The Day Care Challenge

"I’m sorry, I can’t keep Noah any more."

Not exactly the words I was expecting to hear from our in-home sitter just two months after she started keeping my son. And just about a week after we’d plunked down the money for a full set of 26 Bum Genius cloth diapers with the understanding that she would be glad to help us keep the kid in cloth.

When I was pregnant with Noah, my husband Bobby and I considered cloth diapers, but we wrote them off because we figured there was no way we’d find a day care that would be willing to use them. I knew I would be returning to work, and cloth diapering just on nights and weekends didn’t seem worth it to us.

So we found ourselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. We’d invested several hundred dollars to buy cloth diapers, and we actually found ourselves really liking them after even just a week.

When we started looking for a day care to replace the in-home sitter, the first question we asked was whether they had space available; the second was if they would be willing to cloth diaper our child. Turned out, of the three centers in town that had openings when we needed it, one of the actually was willing to cloth diaper.

Bobby and I were actually pretty astounded that the day care center was willing to do this. We live in the deep south, where cloth diapering isn’t exactly the norm, and the other two places we looked told us absolutely not. The workers at one place even basically mocked us for using cloth diapers, telling us there was no benefit to it and that it was a waste of time and money.

When we asked this question at Little Friends, on the other hand, the administrative assistant who was showing us around lit up. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “You have no idea how excited that makes me because I want to cloth diaper my children when I have them, and we don’t have any babies here in cloth diapers right now!”

Even though the center that was willing to cloth diaper was the most expensive option, and we knew the price difference (about $150 more per month that what we’d been paying the in-home sitter) would put a bit of a strain on our budget, it was worth it to us to put Noah somewhere that was willing to work with us on something so important to us.

Our experience since starting at Little Friends has been a great one as far as cloth diapering is concerned, and their willingness to work with us on cloth diapering is a great reflection of the type of care Noah receives all around. It’s well worth it!

BIO: Misty Mathews is mom to five-month-old Noah, wife to Bobby and pet-mommy to Nom Nom, Rosie and Ranger. She blogs regularly at www.thefamilymath.com.