Hi ladies,

My March ‘19 baby is my only child, my mother-in-law was taking care of him until Covid hit and he’s been with me 24/7 ever since shutdowns in March. I’m a high school math teacher with 135 students this year and although we’re teaching remotely for now, I can’t get any work done with my 18-month-old at home. We were counting on my MIL to take care of him again now, but she doesn’t want to commit to it because she wants to move to FL soon, so we put him in daycare.

His first day was 9/15 and he didn’t cry at drop-off (I did!), but then the director called me 5 hrs later to ask if we could pick him up because he would not stop crying and they didn’t want to traumatize him on day 1. He had diarrhea and vomiting on day 2, I told them he’s probably teething because he had those same symptoms the week before and I could see his molars coming in; they suggested I give him Tylenol before drop-off the next day. Day 3 was a little better (maybe the Tylenol worked?) but I got called again to pick him up early. In the end, they called me everyday this week to pick him up early because he was inconsolable. I obviously want the best for my son so I agreed to ease him into it on week 1. However, I haven’t been able to do my job effectively this week because I’ve had to pick him up early from the daycare that we’re paying a lot of money for! Is this normal? I was prepared for it to be a difficult transition for us, but I expected them to know how to handle this since this is what they do for a living! At pick-up on Friday the director told me to make sure we put him down for his nap at 1pm because that’s the time they nap at daycare and “there’s other kids in the room who need to nap, so he needs to stay in his cot.” Isn’t that kind of rude and unprofessional to say to a parent? BTW, there’s only 3 other kids in his room with 1 teacher, so a good ratio, why can’t she handle this?

On top of everything, he’s not eating or sleeping at daycare, plus he picked up a cold and hasn’t been able to sleep much this weekend because he’s super congested ☹️ We don’t know what to do about this since we don’t feel the daycare is helping. Any suggestions? Should we switch him to a new one? Should I just keep him home with me and try to make that work somehow? Hire a nanny? I would greatly appreciate any advice from anyone who’s gone through something similar. Thank you!