Stocks● Neutral
I Work From Home, and Our Family Helps With Childcare. We're Still Choosing Part-Time Day Care.
Juggling work and childcare with family help wasn't enough. This mom explains why she's enrolling her 18-month-old in part-time day care, guilt included.
Continue with
I work from home and look after our 18-month-old daughter during the week. My mom and my mother-in-law have been helping, each babysitting a few mornings a week. Even with that, I've struggled to keep up with work and the house. Next week our daughter starts part-time day care, and I'm confident it's the right call.
Our daughter is our first, and I'm lucky my job is flexible enough that I can spend my days with her. The grandmothers are a big part of that. They come over three mornings a week, usually for two to three hours at a stretch, and I can't thank them enough.
Two or three hours never feels like enough. That time goes to the dog, to lunch, to chores, sometimes to a shower I should have taken earlier. The schedule shifts almost every week; we swap days to fit someone else's plans. There's no firm start time, so I'm never sure when the door will open. Both grandmothers take real vacations, which means some weeks the help simply isn't there.
They've offered more. Stay later, come on different days. I appreciate it. I also don't want to lean on them so hard that the generosity curdles. Their time is their own, and their travel plans are a big reason day care started to look more reliable than what we had.