day care dilemma

Liam D will be 12 weeks old on Saturday, which means "that day" will soon follow. I have to leave my sweet baby and go back to work (if you must know, I am crying as I write this...it's been a tough week). Twelve weeks seems like such a long time but it has gone by so fast. I am struggling with the fact that someone else will be with my baby more hours out of the day than me.

Going back to work means finding child care, which is not an easy process. Months before Liam was born we decided that in-home care was the best choice for us. I started making phone calls at the end of my pregnancy, and was told by those providers that actually called me back to wait until after he was born. Great, I was hoping to have that done BEFORE we had a new baby. When Liam was a month old, I started calling again. I found there are a lot of providers in our zip code, but hardly any with infant openings. After many calls and interviews we still hadn't found someone that was a perfect fit.

Talk about stressful! We found one gal we really liked but she was only open Monday through Thursday. I really wanted to work a flex schedule and have Fridays off to be with Liam. Unfortunately it was not to be. So I started looking...again. This time I was desperate. But not desperate enough to leave him with someone I wasn't comfortable with. The smell of stale smoke in the house? NOT COOL. A pit bull that visits the day care 2-3 times a week? NO WAY.

We found and finally found a great lady. She's very kind and has a lot of experience. She has a two acre yard with a huge playset and a masters degree in early childhood education. And I had a good feeling about her from our first phone conversation. Hopefully my mother's intuition is spot on. I am still hoping that I'll win the Powerball tomorrow night to avoid having to go back to work, but chances of that are pretty slim.