Ep #58: Childcare 101: Pros, Cons, and What No One Tells You

Nannies and daycare and au pairs, oh my. Are you having trouble figuring out what the heck is what in the world of childcare and exactly what you want for your family? Stay tuned for the breakdown of what each type of childcare is and some pros and cons for each.

Welcome to Parenthood Prep, the only show that helps sleep-deprived parents and overwhelmed parents-to-be successfully navigate those all-important early years with their baby, toddler, and child. If you are ready to provide the best care for your newborn, manage those toddler tantrums, and grow with your child, you’re in the right place. Now here’s your host, baby and parenting expert, Devon Clement. 

Hello and welcome back to the Parenthood Prep podcast. Kitten season is in full swing, so I have once again been bottle feeding my kittens and realizing just more and more how much they remind me of human babies. They develop a lot more quickly and you can leave them home alone, but there are just so many similarities and I love watching them go from these little balls of nothing with no ears and their eyes closed and they can barely move around to these playful, spunky little kids.

I say this all the time. I’m going to do videos about it. There’s just so many similarities between kittens and babies at their different stages of development. And it’s just so fun to watch. And then in kind of bummer news, one of the latest things coming out of the current administration is that they have basically cut all funding to the safe sleep campaign and the advertising of safe to sleep practices and things like that, which used to be run by either the National Institute of Health or the Centers for Disease Control. Anyway, so they’re not doing that anymore, which is cool.

So we are just going to really work hard all of us to get out there and spread the word about safe sleep practices and what’s important and teach it in different communities that may not have had exposure to it previously. Just sharing, spreading the word with your friends. I mean, grandparents, I think, it’s really important. Older generation parents, they didn’t have a back to sleep campaign when we were born. We slept great because we were on our tummies from day one in a crib mattress that felt like an adult bed as soft as marshmallow, covered in blankets with ten stuffed animals around. Of course, it’s amazing that any of us made it this far between that and the car seats, but so, just educate yourself about safe sleep, learn about it, spread the word, share with others.

We would like to make it out of this alive, and we would like our babies to make it out alive too. And ideally, pregnant people and people giving birth. We just want everybody to make it. So, let’s work together on that. That was a blow for sure among many others that have come recently. So, we’re going to be talking about safe sleep and stuff even more on the podcast. We have an interview coming up with a pediatrician that I’m really excited about. I just recorded that and she’s so cool.

I also interviewed a really cool author. So that’ll be a fun surprise talking just an interesting topic, not necessarily a how-to, but just some fun stuff to think about and some really interesting things to think about. So we have those episodes coming up. Oh, but back to my kittens. So we had to go away this weekend to a wedding, and we were traveling out of town. So I took the kittens to another foster who’s experienced with little babies and bottle babies to watch them for the weekend. 

So I was like leaving them with the babysitter, which it’s so funny as not being a parent, it’s the one aspect of parenting that I haven’t really experienced at all. Apart from when I was a teacher, I remember the first time I left my class with a substitute. I had gone over to another school in the district for a workshop and so I called the sub in the middle of the day from the school-to-school phone and she was like, “Oh, they’re great. They’re doing so great.” And I was like, “Wait, what do you mean they’re doing so great? Are they sad? Do they miss me?”

And in that moment I realized that when I had been a babysitter and a nanny and going forward when I was doing that, parents want to hear that their kids are happy. Of course, you don’t want to hear that your kid is crying or miserable. But you also kind of don’t want to hear that they don’t miss you at all. I can tell they miss you. She was like, “No, no, they’re having a great time.” I was like, “Oh, okay. Well, I’m glad they’re happy.” But it hurt my heart a little bit. And I could see that with parents. 

So it just got me thinking that I really want to start talking about childcare, leaving your kids with someone. That’s something that from the other side of I’ve been experiencing for so long. Even when I was a teenage babysitter, I was often the first person outside of the family that these parents were leaving their kids with. And that’s such an honor. And I think it’s so important to really help them feel confident and, like the kids are going to have a great time, but definitely be a little sad that you’re gone. Even if they’re not, I would say that they were.

