The Daily Shuffle

Securing child care can be stressful and complicated on many levels. Not only are you contending with the guilt and confusion associated with thrusting your child into an unfamiliar environment, but you're also trying to sort out the logistics while balancing your family's home and professional needs. It's amazing how consuming the logistics can get.

When I started looking into child care options for my daughter, I felt overwhelmed. Laurel and I were -- literally -- very attached, and her resistance to bottle feeding made leaving her in anyone else's care exasperating for all parties. Plus, I was coping with the emotional and practical stress that my parents (our primary child care plan) had new medical complications and their days now needed to be spent in chemotherapy or physical therapy. I felt conflicted professionally, given that my less-than-satisfying job carried an academically noble salary barely covering child care costs. I needed to find a day care that took 9-month-olds (centers offering infant care are less prevalent), and figure out how to fit the to-and-from into my already packed days.

Obviously, there was no choice but to hunker down and work out the details. My job required me to split my time between two different campuses, so I had three options. The first campus option included an optimally situated child care center in the building right next door to mine. The second campus option required an additional shuttle ride from the hospital where I worked. For the third option, I put our name on the wait list of a day care near our home.

The near-work locations seemed more sensible given that commuting with my baby would mean I'd have more time at work (since I wouldn't have to arrive late or leave work early to do drop off/pick up), but in the end, neither location panned out. I nixed the hospital day care option because negotiating a baby by myself through nearly three hours of commuting a day (to and from the hospital and the crowded shuttle to and from the day care site) while hauling a breast pump (and, on the way home, breast milk) was just not going to happen. Then we learned that the perfectly situated day care next door to my other work location had a queue not of the initially quoted "a few families," but more like 200 families. So by default, we ended up at the day care near home, which didn't seem optimal since it was in the wrong direction of my commute.

Fate has a funny way of working though, and the benefits of proximity have become evident time and again. First, and most drastically, I ended up leaving academia behind and now work from home. Second, being close to our day care offers the option to stroll Laurel in good weather, which provides me with some much-needed exercise (a number of families stroll or bike to school -- our center makes it easy to stow strollers until the day's end). Third, having the center close to home makes additional situations such as asking a relative to pick Laurel up, retrieving forgotten lunches or blankies, or being able to attend school events (on days when Laurel is not at school) enormously easier.

After a relatively peaceful and predictable year, during the last couple of weeks we again have struggled to balance a new set of circumstances: my husband's new multi-site work schedule, Laurel's periodic resistance to heading to her new classroom at the day care, my work needs, our household minutia, and having one car (which my husband now needs to take most days of the week). We've had some hairy, poorly communicated days. But, I've come to realize the advantages of the unforeseen. Since my husband's commuter needs require him to be the drop off/pick up person two out of three days a week, I'm no longer flying solo on this responsibility and subsequently have an extra 1 - 1.5 work hours on those days. I have a solid reason to not feel bound to car-oriented household errands (which I typically feel burdened by) during my work hours. Sorting out the daily shuffle can be maddening, but when you finally catch the beat, you can breathe easier...at least for a little while.

Christine Koh is a music and brain scientist turned publisher, designer, and freelance writer/editor. She is the editor of BostonMamas.com and the artist behind PoshPeacock.com.