But, I think everything is gonna be alright...

My husband and I are members of a Catholic church with a large congregation with lots of younger families.  To baptize your child at our church you have to attend a baptism class.  This is pretty standard no matter who you are or what you worship.  Additionally, the priest at our church happens to actually have a video and book series starring him and his puppet (yes, puppet, you read that right.)  So, for our baptism class, we basically had to drive to a fellow parishioner's house, sit in her living room, and watch some videos starring our priest and his puppet.  Easy enough, right?

Except that the baptism class was being held the exact night before I returned to work from maternity leave.  And it was so long.  And I could not focus on anything for the life of me because I was mostly worried about getting up in the morning and turning my Trust over to a stranger.

About 30 minutes after the class started, a woman (about my age) walked in with her husband and baby.  They apologized and introduced themselves, letting us know that they had five children.  I remember this woman.  Mostly because I was only 7 weeks into motherhood and already knew for a fact that I would never have the energy or motivation for five kids.  I didn't catch her, her husband, or her baby's name.  I didn't catch much of anything from that baptism class other than heart palpitations every time I thought about work.

Flash forward about 4 months and the recent betrayal of our Trust and my husband and I are frantically scrambling on Craigslist to find a new babysitter.  I saw one who had a picture of her and her baby on her ad (there's something about pictures on Craigslist that makes the whole thing so much more legit to me).  She lived not too much farther than our current babysitter, in a part of town that we actually hope to move to someday.  Her name was "Jade" (names have been changed) and she sounded very enthusiastic and sweet on the phone.  I laid out all of the details about our situation and she listened patiently, gasping at all of the appropriate times, and validating me every step of the way.  She asked where we lived in relation to her home and I told her we were on the north side of the town.  Jade said, "Oh, do you live near [name of our church.  I have three kids that go to school there."  Jade had two other kids who stayed at home with her, one was almost exactly a month older than ours.  She then shared that she was a former NICU nurse that decided to leave (because of the long hours and new baby) and work instead for an exclusive daycare center in a ritzy part of town.  Soon after, she and her husband decided that she could stay at home and run an in-home daycare.  Lucky for us, she had an opening, she charged the same amount per week as "Grace", and she was really excited that her 7 month old son would have a new playmate. 

Five kids?  Goes to the same church as us?  You'd think the bells would be going off in my head, but they weren't.  I was too preoccupied with everything that had happened that day.

We walked in her door later that evening and my husband immediately said, "I remember you.  When was your son baptized?"  Turns out this was the same woman with five kids that was in our baptism class and our boys were baptized on the same day.  Actually, if you look at a few of our millions of pictures from that day you'll see Jade, her husband, or some of her kids in the background.  Immediately, I got that mommy feeling that things were going to be okay.

And so, far?  It has been.  Her daily report sheets put all of my Type A craziness to shame.  They are so concise and I've never had a single question about how she's doing things - she lays it all out for me.  Her house is very clean.  Her kids are so sweet and adorable.  She follows everything to the letter.  She asked me to email her about how I'm making my own baby food because she thought it looked so good when I sent it with the baby.  And despite everything I went through with Grace, Jade has never made me feel like a crazy mess of a person for being worried or concerned about my son.

My favorite part is this:  My husband said that he put the baby on the floor next to Jade's baby and they immediately started "talking" to each other and smiling.  I could not ask for anything more.  I may have gotten peace of mind and the liberty to work outside my home, but my son got something even better - a friend.

It's always been a matter of Trust...

I started this particular blog post almost 3 weeks ago.  Then deleted it.  It was scathing.  It was crude.  I wrote this post instead in an effort to relieve the rage that was about to spew forth from my furiously typing fingers if I allowed myself to discuss what had just happened.

A little over 2 weeks ago, we fired our babysitter.  The baby has been enrolled in an in-home childcare with "Grace" (all the names in this post are being changed, by the way) since I went back to work.  I knew that by making the choice to be a working mom that I was resigning myself to the fact that someone else was going to be doing some of my mommy jobs.  But, let me be honest - as much as I love being around that little guy as much as I can, I was (and still am) okay with someone else changing the diapers for 8 hours a day.  Okay?  I said it. However, I also know that even if I hired someone with a PhD in childcare, it still wouldn't be me doing the job and so there's no way it would ever be fully up to my standards.  Because he's mine.  And I'm his mommy.  And I may be new at being a mommy, but I have years of experience being a control freak. 



It's just true.





Grace, with her 14 years of childcare experience, probably knows how much trust I instilled in her the day that I left the center of my universe in her care.   It's Trust with a capital T because it is unlike any other trust I've ever given to anyone, anywhere. And honestly, it was Trust that I blindly handed to her.  I'm a new mom.  I didn't know any better.

For the most part, I felt pretty happy in my decision for the 4 months he was enrolled in Grace's daycare.  I wasn't crazy about the level of communication (we never received any kind of written or verbal report of his day other than "good" day or "bad" day), the defensiveness that we were met with when we questioned a procedure, the fact that her busy body sister (with the worst boundaries I've ever seen...and I work in mental health) sometimes took over, or the fact that there were several times when she clearly wasn't ready for my son to be dropped off at drop-off time.  These things were annoying.  Deal breakers?  No.  I figured it was just the control freak side of me that was unhappy and that I needed to learn to give a little bit if I wanted to have the best of both worlds.

So, imagine my rage when my husband called me in a sort of reserved panic and relayed the conversation he had just had with our babysitter at drop-off time.

