How far out of your way to you travel for daycare?

[rhiOrion]

DH and I are hopefully about to buy our first house approximately 10 minutes from my office. But most of that time is spent on/near the Duke campus, so I haven't really seen any suitable daycare options in between. DH works about 20 minutes from this new house.

I'm over-the-moon excited to cut my commute down from 30 minutes to 10 minutes, but now I'm starting to realize that it might not be shorter at all by this summer, once I factor in daycare!

So I'm just curious how far you all travel out of your way to get to daycare?

[kerc]

We used to drive 10 minutes to daycare then 10 more minutes to work (vs. 10 minutes to work for me and dh worked at home). Sometimes it is necessary, other times it just works out that you find a daycare provider close to work/home.

Right now our dcp is literally in the next block, it is SOOOOO much easier for us -- we only need one car, my kids don't have to get into the carseat to get to/from daycare, etc. But if we moved across town, my kids would still go there and I would drive them.

With my first we picked a daycare before she was born (at my work) and then once she got here it totally didn't work for her (or me). So we switched, and it was a good move.

[lyterae]

I don't know if it's really considered out of our way, we travel 33 miles one way to work, we drive through 4 different counties to get there. We live in one county, daycare is in another, and we work in yet another.

I didn't want daycare near our house because our office is so far away and we wouldn't be able to make the deadline to pick her up (and in case of emergency we would be to far away). The city we work in did not have any either affordable daycare or daycare I liked, so we went to the next closest spot that we could find.

[claras_mom]

None at all for dd1's preschool (5 minute walk); maybe 5 minutes for dd2's daycare.

Are you looking at just centers or have you considered home-based care? And is there anything on campus?

[Alyantavid]

Ours is about 2 miles from my work. But in the opposite direction from my house.

[rhiOrion]

Originally Posted by claras_mom

None at all for dd1's preschool (5 minute walk); maybe 5 minutes for dd2's daycare.

Are you looking at just centers or have you considered home-based care? And is there anything on campus?

I'd actually prefer home-based care if I could find something really good. But a center with the right attitude would work, too.

Duke has it's own daycare program but even with the subsidies I think it's something like 1300 a month!

[GoestoShow]

.

Edited by GoestoShow - 1/4/11 at 9:02am

[claras_mom]

Originally Posted by rhiOrion

I'd actually prefer home-based care if I could find something really good. But a center with the right attitude would work, too.

Duke has it's own daycare program but even with the subsidies I think it's something like 1300 a month!

OK, I think I just fell off my chair. I thought things were expensive here--$950 + $40 for food (once she's old enough) for the first two years; then less. It's home based care, but pretty competitively priced, as I recall (for dd2, I didn't shop around; just reserved a space for her where dd1 still was).

But from your signature, it appears that you still have a little time. How much of a maternity leave will you get? If you teach at Duke, I can tell you that in my experience, it's possible to bring a baby to work until said baby starts getting mobile.

[rhiOrion]

Originally Posted by claras_mom

OK, I think I just fell off my chair. I thought things were expensive here--$950 + $40 for food (once she's old enough) for the first two years; then less. It's home based care, but pretty competitively priced, as I recall (for dd2, I didn't shop around; just reserved a space for her where dd1 still was).

But from your signature, it appears that you still have a little time. How much of a maternity leave will you get? If you teach at Duke, I can tell you that in my experience, it's possible to bring a baby to work until said baby starts getting mobile.

Taking the full 12 weeks of FMLA. So as long as I don't have to go out early, and depending on when baby arrives, I should have until early July. But I know that the centers, at least, have wait lists here.

The centers that I'm finding seem to all be at least 1k a month. But the home-based day cares do seem to be cheaper (more like $700 a month, maybe?). I think that's what I'm really leaning towards...they just seem to be a little more difficult to find and sort through (since most don't have websites).

I'm staff at Duke, not faculty. And my boss is anti-baby and a total UAV (not saying that being anti-baby makes someone a UAV... she just happens to be both).

It's also seems more difficult to find a good home-based care now because it's more difficult to tell if they'll have an opening in July. So my thought is that maybe I'll get baby on a wait list at a daycare center...and keep looking for good home-based care in the meantime.

Now if I can just find something on my way to work!