And just, so we’re going to have a bunch of different topics about this. And if you have any questions about childcare or nannies or daycare or babysitters or anything like that you want answered, please by all means shoot us an email. Go to our website, HappyFamilyAfter.com, leave a voicemail. Go to Instagram @HappyFamilyAfter. Just let us know what you’re thinking about. So, today is just a basic overview. 

There’s so much more I could go into about all of this, but just as a basic overview, I’m going to talk about the types of childcare that are available and what the differences are between them and what some of the pros and cons are of each. So you are expecting a baby or you’re thinking about having kids or your baby’s here and you have one situation and you’re thinking about another. But at some point, even if you are not working outside the home, you are probably going to need some kind of paid professional childcare, whether that’s a babysitter, a nanny, a daycare, an au pair, something like that. So what are the options? What do these things mean?

First of all, newborn care, which is what my company provides, is a different thing than what you’re going to have down the road. So a lot of times people hear what I do and they’re like, “Oh, so you’re a nanny.” And I’m like, “Well, not exactly. I mean, I am a nanny and that we care for the kids or the baby, but we’re also very specialized and we only work in a short period of time.” 

So a newborn care specialist or a postpartum doula, or you may use the term night nurse. Those are generally going to work with you in the first three to six months of your baby’s life, sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more. But they’re the ones that are going to be kind of teaching you and guiding you. And yes, like staying with the baby and caring for the baby, but also working with the parents to get you guys learning and feeling confident and all that kind of stuff.

Then we will usually pass you off to whatever your next aspect is of childcare. A lot of people here in New York and New Jersey have nannies who are an in-home caregiver that usually works full-time or part-time, when the parents are working, sometimes when the parents are home. It can really vary. We’ll talk about that. Or you take them somewhere out of the home like a daycare center or preschool or whatever or an in-home daycare. And then they spend the day there, and then you pick them up at the end of the day and you bring them home.

Another option is sometimes people will share a nanny, so you’ll have like two or more different families using a nanny. Nannies can also be live in or live out. We’ll talk about that. And sometimes people bring in an au pair. And these are all the types of kind of regular steady childcare that you would have if you had work that you had to do outside the home or whatever. Or even if you’re not working outside the home and you just want a break or you just want to be able to take care of your responsibilities, you may have your kid part-time in daycare or full-time in daycare, or you may have a nanny full-time or part-time helping you out. 

I worked with a lot of stay-at-home parents when I was a nanny, partly because I just wanted like a more part-time schedule because a lot of times when parents are working full-time, the nanny has to be there before they even leave for their commute, so it can be a really long day and I was not super interested in that as I got older. But working with a stay-at-home parent as a nanny can also be really important and really rewarding, whether it’s because they have twins or multiple kids and they’re trying to juggle everything or just because they want a break and they just want to be able to take care of the things that they want to take care of.

One of the parents I worked with, the dad commuted to New York City from New Jersey, and they had two kids at home and I was their basically full-time nanny. The mom said her husband said to her, he did not want to come home from work and have her stressed out and tired from taking care of the kids all day because he had been working and at his job all day and he wanted to come home to like a peaceful house where she was like calm and relaxed. 

And I just think if everybody was privileged enough to have that accessibility, I mean, that’s incredible. And a lot of times it’s a family member. Like I say this all the time, when I was a kid, my grandma came over every day. My mom worked, she worked nights. So it wasn’t like she was busy in the office all day, but my grandma would take us for like part of the day, basically every day so that she could have a break and it just made her be like so much calmer and in a better mood. So just because you have the capability to be with your child 24 hours a day, seven days a week does not mean you have to. Do not, absolutely do not feel obligated to do that just because that’s available to you. Do consider bringing in a break or some regular support.

