Of Baby Brain, Nannies and other Miscellany

I locked myself in my pants today. Seriously. I was literally stuck in my khakis.

It was the rubber-band trick that got me. I figured I’d wear these non-maternity khakis since they’re one of the two pairs of pre-pregnancy pants I can still get over my butt, where apparently half of my pregnancy weight is going, and my stomach, where the other half is (more understandably) showing up.

So it’s mid-morning and I make one of my many trips to the bathroom, but instead of unwinding the rubber band from around the button of my pants I somehow keep winding it around instead, and I keep doing it until it’s so tightly wrapped around it that there’s no way I can get it untangled. I actually had to leave the bathroom and cut it off. I blamed it on baby brain, since I obviously just wasn’t thinking during what should have been a fairly mindless task.

In other (better) news, I know I wrote recently about the challenges of researching good daycare. That whole issue was made even more frightening the other day when that news story came out about the 22-year-old local daycare worker who killed an 18 month old when she literally slammed him to the floor because she was frustrated with him. How utterly horrifying is that? I know a girl who actually considered that very same place for her son, who is the same age, and she was incredibly shaken by the story. Any parent would be. I mean, it’s hard enough to send your child into a stranger’s care, but many, many families don’t have a choice but to do just that, and then you hear about something like this.

Of course, even with a nanny you aren’t completely escaping that problem. But when you’re picking a nanny, the search and interview process is much more about the person herself (or himself, I suppose, but let’s be realistic here) than about the place, which is where most of the research for daycare centers focuses. I bring up the nanny thing because the other night out of the blue, Laurie called and said she and Jeff have decided not to send their girls back to his sister for another year after all. They’re going to get a nanny instead, which puts our old idea of nanny sharing back on the table.

I’m excited about it for a lot of reasons. First, because the attention is much more personal, and the kids would be at ours or their house rather than somewhere that could be farther away. Also, they can do personalized outings, there won’t be a room full of kids who will be getting sick all the time, and the kids can all get to know their cousins (well, as much as an infant can “know” people, I suppose).

So the four of us are going to get together next Friday and talk details: how it might work, what kind of person we’d want to find, what hours we’d want them to cover, and of course, how the finances would work. We touched on this a little in our initial conversation. On one hand you could say they should pay 2/3 and we should pay 1/3 because they have two kids and we’ll have one. But one of their girls will be in kindergarten half the day. And babies demand a different level of care. But babies also spend a lot of time sleeping. And so on. The four of us have a very good relationship so I think these discussions will go smoothly, but I hope it doesn’t end up being the kind of thing that we could eventually fight about. Laurie has a very strong personality, but then, so can I. So we’ll see. Nothing’s definite, but I’m excited about it.

In other news, we had a doctors’ appointment this morning. Now that we have our fetal doppler, the excitement of hearing the baby’s heartbeat there isn’t as big of a deal, but it’s always nice to have the chance to ask the doctor my random questions. Unlike last time, when literally the only thing I could think of to ask was whether I could eat sausage, I had a small list this time:

• Were these new and changing moles I was getting normal or should I see a dermatologist? (They were fine; I’ve read in multiple places that moles can get darker or more numerous during pregnancy, but it’s always good to have them checked out).
• Were there any yoga moves I shouldn’t be doing during pregnancy? (My doctor asked if I was doing prenatal yoga classes and I said, no, just the yoga on Wii Fit. She said the poses should be fine unless they put too much pressure on my abdomen or cause me to really bear down. As far as poses that start on my back, she said I’d feel it when I shouldn’t be doing those anymore).
• Should I stop drinking my two caffeine-free Diet Cokes a day and cup or two of decaf coffee because of the artificial sweeteners in the soda and small amounts of caffeine in the coffee? (No and no).
• Was my 10-pound weight gain at 16 weeks and 5 days too much? (For now it’s fine, she said, but she added that it should start to taper off. I wonder how or why that would happen, though, since I can’t see myself starting to be less hungry…)

And that was it. The really big part of the visit came at the very end, when we scheduled our next appointment. Yes, four weeks from today, on Feb. 19, we’ll find out the answer to that eternal question: pink or blue?

The Childcare Question

Before we ever got pregnant, we used to joke, semi-seriously, with Laurie and Jeff that if we had a baby at the right time, we could share a nanny. They’ve been in the lucky position since they had their first little girl 4 1/2 years ago to have Jeff’s sister watch the kids at her house with their cousins. They pay her, of course, but what a sweet deal to be able to leave your kids with someone you absolutely know beyond all doubt you can trust 110%. The only drawback for them is that his sister lives about 30 minutes in the complete opposite direction from where either of them work, so it makes for long commutes each way. They switch off – one does the morning and the other the afternoon.

But the point is that they were going to stop that this next school year because his sister was thinking about going back to work. And they’re about reading to be done with  all the driving, too, so when we got pregnant with a July due date, it seemed like the timing was perfect and that we might really be able to try nanny sharing. I did a little investigating online, and not only is a good nanny hard to find, but boy, they are expensive! But we figured it could be worthwhile sharing the bill. Unfortunately, when I talked to Laurie about it the other week, it looks like they might stick with their current arrangement for another year after all. That means I really have to start thinking hard about daycare.

There are so many questions to ask – do we want a center or in-home? If we choose a center, are the big chains good or is it better to go with a local independent provider? What are the benefits of in-home care, and how do you find a good, reputable provider? Which of these might be willing to provide part-time care, since we might have my dad watch the baby for a day or two each week?

Given all the online research I do for work, I’m pretty savvy when it comes to Google, but still, there’s SO much info out there. There are a few Web sites that offer rankings of local childcare, but the thing is, none of them really has gotten popular enough to reach the critical mass it needs to be really valid. There might be one or two reviews for a handful of places, but even then, you don’t really know if actual customers wrote them. I have read some good things about some national programs, and I’ll look into their branches in my neighborhood to start. Then the question becomes, when do you need to start really getting serious? Should I be booking appointments to tour these places now? So many things I hear and read say you need to get on waiting lists as early as the first trimester for some places.

Obviously the ideal thing would be to get recommendations from people I know, but the thing is, everyone I know with kids has found some great in-home set-up where they somehow know the person, or just gets a sitter a couple of days a week, or stays home. I don’t know anyone who sends their kids to a daycare center locally.

For now, my plan is to call a few local centers I’ve found and to try to talk to my next door neighbor to see if she has any recommendations. She stays at home with her kids, but she’s lived in this neighborhood a long time and might have heard things. She also knows a lot of the other neighbors that have kids. Not much of a plan yet, but that’s all I’ve got.