[kerc]

Originally Posted by rhiOrion

It's also seems more difficult to find a good home-based care now because it's more difficult to tell if they'll have an opening in July. So my thought is that maybe I'll get baby on a wait list at a daycare center...and keep looking for good home-based care in the meantime.

Now if I can just find something on my way to work!

Sounds like a very good plan. I forgot to add:

In Minnesota home based daycares are state licensed. There's a listing with the state of people who claim to have openings. You should ask around and find out if there is such a list. One place that is a good place to call to get this information is the local WIC office. Even if you dont' qualify for WIC, try calling the office and seeing if they know of a daycare referral service.

Which brings me to .... in my experience, the best best way to find daycare is to simply ask everyone you know. At the grocery, if you're talking to a mom who has kids find out where they go. At the midwife's office. At the whole foods. whereever you go in your daily lives.

[busymama77]

DS#1's preschool is roughly 35 mins from home. DS#2's daycare will be roughly 5 mins from home, but on the way to DS#1's pre-school. DS#1 will only be in pre-school for another year and a half and his grade school is 5 mins from home. So, we have that much longer to endure the long commute to his pre-school, but it is actually on my way to work. It all seems to work out for us.

[Elecampane]

My daycare is about three miles from my house, in the opposite direction of my office. It's about fifteen to twenty minutes extra added onto my commute (due to traffic). Not counting the actual time spent doing the drop off.

For me it just makes more sense to have a daycare closer to home rather than work. I telecommute a few days a week, for one, and also it's nice to have the option of taking my DD to daycare on the rare occasions I stay home sick or take a day to run errand. Or get stuff done around the house. My DH and I work twenty miles from daycare but both of us in the opposite direction, so this way he can occasionally drop her off or pick up if I need him to since a daycare close to my work would be 40 miles from his.

[claras_mom]

Originally Posted by kerc

Sounds like a very good plan. I forgot to add:

In Minnesota home based daycares are state licensed. There's a listing with the state of people who claim to have openings. You should ask around and find out if there is such a list. One place that is a good place to call to get this information is the local WIC office. Even if you dont' qualify for WIC, try calling the office and seeing if they know of a daycare referral service.

The county--I think it's county and not city--I live in maintains such a list. Way back when dd1 started, I called. They gave me names of caregivers in my preferred area with openings for infants. I'm sure if I'd run through those 4 w/out finding something that suited, they'd have provided more.

Even a home-based center might be able to predict openings for July (or later in the summer), based on the ages of the kids currently there. So a younger kid might pass the age of "officially" being an infant (in terms of licensing); older kids might be heading off to pre-school or kindy. I'm pretty sure my current dcp keeps applications "on file" for people who are interested in an opening if it comes up.

Too bad about your boss. Tiny babies--in the sleeping/eating/easily entertained stage--are remarkably easy to work around/with. Well....at least in my experience. But both my kids have been mellow babies.

[MacKinnon]

My children, DS right now and DD in the summer, attend a wonderful program in the neighboring town. It's about 20 miles away in each direction, then I back track about 7 miles to go to work. The whole process in the morning takes me about 45 minutes. There were no quality options closer. Unfortuantly, is the opposite direction of DH's work, so I do about 98% of pickup/dropoff.

[GoestoShow]

.

Edited by GoestoShow - 1/4/11 at 9:09am

[LilMomma83]

DS2 goes to home daycare which is about 5min drive from my house. DS1 goes to a learning center that's "on the way" if I take a route that adds about 15mins to my trip. I probably would add more than 20mins to my commute for daycare...the only reason I'm going out of my way at all is that we really love the program he is in and I could not afford a similar one anywhere else...he can stay there through 12th grade and DS2 will start when he turns 2.

[JL83]

I went with the best place I could find (after a LONG search - almost 10 months of working from home and stuff). It was ~5 minutes from my work and ~25 from my home.

It ended up working out VERY well for us. We go alot of places in the evenings, like to the grandparents for supper, and stuff like that. So it would have been very inconvenient or impossible to drive close to our home and then head out again in another direction for supper.

I think people can make anything work. IMO, it's better to find a good place that you are comfortable with and then go from there. I wouldn't artificially limit my search based on geography unless it was really getting ridiculous.

[blizzard_babe]

Ours is on the way, sort of. DH drops me off at work (7min drive from home to work), then stops by our DCP (another 4min or so), and then goes to work (maybe 2min?).

So really, even if it were out of the way, our numbers are so small that it wouldn't matter.