And then the last category is what I would consider a babysitter. Someone that you call on as needed to watch your kids. So you might have like on a Saturday when you have plans, they come over and you have like a date night or maybe you have them come over steadily one day a week because that’s when you run your errands. My sister and I always joke a family that we both babysat for had a two-year-old who, God, he’s in college now, but he was he was a little pistol. He was a piece of work. 

And the mom just wanted somebody to like keep him for a few hours once or twice a week. And as she said on the phone one day because I was talking to her, I had to like change my schedule with her. I had something come up and she’s like, “Oh, you know I don’t care when you come. I just want to go to the grocery store without that maniac.” So, it’s totally fine to just want that break and want that time apart from your kids.

So, those are the categories. I guess I’d also throw Mother’s Helper in there, which obviously is a pretty outdated gendered term, but we’ll call it like a parent’s helper. That’s usually somebody that’s like a little younger, maybe they’re not old enough to be left alone with the kids or to babysit, but they have that like energy level where they can chase the two-year-old around in the yard. I mean, I loved that. 

I mean, it was the 90s, so I was just fully being left alone with toddlers when I was 13 or 14, but I had that energy. I wanted to run around. I wanted to throw them up in the air and do all those things that I am way too old and tired for now. So, even having a kid in the neighborhood just come over and play with them and give them like a couple of bucks an hour to just hang out with your kid. That was like the best thing.

So those are some of your options. We’re going to go into a little bit more detail about what’s what. So, your baby is coming, they’re being born. You want a newborn care specialist or a postpartum doula or sometimes people call themselves a night nurse that you would have that support in that first few months. Then you’re going to look at what’s going to be your longer term daytime support. So, a nanny is generally someone that is hired full-time. You are their employer. This is their job just like you have your job working at a business or the people at the daycare work for the daycare company.

You are the employer of this person. So they work for you, but they are also not your servant or your slave. They are there to also work collaboratively with you. Generally, you would have an employment agreement much like the one you have at your job. There’s usually paid vacation, paid sick time, raises discussed once a year, standard pay. Generally, standard hours. Sometimes if you have a job that requires some flexibility, you can often build that into the contract, but we don’t want to abuse the nanny. And honestly, I think the most important thing is having a good relationship with this person. This person is caring for your children.

So, treating them professionally because they are a professional, but also having a positive relationship with them with lots of communication and stuff like that. And again, we’ll talk about this in a future episode. A part-time nanny is usually someone obviously that works fewer hours per week. Again, typically a pretty set schedule. They may have another job or maybe they have their own kids or they’re a student or whatever that’s working for you part-time. You may also not have a set schedule. It may be something that you do flexibly.

If you’re a stay-at-home parent who just wants to go to the grocery store without that maniac, maybe your part-time nanny lets you know week to week when they’re available based on what they have going on in their lives. A fun thing about living in New York City is that there’s a lot of people here trying to do things like acting or dancing or writing or art, and they want something just to fill the gaps and give them some income. So, part-time nannies abound. I had a great relationship with a client when I was growing the business where I would just go whenever I wanted.

Her husband stayed home. She was the breadwinner and her husband stayed home and he was single-handedly finishing their basement and just doing various things. So, some weeks when I wasn’t super busy with postpartum clients, I would go over there more and some weeks when I was more busy, I would go over there less and it just worked really well. But that sometimes can be a needle in a haystack in terms of finding someone who wants the flexibility that you also want.

That can also be a tradeoff. Generally if you’re giving someone fewer hours, the hourly rate is going to be a little bit higher. A part-time nanny might not necessarily get paid sick time or paid vacation time or maybe not as much as the full-time nanny. You might be paying a little bit more per hour just because it’s fewer hours, that kind of a thing. Whereas with a full-time nanny, you’re committing to sometimes fifty or sixty hours a week with them. So you’re able to get the hourly rate down a little bit.

Nannies and in-home care will also generally, and again, this is something that should be in your agreement, but they’ll generally prep the kids’ food, clean up after the meals. You can sometimes even have them cook for you if that’s something they’re interested in. Again, have this in your agreement and work it into the contract, but I just sleep trained for a family that I had worked with before. I sleep trained their third and this was now their fourth baby. And they had the same nanny the whole time and she was an amazing cook and she loved to cook and she made dinner for the kids and the parents and me while we were there and I loved it. 

