Doing Daycare with MY OWN Baby... Help!

[LeslieG]

I've been taking a break from doing daycare because we moved out of state and I had my first baby. Now I'm going to be getting back into daycare by summer time and I'm SO nervous because now I have my own.. who still doesn't sleep well for naps and at night. He will not go down unless I rock and nurse him to sleep, and it's not unheard of for him to wake up multiple times wanting to be rocked/nursed back to sleep. I don't know what to do because I can't be rocking and nursing him for naps when I have kids here. Suggestions? Have any of you dealt with this before?

I swear, taking care of my own baby has been a lot harder on me than my years of caring for someone else's baby.

[permanentvacation]

There was a lot of me telling the daycare kids things like, 'Hold on, I have to go slow.' and 'I don't think I can do that activity with you today.' for the first couple of weeks.

With my second baby, I gave birth and then 2 days later did daycare on a daily basis by myself. I was a bit slower moving around. The kids watched television a good bit, which we NEVER did. But it kept them from being too loud, kept them from fighting over toys, and basically allowed me to relax while sitting on the sofa to give me time to recuperate from having the baby.

As far as breast feeding, I just put a blanket over myself to keep the kids from actually seeing my breasts. But of course, they got a quick lesson on the fact that babies drink from their mommy's 'boobies'. But none of the kids made a big deal of it and my parents were all alright with it.

My baby, like many newborns woke up a couple of times in the night. I just started going to bed early right after I put my older daughter (4 years old at the time) to bed. I was tired for a while. But I managed. I found out that I wasn't producing enough milk to fill her up, which made her need to eat constantly. So when she was 6 weeks old, I put her on formula.

Just because I like telling my story, here's my story of how my second daughter was born...

I had already been doing daycare for years. I continued doing daycare the entire time I was pregnant with my second baby. I went into labor with a house full of daycare kids. When my contractions were about 5 minutes apart, I called my doctor who told me to go to her office so she could check me to see if they were Braxton Hicks contractions or the real thing. So I called my substitute over. She came over at the same time that my own daughter plus the daycare kids that walked home from school arrived at my house. One of the mothers of a daycare kid (the child happened to be my older daughter's best friend and the mother was my best friend) also arrived at my house at the same time.

So my friend, my older daughter, and her friend and I got into my van to go to my doctor's office. Since the drive was about an hour long, I felt that I could drive it faster than having to tell my friend directions, so I drove.

We got to the doctor's office. As I went to get on the examination table, either my water broke or I peed myself. So I went to the bathroom to see if I had to pee. I sat on the toilet and COULD NOT GET UP!!! I started yelling for the doctor from the bathroom. She put her arm around me to help me off the toilet and told me that she would get me to the hospital. I grabbed her shirt and very demandingly informed her, "We ain't going to no hospital!" So the nurse put towels and a pillow on the floor. I laid down and in 3 pushes, my baby was born! A couple of minutes after giving birth, I was standing up washing the blood off of my foot in the bathroom sink!

They called an ambulance. They made me get on a stretcher. I told them that I was perfectly fine. I jokingly said "I'm good! I just lost 20 pounds!" But I got on the stretcher as ordered. Then in the back of the ambulance, they HANDED me my baby to HOLD ON THE STRETCHER! I in a very demanding way asked if they had a car seat in the ambulance and informed them that if they don't, I have plenty of car seats in my van because I do daycare and I'd put my baby in a car seat in my van and drive my baby and myself to the hospital myself! They looked at me like I was a horrible mother and told me that most mothers want to hold their baby. I told them that I want my baby to be safe in a car seat if the ambulance gets into an accident and again demanded to know if they had a car seat or not. The man then flipped a car seat out of the side of the ambulance and strapped my baby in. I then said, "Okay, we can go to the hospital now." ::

My baby and I had to stay in the hospital that night and the next day we went home. The following morning, I had my father and his girlfriend (my substitutes) over to do daycare. But I kept hearing my daycare kids fuss at my father that he was giving the kids the wrong cups (each child had their specific cup). So, a little after 6:00 am, two days after I gave birth, I got up and did daycare. I sent my dad and his girlfriend home that afternoon and continued doing daycare by myself each day as if nothing had happened.

[Ariana]

My baby didn't nap in a crib by herself until she was probably 10 months old. She napped on me, on the go. I had her in a carrier and I had a big exercise ball that I woukd sit and bounce on and she would nap right there with all the daycare kids. Then at 10 months I had to transition her to the crib. I basically took a weekend and got her to sleep in her crib for naps. I would put the tv on for kids and then go put her down during daycare hours. To be honest the whole thing was a blur. I don't even remember for sure how old she was when we put her in her crib for naps! Lol. I also breastfed her right there with the kids. No one batted an eyelash! Kids don't care about that stuff at all.

[Ariana]

Permanentvacation that is the best birth story ever!::::

[permanentvacation]

Ariana,

Thank you I love my birth stories.

My first baby was almost born in the car. My water broke at the gas station near my home (my ex kept the gas receipt for me as a memento). He drove almost an hour to the hospital. I was in the back seat screaming my head off because my body wanted to push the baby out, but I was trying to keep her in. My ex called the doctor and she said that I was over exaggerating. I yelled, "F**K HER" and he then said that she said, "She's having the baby!" (I never spoke like that to my doctor!) We got to the hospital. My ex drove up to the sidewalk, they had a gurney out there waiting for me. I got on the gurney, they raced me to the delivery room. The doctor took one look at me and told me to push. I pushed a couple of times and she came out!

Yeah, I love my birth stories.

[MunchkinWrangler]

Congratulations on your new addition! Because you are doing daycare you have the advantage of doing things differently. You could start sleep training now to get baby used to the daycare schedule by the time you start. I would definitely sleep when the baby sleeps right now and go to bed when the baby does, I did that for a while. 8 PM was my bedtime and I was able to get up for a night feeding until my son started sleeping through the night. I'm sure you'll do great!