Childcare costs?

Just wondering what people pay for childcare? Obviously it is very dependent on where you live, but my husband and I cannot come to an agreement. We live in rural MN, and from what I’ve heard, $125-ish seems to be about average for one child per week. Here’s our situation.

I went back to work at 4 months postpartum. I wanted to ask my boss to reduce my status from 1.0 (full time) to a .6 (only working 3 days a week) but I knew it would be denied, so I asked for .7 (three days off per pay period) which was granted.

My mom is retired and volunteered to babysit for us. This is my mom’s first grandchild that lives nearby, her other four grandkids are 16 hours away, so she wanted to babysit so she could bond with my boy. At the time, my mother-in-law also lived close by and my cousin was moving back to town, so we thought we had 2 backups, my mom could take him three days a week and someone else could take him on the fourth so she wasn’t watching him basically full-time. My cousin moved back and is a SAHM but has three kids of her own in various sports/activities, so when I approached her because my mom was getting burnt out, my cousin essentially flaked. She said she could take him if we absolutely needed her to, but she didn’t really want to commit to anything and once her kids started school she would be unavailable. 😒 Great. Then my mother-in-law took a new job two hours away, so during the week she lives in an apartment in that city and then comes home on weekends. So both of our backups fell through. This put some strain on my relationship with my mom because she was giving up a lot (Bible studies, multiple volunteer opportunities, coffee dates with friends, plus my parents run a gardening business out of their home, and it’s not easy to run out and dig up plants for customers with an infant to watch) and I knew it was hard on her but I also couldn’t just quit my job.

Not too long ago she mentioned wanting to go on a cruise for her and my dad’s upcoming anniversary as they’ve never taken a trip just the two of them. She told me how much it was and said instead of a Christmas gift, if we just wanted to give them money towards the cruise, that’s what they would like. She also mentioned in a roundabout way that if we were to give her money for babysitting, they would be better able to afford the trip. I asked what she was thinking we would pay her, and not wanting to give me a straight answer, she said, “idk, $50/week?” Well that’s not enough. $50/week, assuming she watches him four days a week is $12.5/day, about $1.56/hour. Wtf. That’s not nearly enough to pay someone who is taking care of my most precious belonging. I suggested $100/week to my husband, and he thought we should split the difference and go $75/week.

My thought is that even at $100/week, we are still getting by really cheap for childcare. I also told him that we spend more money on less important crap, we can shell out a little extra for our CHILD. We pay $150/month for cable and literally all I watch are reruns for Friends & Parks and Rec. 😒 He seems to be caught up on wanting to claim it for taxes and he’s not sure how we would do that; I have told him to call the tax guy. Taxes or not, I don’t feel comfortable ripping off my mom like this. So I want to know what y’all pay for childcare so I can prove my cheapskate husband wrong.