Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Banging My Head Against the Wall

Update on the day care situation:

The director of the center did not read my email. She heard from Cily’s caregiver that I had emailed her, so she called and left a message saying she would rather just speak with me in person.

When we spoke, she had the nerve to argue with me. Incredibly, she seemed to think that if Cily wasn’t crying, there was no reason to think she might be hungry. “We feed on demand,” she said.

“I understand that,” I said. “But if a child goes five hours without eating anything, wouldn’t you just offer her something?”

“Well, she wasn’t crying,” she said.

“No, sometimes she doesn’t,” I said. “But—“

“Well, usually she lets us know if she’s hungry,” she interrupted. “Believe me.”

“What I would like to see happen is EVEN IF SHE IS NOT CRYING, offer her a bottle every three hours,” I said. “If she isn’t hungry, she won’t eat it. But she should never go five hours without being fed.”

“Okay, we’ll do that,” she said. “But you know usually a baby will cry to tell you they’re hungry.”

Deep breath. “Okay, L. – let me tell you what I am trying to do here. I am trying to avoid having my husband come down here. He is not happy. You do not want him to come down here. Can we just agree that from now on you will check to see if she wants to eat every three hours or so?”

Agreed. Jesus Lord, give me strength.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why is it we research, interview, cross reference, and use our finely tuned intuition on choosing people to watch our children and they still present us with bonehead situations (not feeding infants, no shoes in the snow, etc.)?

*sigh* I mean, seriously. Not every baby/child/person reacts in the same way.

Sending you strength, girl, sending you strength.

Lisa Blah Blah said...

Tell me about it. I hate that I had to invoke the Angry Black Man in my response. I was just at The. End. of my rope with this woman.

Liz Dwyer said...

What in the world??? You're the baby's mama! If you say feed the child every three hours, they better do it! AAGH!

Cee in SF said...

our mom, you establish her routine. If you want her fed every three hours, they need to stick to that. I mean are there 90babies in there that they can't check to see if Cily needs a bottle every three hours? How hard is that? Really! For the love of Gazatio!

Lisa Blah Blah said...

LA: I know you feel my rage! It was so hard to stay calm.

Cee: There are 5 babies in her group, out of 15 total kids in the day care center. Not all 15 are there at the same time, because some of the kids are part-time. There are 4-5 caregivers there at all times. Seriously, that's why I chose this place - because the ratio seemed to indicate that they'd be able to give her more individualized attention.

Who or what is Gazatio? I Googled to no avail.