I was like, I want to get this for myself. I want a nanny at home who’s going to help with the cooking and this and that. Now, generally they’re not going to do that while also doing a craft project with the kids and blah, blah, blah. If you’re expecting them to do something like cooking meals, then maybe that’s when you are with the kids or maybe that’s when the kids are watching television or something. Again, expectations is something that we can talk about in a future episode. But when you have an in-home caregiver, they are usually willing to do the kids’ laundry, maybe change the kids’ bed sheets once a week or whatever you have going on there.

And not mentioning a housekeeper as childcare because that’s not usually their responsibility, but some people do have a situation like these clients with this nanny who also cooked for them where you have an agreement that they would do some housework and either you pay them a little extra or maybe that’s part of their job. Maybe you can keep the baby and care for them yourself for two hours in the morning while they do some housekeeping tasks and things like that if that’s something that’s important to you. 

I know for me, organizing and tidying is so important that someone else be doing because I am so bad at it that if I ever have children, we’ll make sure that is a part of my agreement with whoever my care provider is. I would rather record podcasts while the baby is napping and I’m watching over them. And the goddess, wonderful, fabulous angel that’s there or God or whatever, organizing and cooking for me can be focusing on that instead of focusing on the baby.

But for some people, you want to do the cooking. You want someone caring for the baby. So, think about what you’re looking for in the job description and realize if you take nothing else away from this episode or this podcast in general, realize that you get what you pay for. And I know that I’m saying that in a society where childcare is so expensive in every way and it can really just be such a burden to families. And I hate it. I want it to not be that way, but not at the expense of professional caregivers getting paid less or getting shitty job agreements or being overworked or things like that.

If you can’t afford a full-time nanny, there are plenty of other less expensive options. Don’t hire someone cheap that you are going to then abuse just so that you can pay as little as possible for your childcare. Daycare is cheaper than nannies typically, and there’s a lot of reasons for that, which I will get into.

So you’ve got your full-time nanny, you’ve got your part-time nanny. You can have a live-in nanny, which is generally either full-time or part-time. I was a live-in nanny who was part-time, which was pretty sweet. They happened to have the space for me to live, so I lived there and I just worked with them part-time.

Generally when you have a live-in nanny, they do still have set hours. There may be more flexibility there, maybe sometimes you need them in the evening, sometimes you need them during the day. The expectation is not that they will be in your house 24/7 available to you unless you are paying them for that. Like with a 24/7 newborn care specialist, that is the expectation and they are being paid around the clock.

With a live-in nanny, generally they’re living with you, you’re paying for their room and board, so you may have a reduced salary cost because they are not having living expenses. I once had a client that wanted to live in for a month, say, “Oh, but we’re paying for room and board.” And I’m like, “You’re not really. I’m still paying rent on my apartment. I’m not giving all that up so that I can come stay here. I’m not bringing all of my belongings and moving in here.” 

So, typically, your live-in nanny doesn’t have another home or if they do, it’s with family members or something like that, and that they live with you and they don’t have living expenses and things like that. But that does not mean that they are on call for you 24 hours a day unless you are paying them to be and to do that.

But it can be more convenient in a lot of ways. It can save them on the commute, especially if you have long hours or you need to leave early in the morning for your commute. I loved that about living in. I could basically roll out of bed and be at work in under ten minutes, which was really nice. Going home at the end of the day, I didn’t have to sit in traffic. I just walked over to – they had an apartment above the garage. I just walked over to the garage and there was my space. If you have someone living in or even if you just take your nanny on vacation, give them a separate living space and respect that. That’s really important.

We’re going to talk about this more. I’m going to repeat myself a lot. A nanny share is something that families might do where you have a full-time caregiver or part-time caregiver and they actually take care of your child and the child of another family. And maybe they do that at your home or at the other family’s home, maybe they switch back and forth. That’s something that you would work out with them on a case-by-case basis. 

