Adoption Leave, Short Term Disability, and Day Care- OH MY!

As we continue our preparations for our adoption journey today it was finally thinking about what happens when the baby comes home and what happens when we have to go back to work, how does this new baby fit into our lives?

The day started with calls to human resources at John's work- and much to our surprise John gets paternity leave, a lot of paternity leave- all paid at 100%. He gets 12 weeks of paid adoption leave starting when the child is placed with us. WOW! How great is that?! On the other hand I get NADA! Because my firm is less then 50 people they are not required to offer us FMLA, so all I get is my vacation time. So luckily John can be a stay at home dad until the baby is 6 weeks old and is old enough to go to day care. I have to admit, I think he is really excited about that!

I also took a tour of a daycare center today. I think I found a good one- its a large day care center around the corner from my office. They do not have a waiting list- which is good for us. They take children from 6 weeks up to kindergarten. The location is great, the price is reasonable and the facility is clean and taken care of. Each child has their own mini crib- and their own cubby- in which bottles, formula, wipes, and snacks are kept. They are also kept with children their own age, which is great for socialization. All in all I am very happy with my first visit- and it's defiantly the front runner right now. The fact that it's so close to my office is great- if anything happened I would be close by. It's hard to find a place that you think is good enough to leave your child all day- but its the choices that every mother must make.