Emergency Child Care -- Ready or Not!

The call came at 5:30 p.m. on a Friday.

My pregnant wife, who'd been experiencing every pregnancy-related problem known to womankind, was poleaxed by abdominal pains in the middle of one of those mega-sized discount stores. She had our five-year-old daughter, Emma, in tow.

I raced over from work.

What ensued was not our first visit to the emergency room during this pregnancy, but it was our first accompanied by Emma. We knew that our regular caregivers were unavailable at that time, so we had no choice but to bring our daughter into that stressful and confusing hospital atmosphere. Keeping a five-year-old calm (on the one hand) and entertained (on the other) under such circumstances is no mean feat.

Time is of the essence in a hospital, so medical professionals don't always have the luxury of explaining to scared little girls exactly what is happening to their mommies every step of the way. That's not to say these particular medical professionals weren't wonderful. Emma enjoyed hearing the baby's heartbeat (as did we all), then grew bored waiting for the ER doctor (as did we all). I walked her to the gift shop (closed) and the cafeteria (filled with yucky food, apparently). We even visited the chapel. When I explained to Emma what people do there while waiting for sick people to get well, she seemed alarmed and wanted to leave.

The enormity of it was a bit much for her. It is hard for a father to know what information to deliver unexpurgated to his kindergartner and what to soft-soap. Luckily, Daddy wasn't too worried about Mommy, having been in this precise situation several times before. Still, it would have been nice to have an emergency childcare plan in place. This was not something we'd thought of, or at least we hadn't thought enough of it to get to the planning stage.

It makes sense to work out as many last-minute options for childcare as possible, especially if you're like us and don't have any relatives nearby. The most obvious way to start this process is to call day-care providers in your town and find out who provides drop-in care. You may also want to canvass your friends, neighbors, teenagers, child-loving widows, and fellow parents to see who would be willing and able to provide last-minute childcare and when, precisely, they would be able to provide it.

At least one of your nick-of-time caregivers should have the freedom and ability to drive to your locale and pick your child up. This would have been an invaluable service to us while we were at the hospital. It also would have been smart to have had an emergency bag of children's diversions in the car to supplement the substantial-yet-always-inadequate amount of diversions my daughter keeps with her at all times.

Chances are you'll be able to form a patchwork schedule out of the various evenings, afternoons, and random hours that people have said they'd be available. Few folks work for free, of course, but most U.S. citizens are adherents of the barter system, whether they know it or not. Fellow parents will have their own child care needs, last minute and otherwise and other sorts of people need leaves raked, relatives chauffeured, oysters rockefellered, etc. Whomever you enlist, make sure they spend quality time with your child before the next emergency happens and make certain that your guardian-in-a-pinch is well acquainted with your child's routines and foibles. Rumor has it that more and more workplaces are offering emergency childcare programs (this is de rigueur in Canada, of course).

Such progressivism has probably not yet filtered down to your place of employment. There are going to be days, therefore, when you have no option but to bring your child to work for a few hours, even if such a practice is frowned upon. This isn't an ideal situation, but there's no reason it has to be catastrophic. The key to making this work is preparation. Give your child specific guidelines on how to behave at your workplace. Have activities in your desk or cubicle to occupy your child and scope out your workplace to see if there's an empty office near your cubicle where your child can play quietly. You probably know a warm and affectionate coworker who would be eager to help entertain your child for a short period of time. There is likely not a single solution to your emergency childcare needs, but with enough pre-planning, peace of mind can be achieved.

Steve Penhollow is the Arts and Entertainment Reporter for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette in Indiana. He has written for a number of publications, including the Advocate chain of newspapers in Massachusetts and Connecticut.