It can be complicated because you are sort of co-employing this caregiver with another family. They might have different ideas about how they want things done. So you want to really make sure you have clear communication and a clear contract when you are going into a situation like this with a nanny share.

And it works out really well for all parties from a financial standpoint because typically each parent is paying less and the nanny is getting paid more. So, if normally a nanny’s pay would be thirty dollars an hour, maybe with a nanny share, she’s getting forty or forty-five dollars an hour and each parent, each family is paying twenty or twenty-two dollars an hour instead of paying the thirty dollars an hour. 

There are some downsides. Again, you have to really have great communication and really great boundaries and contract with the other family. They may be a lot busier with two kids or three kids and not as able to help out with chores and tasks and things like that around the house. Your kid may have to adapt their schedule to work with the other child’s nap or feeding schedule or whatever. But it can be a really good option if you can find the right situation and the right caregiver.

So what is an au pair? I think this is something that people, is probably the most misunderstood type of childcare. People will say that about me, “Oh, you’re an au pair” because they think it just means fancy word for nanny or maybe it’s the new word for nanny that people are using because they don’t want to say nanny anymore. It is not. It is a very specific thing, which is a person from another country who comes to your country, typically the US, on a special visa that allows them to live and work here for one year. You used to be able to extend it a second year. I think you still can, but things are changing so much right now that don’t quote me on that.

That they come from Switzerland or Germany or South Africa or wherever and then they live with you and your family and they care for your children for a year. This is very, very bound by guidelines. You are typically working with an agency that’s going to place them with you. Of course, you’re going to get to interview and stuff like that. And you get to choose who you’re going to be working with. 

They come in. Their salary is definitely less than a nanny. Your hourly rate is going to be much, much lower with an au pair because they get paid less and they get the room and board expenses taken out. But there’s also a lot of additional costs that you don’t necessarily have with a nanny. So you’re paying agency fees, which can be pretty significant.

You’re paying for their travel, you’re paying for them to have a phone, you’re paying for them maybe to have a car, if you need them to drive the kids or if you live in an area where it’s necessary to have a car. You are typically paying some kind of stipend for them to go to school. So there’s a lot of other costs rolled into it. 

And I did the math a while back and it really, when you considered all the additional costs, it did actually work out to about the same for a nanny or an au pair, which reduces the benefit of it. But it’s exciting. You get to meet someone from another culture. They can teach your kids about their culture. Maybe they speak a different language than English and they can teach your kids that language.

There’s a lot of positives to it. I know families that have had au pairs years ago and have stayed in touch with them and are still friends with them years and years and years later, which is great. I know families that have had very positive experiences with au pairs and families that have had less positive experiences. 

One family I was working with early in my postpartum career, I was doing overnights with them and they had just brought this au pair from Germany for the daytime. They had an older toddler. Au pairs typically cannot take care of a baby under three months alone. So they had an older toddler that they had brought the au pair in to start with him and then help with the babies when they got older. She was so homesick that she just cried all day every day. She stayed one week and then she left. But the good thing about working with an agency is that they will usually be able to place someone else with you really quickly, which is great either if it’s a temporary interim person or it’s the person that’s going to be your long-term caregiver and help you out like that.

So that is an au pair. Again, they live with you. A good thing about it is that you do typically have a little bit more flexibility in scheduling with them because they’re here just to work for you. It is their only job. That doesn’t mean they work around the clock. There are strict limits on their hours, but I’ve also seen people who need more flexibility with the day-to-day, be able to have that more flexible schedule with the au pair.

They can also be really useful if you need something like your kids are in school, but you want someone who can get them ready in the morning and off to school and then pick them up in the afternoon or get them off the bus in the afternoon. And sometimes it can be tricky to find a nanny to work two hours in the morning and five hours in the afternoon versus somebody that just wants to be there all day. 

