What if you changed your available date to be right after your vacation so that week wouldnt' be involved. Then it is just convincing them about the mat leave part as in one thing not two. I filled my last space finally - had 4 calls from Sept to Jan and non were what I wanted. Had 4 calls the first week of January and filled the space to start in March. Instead of taking down some of my ads like here on daycarebear I changed the date from Jan to Sept when I have a child leaving and have already in the last week had 3 calls for that space.