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OP, I think you should stick with the professional daycare. Your mother seems immature and I don't think you'll be saving much. Also, what if she is sick one day or for whatever reasons can't? Daycares are always open. I think if you're mother is being this difficult now, I wouldn't allow her to be the babysitter. She might change her mind.
I don't get how you got any of that from the OP. How is the mother acting "immature?"
I think family should help each other for free. Especially in the OP's case where the OP isn't asking her mother to babysit at all. I think that's nerve to insist someone make you the babysitter and then you want the same price as a licensed professional. (I know she didn't say 600, but 300 isn't good enough. Anything more isn't saving the OP much.)
OP, I think you should stick with the professional daycare. Your mother seems immature and I don't think you'll be saving much. Also, what if she is sick one day or for whatever reasons can't? Daycares are always open. I think if you're mother is being this difficult now, I wouldn't allow her to be the babysitter. She might change her mind.
Huh? How in the world did you get that from the OP? The grandmother hasn't demanded anything.
I disagree that the grandmother should do it for free. It wouldn't be free for her anyway, she will have travel expenses. The OP will get peace of mind knowing her baby is well cared for, and not in a day care exposed to all sorts of illnesses during infancy. $300 is a total bargain, and the OP seems to realize it.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Whatever the two of you agree to is fine, no one else has any business telling you whether it's fair or not. If we were retired my wife and I would love to take care of ours if only for the enjoyment of watching them grow up and not having them raised by strangers.
I too have seen the tricky side of this. You want the tax credit and will have to give her SS#. She wants to declare the income but it may put her in a higher tax bracket.
A lot depends on the relationship you have with your mother. Do you get along? Will she respect your instructions or insist on her own way? Do you feel you can correct her?
Too many times mother will insist "well it worked just fine 30 years ago so no need to reinvent the wheel". Like solid foods. I personally feel they are started way too young these days on solids but my mother insisted 6 weeks was not too early. Had she been the babysitter we would have butted heads on this and other issues.
I would prefer a professional boss/employee relationship for my childcare which can be tricky with Mom. But it depends on your financial situation and your relationship with your mother. I could never have had my own mother as caregiver. no way....
I too have seen the tricky side of this. You want the tax credit and will have to give her SS#. She wants to declare the income but it may put her in a higher tax bracket.
A lot depends on the relationship you have with your mother. Do you get along? Will she respect your instructions or insist on her own way? Do you feel you can correct her?
Too many times mother will insist "well it worked just fine 30 years ago so no need to reinvent the wheel". Like solid foods. I personally feel they are started way too young these days on solids but my mother insisted 6 weeks was not too early. Had she been the babysitter we would have butted heads on this and other issues.
I would prefer a professional boss/employee relationship for my childcare which can be tricky with Mom. But it depends on your financial situation and your relationship with your mother. I could never have had my own mother as caregiver. no way....
These are concerns my husband has, which I agree are legitimate concerns.
I don't know how it will affect her tax-wise tbh, but she's not someone hurting for money at all.
I do get along with her overall and am completely comfortable telling her what I do and don't want to do. And that's part of the reason why I'd prefer to pay because then she'd be more than just grandma, she'd be an employee too. It's like I'm paying so you do what I say lol.
She ran her own licensed daycare for 10 years+ and she had to follow the demands of the parents and never really had problems with that over the years. She also took child development courses and stuff for her business and I think she'd respect my wishes if I told her things about solid foods. Specially since she knows I plan to breastfeed and I remember her warming up breast milk in water for the infants that were fed breastmilk and I know she did it the proper way (she talked to me about this already haha). I mean from my understandings it's no solids for 6 months at least? Just breastmilk?
We can afford daycare, but it would just be better to not have to pay so much and use that extra money towards paying off our student loans faster and/or saving for a home.
She knows I'd be really pissed and stop taking the baby if she did something that I didn't agree with (and I found out).
I am only hesistant because I think this will be too much for her.
When my MIL found out what daycare costs she also volunteered to take the baby 1-2 days a week to ease the burden from my mother (and she refused money). $600 is a very conservative estimate because here it can cost up to $1600, I think $800 is more average for where we live.
I guess we'll see, I'm still actually looking around, in case things don't work out, I figured we'd give my mom a "trial run" for the month of December (and 1 week in November) and have it set up where the baby could be in daycare in January but if things are just fine we'd just cancel with the daycare or purposely enroll only part time to keep a spot (well and of course we'd have the baby actually go in that event at least 2 days/week).
