April 5, 2010
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waaaaaa! waaaa! WAAAAA!
I had a dream last night that I was fired from my job for texting a friend that Martha Stewart was on-site. When management asked me if I’d “leaked” the information, I honestly didn’t think that texting my pal qualified as “leaking,” so I said no. Then they showed me a print out of my text and I was escorted out of the building straight away. And I remember feeling nothing but emense relief.
Snugglebot woke Satruday night feeling feverish and sad. Today, her fever has held steady at 103 (100 with regular doses of Motrin). Any fever above 100 means baby is barred from daycare. We don’t have any family in the state to help us out in situations like these, so I’m at home today with my girl. Again.
In the past four weeks, Lila has been sick with three separate illnesses—one of which put me out of commission for about four days. We’ve been told this is par for the course for daycare babies. Since I’m salary and Shaun is hourly, I’m always the one who has to stay home with the snugglebot. I’m happy to care for her, but I’m really starting to worry about my standing at work. I’m sometimes able to work from home, but often the demands of baby really prevent this.
After health insurance, daycare payments, and parking, I only take home $100 per month, which about pays for the gas I need to make the daycare/work commute. I work for our healthcare. Shaun is contact labor, so his job can’t offer insurance. I wish it were 2014 already so that we could just buy into the government option and spare me the waste of time and energy of working at a job that barely allows me to break even. Even still, Shaun’s contract only gives us 8 more weeks of his great pay and then it’s back to where we were, with my measly $30,000 being our primary source of bread. Lila however, will be out of daycare when Shaun is back home, freelancing part-time. We’re hoping that Shaun gets brought on full time and I would then just quit, stay home with Snugs and find part-time work when Shaun can be home with her. But nobody wants to hire anybody on full time these days. The recession taught everyone how to survive with skeleton crews and freelancers without benefits.
I can’t get too bogged down in it, primarily because my poor overheated baby just woke up from her sorry excuse for a nap.
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Working mamas: how did you do it?
Comments (4)
Yep.
I hope your baby is better today.
That’s really hard, Truly. Daycare shouldn’t be so freaking expensive. Neither should healthcare. I wish I had mama-advice but I’m not a mama. I do think it might be illegal to fire you because you have to take care of a sick baby. Or at least I hope it is.
That first year was especially hard for me. I went through 4 or 5 babysitters, as I recall; I was working in a small town with no daycare center, and homecare was my only option. But the pay isn’t great, and life has a habit of throwing obstacles in the way, and I would be given notice that I needed to find a new care situation ASAP, and spend a day on the phone trying to find a sitter. Thank goodness my baby was pretty healthy, but she was spared the mass onslaught of germs on tap in a daycare center.
Like you, there was no family close at hand. I found too that our parents were not comfortable taking care of an infant – too much time had elapsed since the last time they had cared for a wee one. After Ana was a couple of years old, my mom helped out a couple of times by driving up when we needed childcare.
It will get easier when Lila is older and more capable of amusing herself. Then Shawn will be more able to combine work and child, as my husband did, if he is still free-lancing. One tip: do everything you can to develop a long attention span in Lila!
My older sister has been wanting to quit her job for a few years but can’t due to the health insurance bennies. Her husband works full time and does well in the family business, but still, good insurance is ridiculous for a family. But I don’t have to tell you that. Luckily for her, the job she has pays well enough to afford decent day care and she has the family nearby too. Still, she’s stuck a bit.
I have no idea how she handles it. When priorities shift so dramatically to another human being, it would take understanding that shift personally to know how to handle it IMO. I don;t have that knowledge but great respect for those who do.
The younger has a job that is excellent and pays enough for her hubby to be primary care giver, but then she pimps out God for money and is destined to go to hell in accordance with her beliefs. I don’t know how she does it either.
These are no small trade offs and I have to think they are worth it. Still, I wish you an amazingly profitable job that you love that has day care on site.