Husband:  So, we've been making our own food and starting tomorrow we'll be sending you two solid meals a day to feed the baby.

Grace:  Well, I've been feeding him solid foods for awhile now.

Husband: (rendered almost speechless) You have?

Grace:  Yeah.  Like, carrots and cereal and stuff.

Husband:  (absolutely gobsmacked) Okay, well, we're making our own food and we'll start sending that to you tomorrow.

Here is a short list of all the things wrong with that conversation:

• We did not tell her to start feeding the baby solids.
• She did not tell us she was feeding the baby solids.
• The baby had just turned 6 months old, so he didn't really need to be getting 3 solid meals a day yet.  In fact, we only told her that we started solids at 4 months in a passing way so that she'd know why his poop started looking different.
• I make my own food.  Why?  It's cheap.  It's healthier.  It's less chemicals.  It's so simple even a caveman  I can do it.  But I am sure this woman was not making her own food.  I have no idea of what brand this woman was using.  For all I know it was the cheapest, most chemically infused garbage on the market.
• "... and stuff."  Stuff?  STUFF?!  Can you be more specific about WHAT you have been feeding my child?!
• We did not tell her to start feeding the baby solids.
• She did not tell us she was feeding the baby solids.
• This conversation took place on a Monday morning.  The night before, I fed the baby carrots for what I thought was the first time.  But, apparently not.  So all of that "First Carrot Feeding" photo documentation?  Null and void.
• I've been following a very slow and specific schedule for introducing foods to the baby as you're supposed to do to make sure the baby doesn't have a horrible allergic reaction.  Who the hell knows how the babysitter was introducing foods.  She never told us what foods she was feeding and we never told her what foods we were feeding.
• WE DID NOT TELL HER TO START FEEDING THE BABY SOLIDS.
• SHE DID NOT TELL US SHE WAS FEEDING THE BABY SOLIDS.

So, now my head is spinning.  Sometimes Grace would tell us the baby didn't eat well.  Did she mean he didn't eat the solids well or the bottles well?  Was he not eating the bottles well because he was so full from the solids or vice versa?  One time we found a pacifier during pick-up in our play yard.  She swore up and down that she wasn't giving him a pacifier.  Was that a lie?  She's told me lots of "home remedies" for some of the baby's ailments.  I had always just taken them with a grain of salt and followed my pediatrician's guidelines.  But now I wondered if she is taking matters into her own hands and making decisions for our baby that were not hers to make.  Basically, I was panicking.

The door to my office was open when I got my husband's call so all co-workers within earshot heard my yelling and cursing and other inappropriate work behaviors.  But, wouldn't you know it?  It was as though someone had raised the Mommy Threat Advisory Level to Severe and sounded the alarms.  Within minutes I had fellow mommies sending me emails with links to popular childcare finders.  A friend gave me her actual log in information to Care.com so I could search for some babysitters in my area.  Less than an hour after our phone conversation, my husband sent me an email with links to three or four different Craigslist ads for daycare openings.  Another friend started texting every working mom she knew to find out how they found their babysitters and to try to get some referrals.  I even received sympathy calls from other moms who had heard through the grapevine.  All in all, I have never felt so supported and validated in my life.  In my 6 short months of motherhood, I don't think I've been this angry or out of control, but I was fortunate to have so many people that day who helped me hold it together no matter how much I was ripping apart at the seams.

No part of me wanted the baby to continue to go there, but it was such short notice to find a new situation for him and we only had one promising childcare lead out of the hundreds I probably looked at that day.  I wanted Grace to know that what she did was wrong, but I didn't want her to somehow take it out on the baby.  (Is that an irrational fear?  Do other working parents feel that way?  It's clear I have trust issues, but I don't think this is out of the realm of possibilities.)  Fortunately, in a unique twist of fate made for another blog post (or a TV movie),  the single lead (from Craigslist) worked out.  Two weeks later and we're already happier.  Sublimely so.  (And though it's another 10 minutes each way to get to the new sitter's house it is still totally worth it.  Easy for me to say since my husband is in charge of pick-up/drop-off.)

Firing Grace wasn't easy for either of us.  My husband was horribly sick on the day it had to be done.  He said he actually thought he was going to have to fire this woman and then ask her if he could go throw up in her bathroom.  We decided to cop out and tell her we had just find someone that we knew (partially true) who was more convenient (not at all true).  Surprisingly, Grace seemed to have a tough time with it.  She cried a little and seemed sad when we picked up the baby and she had to say goodbye.  Of course, she had a Craigslist ad posted to fill the spot before the day was through and she made sure to remind us of her 30 day cancellation policy.  So.  Whatever.  No love lost.

So, how do you keep from having your Trust betrayed in such a way?  Short of quitting your job, asking a (reliable) family member/close friend to watch your child, or paying thousands upon thousands of dollars a year to send your child to the best of childcare centers...I don't know.  Most of the mommies I know aren't able to exercise most of those options and the ones that have still have moments when they aren't 100% happy.

What I do know is that I had no clue what questions to ask from the beginning and I really had no idea what I even wanted out of our childcare.  In a way, I wonder if out of all the ugliness created by this situation gave me the opportunity to discover what I was looking for when it came to childcare, to allow me to really assess my values and philosophies of parenting, and to remind me to not give that Trust away so freely.

The good news is: there's a happy ending to this story (and that post will follow), I didn't blog angrily (which is a huge win for me), and I ended my 3 week blogging hiatus.  Everybody wins.