In a Pickle.

Literally... that's me. In a pickle suit.

jk! I'm not that tall, silly. Nor do I have man-hands. Nor do I wear middle-aged-dude white sneaks. But I AM writing to discuss a pickle I find myself in. Or, that I WILL find myself in eventually. I started thinking about it on Wednesday evening during a related conversation with my SIL Emily - the one with the super-adorable 3-month-old... OH OK stop twisting my arm, I'll toss out a photo for you...

Carsen, 14 wks... LOVE <3

And anyway, ever since I started thinking about it on Wednesday, my worrying mind just won't drop it. Thanks, Em. Thanks a lot ;] So here's the general gist of my conundrum.... child care. YES yes I know, it's just plain dumb for me to fret about this at the moment. But good luck telling that to my frontal cortex. It's already swirling with baby thoughts all the time anyway, so throw something baby-related at it to worry about and then try to stop it from worrying. HA! Good luck to you. Let me know how it works out for you, 'cause I gave up.

I won't even start in on the topic of whether and when I'll ever be able to stomach leaving my child with ANYONE AT ALL, let alone at a daycare, because I am well aware that I won't even BEGIN to understand how I'm going to feel about that until I've held my baby in my arms for real. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that I am in fact going to continue on with my training/career after having my first child (as opposed to abruptly quitting and staying home to have babies forever, which also sounds DELICIOUSLY appealing to me most of the time). What are my options?

That depends on the timing, and where I find myself along my educational path when that blessed day arrives. Without disclosing any of my many top secret baby schemes, let me just say that if you think I'm waiting til I'm out of residency or something to have my first child, you've lost your ever-lovin' mind, my friend. There's simply no way that's happening, short of divine intervention. And people do this ALL the time, and I've met them and spoken with them on the subject, so don't tell me I'm crazy. All that said, chances are I'll be operating within a rather strict educational timeline when our first comes along. I forsee two options being offered to me - I can take a standard maternity leave, 8-12 weeks, or take the entire year off. Of course a year sounds fabulous to me, but I also like having a roof over my head, and modern conveniences like electricity and clothing. Not only would my student loan/residency stipend income be cut off for that year, but my accrued loans would most likely also come due - they're only deferred while I'm in training (ie. enrolled in school at least part time or in a residency program, and even then they're only deferred if we're poor enough). And we can't live on Ben's salary alone as it is, much less with several hundred dollars worth of loan payments per month. So, alas, I believe that's out.

That leaves me with a standard maternity leave situation, followed by... GASP... going back to whatever it is I was doing (long hours regardless of where I am) and LEAVING MY BABY all day. The thought already makes my stomach turn, quite literally, so I really can't imagine how I'll feel when there's actually a real child in the picture. I look at Carsen, my 14-week old niece, and I just can't imagine her parting from her mother TWO WEEKS AGO. I know that people do it, but how?! I guess babies adjust to their new situation with time, but I also think that there really is a time that a baby is ready to be separated from his or her mother, and from what I've seen of babies, 12 weeks probably isn't even close to that time. If you've encountered this situation in your own life, PLEASE tell me about it and make me feel better. I know that thousands of babies live through it and come out just fine, but I just can't wrap my mind around it.

So anyway, all that angst about leaving my child (at all) aside, where do I leave my child, if I must leave my child? Any relatives we have that would be available to watch him or her live too far away. We could move closer to someone, but in any of those cases, Ben's commute becomes over an hour (and that's without traffic). Maybe he'll be more willing to make the extra drive when it's his baby, but he maintains that he's not doing it, and I honestly don't want to make him do that either. I don't like the idea of him wasting two hours a day, 10 hours a week, 40 hours a month of his life in the car commuting, ESPECIALLY when we have a new baby to spend time with. Not to mention the gas and the mileage on the car. There has to be a better solution.

Which leaves us with leaving our child with someone in the area, or near Ben's work (I suspect that my hours will not be convenient to normal daycare hours, so me doing the dropping off and picking up is probably not a possibility). Of course if we were loaded we could just hire a nanny, but (a) that's not the case, and (b) as my astute SIL pointed out, that's the most unregulated situation you can possibly leave your child in. Unless you want to put up cameras and spend all your free time watching the tapes, you'll never know what goes on unless you find a mark on your child. There's no one else in and out, no one watching, no one to be held accountable to. At least at a Kindercare or a Goddard you have parents in and out, windows everywhere, multiple adults all over the place... caregivers are never in a situation where they're truly alone with your child, where no one else could walk by at any moment and see them. Plus those places are very tightly regulated (much more so than private daycares) and inspected frequently.

BUT those places are also HELLA pricey. Not that I plan to be a cheap-ass about my child's safety, but if the money ain't there, the money ain't there. I honestly don't know how ANYONE (particularly people with multiple children) afford that kind of child care. It turns my stomach to think that I'm paying out all that money to put my child in a less-than-ideal environment, when I could give them the best possible care in the world MYSELF, for free. Well, not completely for free... at the cost of my entire financial contribution to this household. Which we simply cannot afford to lose, at least not at this particular point in time... and I don't see Ben's salary increasing so dramatically as to make that possible any time in the near future. Especially since he did just get a pay increase, which assures me that we won't see another one for YEARS (at least as long as he's at his current job). We'll be living much more comfortably with this increase - comfortable enough that I finally feel comfortable with the idea of adding to our family - but not comfortably enough to shell out a G a month for infant daycare.

So where does that leave me? Screwed until I make a doctor's salary? REALLY?! How do people afford to have kids EVER?! It makes me want to scream. Or cry. Or both. Here's how I maintain any sense of hope surrounding the situation...

• God DOES provide - I've seen it over and over in our families and others - and if it's His timing, the pieces WILL fall into place. Ben will get a promotion or a new job, some affordable child care opportunity will present itself, my mom will suddenly retire and move to White Marsh to watch my kids... something along these lines ;]

• There has been talk of my church opening up a daycare, which would be amazing. We'd just have to hope it was affordable. But based on their school tuition rates, which seem quite affordable from a monthly perspective, I can't imagine it would be too bad. 

• Also speaking of our church, I BET YOU at a church that size (several thousand members), there's more than one mom who has a home daycare. That would definitely be worth looking into, and I'd feel much more comfortable leaving my child with someone I know from church. And our church is on Ben's way to work, so chances are there would be a home daycare that was convenient enough to his commute.

• I do have a few tricks up my sleeve in the case that we decide that my taking a year off would be best for our family... tricks that keep me technically involved in a training program for loan paperwork purposes, to keep my loan payments out of the picture. That still leaves us without any income from me for the better part of a year, but it's a start. Who knows what else will be going on when this situation finally becomes a reality and we're forced to figure it out.

So those are my thoughts. Anyone have any ideas or words of encouragement for me?! Please?! Unless you're going to tell me that I'm doomed and just won't be able to have children for another 6 or 7 years, I'd love to hear your thoughts ;]