Providing care through pregnancy and after delivery

[playfelt]

I found I was ok for the day until afternoon naptime and then it was too quiet to keep me awake. I stayed busy in the morning with the kids and then half my group went to afternoon kindergarten and the two toddlers went for naps. My own baby slept, ate, etc during that time too. I managed but in retrospect it probably wasn't good for my health. What you could do is hire a high school student just as you would hire a babysitter for an evening. Have them come as soon as school is out and stay till suppertime. They are cheaper than hiring an adult and also means when you do want to go out you will have a knowledgeable babysitter. The problem is what to do if you end up with a C-section meaning you are unable to do daycare or pretty much anything for a month. Have you thought of simply closing your daycare for a month or even two with the idea of interviewing in advance to fill your spaces after your maternity leave is over. It means no income but if you keep it just to the minimum needed to catch up you have a year to budget for it. To have income the other option is move to a school age program so that you would have the children before and after school but they would be gone all day to school leaving you with just your own children. Since this is a second child you will still need to care for your first child so it means staying awake anyways. I found my own children were better behaved and playing with the other daycare children left me free to care for the baby and sit and watch the play for the most part. Just make sure you adjust the numbers and ages of children in your daycare to reflect your new workload. Parents need to be on board and know exactly what will be done and what won't such as how much programming, cleaning, outside play, etc will take place and have them sign contracts accordingly if necessary.

[Monkey Minding]

Hi there! I became pregnant with my second, 2 weeks shy of my daughter's first birthday. My daycare had only been opened for 2 months when I found out. I was very fortunate to have an easy first pregnancy, which lead me to believe that I could handle working til the end while pregnant with #2.

At the time I had my oldest, plus 2 others that were all 1 (within a few weeks of eachother) and an older 4yr old boy. My plan was for my last day of work to be my actual due date of July 24. The 4yr old's contract was scheduled to end at the end of the school year in June, thus leaving me with three 18month olds. Yes, there are some days you are a little more tired, but I didn't find it to be that challenging.

As planned, I worked straight up to my due date, and took my 2 weeks vacation and hoped that the baby would come quickly, so I could have recover time before daycare started back up. Needless to say, baby had other plans and was 6 days late. My daughter was 10 days old when my daycare opened back up. My husband was off for 7 weeks, which were challenging to say the least. The day he went back to work, all the kids went back to napping properly and I was able to sort out our new routine.

Looking back, I would do it again in a heartbeat, but send hubby back to work earlier.

That is just me though and what worked for us.

Best of luck