So that’s somewhere where if you have a lot of variability in your schedule, an au pair might work well for you. Of course, you do need the space in your home. You need a bedroom for them and a private bathroom and all that good stuff. They also, obviously are going to live their own lives when they’re not working, so they’re going to be in and out with social lives and friends and things like that. So taking that into consideration.

Of course, any live-in nanny is going to be like that, but typically au pairs are younger. I think there’s an age cut off of twenty-five or something like that. They’re going to be younger. They’re here to see the country and experience life here and stuff like that. So they are probably going to be a little bit more social and a little bit more out and about than say a live-in nanny who’s like a grandma and just goes and watches TV and goes to bed when she’s done working. Again, not all grandmas, not all nannies. I’m just saying generally the vibe. A friend of ours in my 20s, during my going out and partying days, was an au pair, which was very funny. She was being very mistreated by the family that she worked for. So I’m really glad she was able to get out of that situation.

And I think unfortunately, it’s more common than we would like to admit is just people taking advantage and maybe because they’re malicious, maybe it’s just because they don’t know what the guidelines are. I worked for a mom, my very first nanny job was in the summer when I was sixteen years old, was taking care of this baby. It was actually my mother’s employer. She worked for her family business and she was a bigwig there. And she had a baby and he was six months old and I was his nanny two days a week.

And I loved it. But one of the things she said when we first started out working together was that it was she knew it was going to be a challenge for her to navigate having someone who worked for her, but not in the way her employees at work worked for her that I was her employee, but also her teammate. We were doing this together. And I think that’s something that especially if you have somebody who manages people at their job, you kind of need to realize that this is yes, it is an employer-employee relationship, but there is a little bit more, obviously, a little bit more of a personal connection and a lot more at stake. So just navigating that in a different way. And there are plenty of people out there who can help you with this, us included.

We do nanny matchmaking, we do nanny relationships. When we find nannies for clients, sometimes they call us six months later and say everything’s going good, but there’s this little issue that we’re not sure about that we want to talk about. And we just hop on the phone with them. Sometimes I’ve gone in and observed the nanny and made some suggestions. Just different things that are happening. 

We’ve also had people say, “Oh, the nanny wants to leave or the situation isn’t working out or the nanny comes to us and says they want to leave or the situation isn’t working out.” And we are able to help them navigate it in a way that then it’s able to work out and we’re able to make it work for everybody. We had a client who was doing a nanny share and we had found them a shared nanny for them and another family that had a baby. Their baby was eight months, the other baby was four months or three months or something. 

And the nanny was just struggling with having them on different schedules and this and that. And I just went in for a day and I coached her, gave her some suggestions for getting them on the same schedule to just streamline things, make things easier for her, talking to the parents, observing what was going on and being able to give advice and suggestions to the parents. And it really turned things around for them. 

So, if you have a care provider and you are not entirely happy with them, try and work it out. Try and fix it before you rush to say they’re fired and we want to find someone else. I mean, obviously, if it’s an egregious safety issue, that’s a different story. But generally if it’s just struggling, I would always rather try to help people navigate that and see what we could do to help out.

Okay, so that’s in-home childcare. Daycare or out-of-home, there’s a couple of different options, of course. There’s a daycare center, which is usually run like a business, owned by a company. And it takes place in a facility that is not someone’s home, it’s a daycare center. They maybe have, depending on the size, different rooms for different aged kids. So your kid might be in the infant room where there’s a one-to-one ratio or two-to-one ratio. Then maybe they go to the toddler room where there’s more like a three-to-one or four-to-one ratio.

They do activities, they sometimes provide snacks and food, sometimes you have to provide the snacks and food yourself. Sometimes they provide diapers, sometimes you have to provide the diapers. It depends on the kind of place that you’re going that you’re working with. There’s also in-home daycare, which is obviously in someone else’s home, not in your home. In-home daycare in your home is a nanny. In-home daycare where it’s usually a person who takes in a small number of kids, maybe three, four, or five, usually there are different ages. 

