Childcare

One of the biggest decisions that faced us as new parents was what to do as Kelsey approached the end of her maternity leave. For some people, the finances work out well enough for one or other parent to stay at home and provide permanent care for the baby, but as I'm on a trainee teacher salary, Kelsey had to go back to work so that we could afford childcare for Jake. It's been an interesting experience so far, and as I was walking with Jake today, I started to make a list of pros and cons of childcare from my perspective:

Pros
- there's a whole load of new people, both adults and children, and I think that it helps to socialise Jake. He definitely likes watching other children play and you can see this in the way that he sits and stares when we take him to the park.
- the staff are all trained professionals which makes it easier to leave him in the hands of people who are effectively strangers. They know how to look after him and the book that they keep records their interactions with him and how they're going to help him meet his next developmental goals. They're also all really friendly and seem knowledgeable about what they're doing and why.
- it allows us a certain amount of flexibility. For example, during the last school holidays, I was able to drop Jake off for a few hours allowing me to go hit the books at university for my course. Naturally, we'll be charged for the extra hours (sadly we don't get refunded on the days we collect him early!) but it's useful to have that option without having to call in baby sitting favours.

Cons
- even with a three quarters contract (meaning that I get Jake all to myself during the school holidays), the cost is still more than our current mortgage payments. Fortunately, with a combination of child benefit and tax free childcare vouchers from both of our jobs, the cost is reduced a little, but it's still a massive draw on our finances.
- communicating Jake's changing routines and likes between us and nursery can be difficult. We gave them an initial overview of when he ate, his nap times and his food preferences, but that was a couple of months ago and he changes on almost a daily basis. Only today we discovered that he's eating more formula at nursery than we thought which may explain why he's not been so keen on solid food at the weekend. Finding a way to keep both sides updated will be tough but essential to give him as much consistency as possible.
- food is another minor issue as we're struggling to get Jake off beige foods and have already started to pack our food with vegetables that he won't notice when we blitz it up for him to eat. Whilst we didn't specify that we didn't want him to eat things like chocolate at nursery (we didn't want to make a fuss), it's slightly frustrating to pick him up sometimes with a face full of chocolate.

On the whole, I think it's a great place for him to go. In the last week he's started letting a little gurgle of excitement out when he realises where he is and he's certainly learning a whole load of new tricks like bum shuffling and giving people objects which bring us endless entertainment. It's also a great feeling having other people tell you how happy and content your baby is, even if we're paying them a small fortune to keep him that way.