Daycare Searching Sucks

How has no one ever mentioned to me how freaking hard and stressful it is to find a day care?!

"Start to look for daycare" got added to my to-do list once we hit the 20 week mark. I had set myself up to start looking by the end of February. Well that is next week., so this afternoon I actually started.

I think I mentioned to Dylan at least three times that this sucks and I wish I could just stay home so I don't have to do all this research and make such a big decision. Unfortunately staying home isn't a financial option (or probably personally ideal either), so I have to keep moving forward.

Also note that Dylan didn't once offer to help or take over said search. Somehow I make the internet work much better than he does... And as much as I love Dylan, I think I would end up more stressed if he was coordinating the search since I would think he missed something.

While I have done several searches in Google about how to choose a school, I don't feel any comfort at all about how to make this choice.

We are pretty open to a larger day care center or a home day care. Both definitely have their pros and cons. Ultimately it will come down to having a place we feel comfortable with, that has the availability we want, and is in a reasonable location. Figuring out what places to look into is the hard part.  It's hard to judge a book by its cover (website) and decide they are worth looking into further. Plus a lot of home daycares don't really have a website to look at.

It is even more difficult when I know nothing about what my kid is like. How can I know who will be able to care for my kid well, when I don't even know how to take care of him? However, the fact that most places have wait lists and we will be starting day care right at the end of August/beginning of September, which is a high demand time, means I really need to get started sooner rather than later.

I have officially reached out to a whole three child care centers to get more information and set up a tour sometime in March. We'll see how those go and what else crops up along the way, since that was definitely just my first go round.

Wish me luck!