Unfortunately that's a fear that is going to have to be overcome one day. One day, your child will go to school and have lots of strangers looking after him for 6 hours a day.
I used to feel the same way, especially when it comes to my daughter. My daughter's brain isn't growing properly, she has severe speech and developmental delays, she has seizures, her oxygen levels drop dangerously low when she sleeps, she's a flight risk,...I could go on and on. Then her therapists began recommending part-time daycare to help with her social development. I refused. I wouldn't have anything of the sort because I was so afraid of getting that phone call that she ran away, or was going to the hospital or something. I finally compromised and placed her with a mom from the playgroups and she absolutely thrived. Her development improved in leaps and bounds.
I've been in college since last May and my hours had me attending an opposite shift of my husband's work. Two weeks ago, I began a full-time placement at an elementary school for children with with special needs. The school hours start at 8:00am and end at 4:00pm. My husband works from 6:00am to 2:00pm. The part-time daycare I had my daughter in wanted $1200 a month for full-time care. In turn, we had 5 days to find full-time care at a reasonable price since we're a one-income family. This meant we had to open ourselves up to the possibility of strangers watching our kids for 6 hours a day.
I don't mean you look on Kijiji and call up the first babysitter listed and go out on a limb and go to the movies the same night. I mean ask around. Ask family to babysit, or as a friend for a recommendation, and if you're limited there, start performing lots of interviews and find the perfect fit for a babysitter.
My kids are in an amazing, affordable daycare now and they absolutely love it. I'm going to hate pulling them out in March when my husband gets laid off. Eventually you will have to open yourself up to strangers watching your kids, though. Just trust your gut and your child's behaviour. Remember, all your friends were strangers until you got to know them. Strangers become friends all the time.
And trust me when I say this, because I almost lost my marriage..you WANT TO and NEED TO have nights to yourself, or just you and your OH. A baby takes a lot of time and energy, and while he or she needs to be fed, so does a marriage so it doesn't go sour and distant.
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to everyone on here. I have a 3 year old and the hormones seem to have hit me very hard the last two weeks. I am also running a very high risk pregnancy with diabetes (type 1), asthma, hypothyroidism and bipolar and have become depressed in the last month and a half which is not really suprising considering DH has been pretty absent and I have been comatose a few times recently and in hospital for 5 days. I am feeling terribly guilty about my DD who has seen far too much - she keeps coming to me and asking how she can help, if my sugar levels are low and if the baby is alright. I think she is also scared that Mom will disappear to hospital again (and it was not the first time this pregnancy either)