They might have a two-year-old and a baby from one family and then a toddler from another family and a preschooler and then the preschooler’s six-year-old sister comes after school and in the morning and are there. Generally in-home daycares are smaller, more intimate, less expensive than a daycare center. But also pros and cons. I think it can be a little bit more chaotic to have all the different ages in a room together, but it can also be nice for kids to experience different age groups and not just be isolated with other kids their own age. So it all really just depends on the individual situation. 

There’s daycare centers that are amazing and there’s daycare centers that are not so amazing. Once again, you get what you pay for. If there is some kind of egregious safety issue, you should absolutely speak up. You should absolutely, you can report them. Thankfully, I have really not heard of too many super egregious daycare center or in-home daycare issues, but of course they happen certainly, just like they happen with nannies. And honestly with parents. People are like, “Oh, there was that one story 10 years ago where the nanny drove the car off a cliff.” I’m like, “Yeah, and there are like 20 stories of parents doing that.” We’re all just humans and things happen, but I don’t think it’s any more likely to happen with someone taking care of your child than with a family member. Just listen to a true crime podcast and you’ll hear about some of the terrible things that rarely happen but do happen.

So, we’re going to talk about hiring a nanny and bringing people on and all kinds of stuff like that. The plus side of daycare is that your kids are getting more socialization with other kids. They’re doing more structured activities, which is pros and cons. I don’t love a daycare that has kids doing worksheets and stuff like that when they’re three years old. 

I know filling time with kids is hard, but as I’ve mentioned before, play is children’s work. They should be out there playing. They usually can have access to a lot more fun toys, dress up area, Play-Doh, clay, paint, all the messy things that you don’t want on your kitchen table at all hours. They can do those at school. They could do them at daycare. So that can be a real positive if you don’t want your kids string their toys all over the house all day. They can go play with toys at daycare, which can be really nice.

A downside, of course, is that it is a little more work. Well, sometimes a lot more work for the parents because when you have someone coming to your home to care for your baby, like your nanny, your kids can be in their pajamas. They can still be asleep. It doesn’t really matter. With daycare, though they can also still be in their pajamas, but you have to get them up, put them in the car, drive them. Usually pack their bottles, pack their milk or formula, pack their food for the day. 

Typically when they’re a little older, I think the schools are more likely to provide snacks and stuff, but you want your baby to have their formula or their breast milk or their baby food that you’ve made them or whatever. So you have to pack all that and then when you get home at the end of the day, you have to clean it, the bottles or whatever. The house is generally in the same condition you left it in for better or for worse. Maybe you left it really neat and tidy and the kids didn’t mess it up all day. Yay! Amazing. 

Or maybe you left it a disaster and you come home and it’s still a disaster versus if you have a nanny, maybe they’re doing the kids’ laundry during the day, so you’re coming home to clean laundry, you’re coming home to clean bottles, you’re coming home to the dishwasher loaded from the breakfast dishes that you left when you went to work. And these things can all be really nice. But again, that’s why having someone in-home caring for your kids is generally a little bit more expensive.

So yeah, that’s the overview of different types of childcare, what you can expect from each. We’re going to talk again in the future more about how to find someone great, how to figure out what you’re looking for, and just a lot of different stuff with these childcare and family caregiver relationships because I think it’s really important and it’s something I can speak to from a lot of personal experience as well as a lot of research and things like that. 

So yeah, we would love to hear your questions. Hit us up on Instagram or leave a voicemail on the website or shoot us an email, pretty much whatever you want to do. We want to hear about it. So, talk to you soon.

To be sure you never miss an episode, be sure to subscribe in your favorite podcast app. We’d also love to connect with you on social media. You can find us on Instagram @happyfamilyafter or at our website HappyFamilyAfter.com. On our website you can also leave us a voicemail with any questions or thoughts you might have, and you can roast your baby. Talk to you soon.

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Parenthood Prep. If you want to learn more about the services Devon offers, as well as access her free monthly newborn care webinars, head on over to www.HappyFamilyAfter.com.