The challenging reality of temporary daycare
In my last post, I was excited to share that I had found a temporary daycare where I could reserve a spot on a case by case basis when I need to work, so I wanted to share an update about the experience.
The good news is that the process and the care has been great and even though it’s taking my baby some time to adjust, I feel safe with this system.
On the other hand, I have struggled to secure spots when I need. Actually, every time I’ve called to reserve space, I’ve been put on a waiting list because the spots were all booked out. So the only times I’ve been able to use the daycare of when I received a call that there had been a cancellation and I would be moved off the waiting list.
For some activities like hybrid meetings where I can join online this hasn’t been too much of a problem, but I can already foresee a few problems where I’ll really need to know in advance that daycare is secured before I can engage with work.
For example, I am planning on running a workshop and since the temporary daycare is unavailable, I will have to hire a baby sitter instead. The baby sitter I am hiring is an experienced pediatric nurse who requires a consultation before usage, and the total fees for the time I need will be about 8,000 yen. This is compared to 2,400 yen for the temporary daycare. If the temporary daycare becomes available at the last minute, I would incur a cancellation fee from the babysitter if I want to switch to the daycare instead based on costs, so last minute notice is inconvenient.
Given other expenses I have to run the workshop, it puts pressure on me to increase the number of participants so that I don’t wind up spending more on expenses and care than I receive from the work. I would be lucky to break even (and this particular workshop is one where I’m aiming to lower the cost to participants as much as possible).
It makes me question the purpose of holding the workshop at all if there is no financial merit, so I had to reconnect with the purpose behind the workshop and other things I want to benefit from (like connecting with people, finding ideas for content, etc).