I think a lot would depend on your mom's health. Does she take any meds which might make her sleepy?
I had a friend whose mother had a heart attack and recovered. A few months later my friend left her young kids with her mother IN THE SWIMMING POOL. I couldn't help but say "Aren't you nervous leaving your kids in the pool with your mother?" She looked at me funny and said "Why?" I dropped it.
8.5 months after her first heart attack the mother dropped dead of 2nd attack in the grocery store. She was alone. Now I know many people have HA and go on for years but i certainly would not leave 2 kids in a swimming pool with a woman who had had a heart attack.
I think a lot would depend on your mom's health. Does she take any meds which might make her sleepy?
My mom takes blood pressure meds, but that is all I believe. No history of heart attack or anything like that. She had some knee surgery last year on her right knee, minor, but she's better now.
I mis-wrote earlier, my mom is 56, not 58. I know two years isn't a huge difference lol. My MIL is 58.
I talked to my sister she thinks I should give our mom at 100/week. I wasn't really too on board with that but I listened to what she said.
So then I asked my mom how much she wanted, now she says $500/month. That's a far cry from the $200 she wanted earlier.
I'm like um okay... we'll see. I mean obviously the convenience of her coming to our home is a plus. Obviously I want to be fair all the way around but it is a little frustrating for her to go from $200, to me offering $300, to now it being $500. Even though originally (before we were pregnant) she said she just wanted a grandchild and told me "don't worry about daycare I want to take care of the baby, don't worry about money, just have a baby..." There goes that!
$500 is something we might be able to afford (we are changing our tax with-holdings, I'm getting a raise in November as well), it would just have been nicer to pay a little less, even though no matter what we are going to save by going with my mom and have peace of mind that it's my mother taking care of the baby. HOPEFULLY.
I found licensed daycares asking for $140/week. So essentially going with my mom would save me $1300/year.
Though that would entail us driving to that daycare... but it's on the way to our jobs.
Now I'm scared tomorrow she's going to say $600.
I was just hoping to have a little extra so we could pay off our student loans faster. Guess that won't happen now.
My MIL has also said she'd take care of the baby as well (like 1-2 days a week) and I'm like at this rate I can't afford them. Though I don't think my MIL wants money.
It frustrates me a little too because my mom doesn't really need the money like we do. $200/month is $2400 extra per year we could use for other expenses like for things the baby needs and so on.
First of all, you get what you pay for with daycare. A place only charging $140/wk for full time infant care sounds to me as though it will be short staffed, at the least.
I would find out if my MIL wanted to fill in a day on a regular basis. Then ask your mother if she will sit the other days for the previously agreed upon $300. It would be good to have a backup in case your mother couldn't sit for some reason anyway.
What I wouldn't do is pull the "we need the money more than she does" card. That makes you sound entitled. Surely you didn't think you could become parents without budgeting for care.
Yes I budgeted, but it's one thing to say "don't worry about the expense of daycare I WANT to take care of the baby," then to go from $200, to $300, to $500. I feel like she wants to profit vs. help.
I think I'm just stressing because I don't know how our financial situation will be in 5-6 months. I just worry we won't have enough to take care of a baby when on average it costs what- $8-10k/yr? I'm doing all I can to minimize costs, breastfeeding, cloth diapers, accepting secondhand furniture from friends, buying maternity stuff at second-hand stores, etc. It's not like hubby and I are living it up here. But since I'm 31 and he's 38 we didn't want to put it off any longer.
She's texting me now telling me don't stress about the childcare costs and we'll talk about it later. How do you not stress when things change so drastically?
I guess I just can't imagine charging my future children almost the same as it costs for daycare if I didn't need the money. Specially with my mom going on about how "in our culture the grandparents take care of the grandchildren." I sure as heck know in our culture they don't charge either! I wanted to give something but $500?
My sister suggested asking my mom to do 3 days, my MIL 2, but then seeing if that way they both will be willing to do it for free at that point. IDK.
I'm going to bed, it's 11 pm and I need to be at work tomorrow. I'm not trying to come off as entitled, I think I just need to sit on this for a while before making any decisions. Maybe talk to my dad as well.
Last edited by beera; 04-15-2014 at 12:04 AM..
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