. If I had to go to the client site I didn’t have to worry about getting everyone ready and if I was WFH I could have my coffee and visit with the kids while someone else was getting everything together. The part time nanny was also available for evening pickups as needed when we had work events or if I was traveling and my husband needed more support.

Kids are now 10 & 13. We both work from home though I still travel every couple of months (went from a client service to internal global role in consulting) and we still have someone help in the mornings. So long as transportation is still needed in the mornings, I will not let go of having someone help us out.

 

[1stjohn0666]

@liuy ooh this sounds great, and takes care of some of the daycare cons (like transit time i mentioned). can i ask when you started this? was the nanny FT when your kids were infants?

 

[liuy]

@1stjohn0666 When I had my first I had a local client and my husband worked out of the house with a 1.5 hr commute each way. I did everything in the mornings and we split the evenings. It killed me. I realized when I was pregnant with my second that something had to give. I found a local grad student who could part time nanny. She started when I was midway through maternity leave with my second. My kids both started daycare at 14 weeks old (the daycare we were at was a bit of a unicorn). It was a daycare that had a staff with very good retention, some had been there for 20+ years, all had college degrees, and at least one teacher in each room had an advanced degree in early education or special education - they taught me so much as a parent.

 

[seagonwarms]

@liuy This is legit. Our current nanny suggested this but we don’t have the car capabilities right now but gosh I would pay $50 for an hour for someone to be at my house at 7am, get my kids up, fed and to school. +$20 if they managed to brush my daughters hair