She was serious.  I decided to move on but was surprised to discover that the next three daycares I visited within a 5-mile radius of our condo had the same story.  So I sorted daycares on my Google maps search based on their distance from our home and started working through the list.  I was SHOCKED to learn that the only daycare that could meet our availability requirement was a 30-minute drive from our house EACH WAY.  That didn’t include traffic — which Seattle had become notorious for being horrible at.

It was overwhelming and alarming. I was in the middle of a childcare crisis and I did not know what to do! I immediately felt the need to call every co-worker whom I had written off as lazy after reading their out of office notification marked “WFH — No Childcare”. Now that I knew the truth − that childcare is a necessity — I replayed every eye roll I had made at those poor parents before me and cringed.

But self-reflection wasn’t helping me find childcare and daycare was DEFINITELY out.

The next option was a RETIRED GRANDPARENT.  That older man on the 5th floor whose daughter dropped off her infant son every morning at 7 am now made sense to me. I hadn’t given the arrangement much thought when I was the morning dog walker (post-baby this became my husband’s responsibility). But it was now clear that the reason that man was standing at our building’s entrance each morning was because he was his grandchild’s primary childcare provider.

It also occurred to me that he was standing there because he was saving his daughter time by not having to park, get her kid out of the car seat, go into the building and into the elevator up 5 floors only to drop off the child and reverse everything to continue her work commute.

This would be a GREAT and potentially SUPER cost-effective solution IF my parents were healthy enough to rely on consistently.  My husband’s parents lived on the other side of the country so the retired grandparent option was a FIRM no-go.

So I started searching for a nanny.  After some more Googling, I learned that there are two nanny options: private nanny and nanny share.

A PRIVATE NANNY is a dedicated childcare provider who 100% cares for your child.

A NANNY SHARE is a dedicated childcare provider whom you share with another family.  The time can be split or combined and would depend on both the nanny and the family you share with.

Now.  I also learned there are a lot of ways to hire a nanny.  I felt more comfortable sourcing a nanny through an agency who handled the initial screening and background check vs. also having to take that responsibility on.

That said, after speaking with a few agencies one thing was clear − I had chosen the wrong side hustle in college… Not only do nannies get holidays off, their hourly rate was higher than I expected [between $20-$26 based on experience] AND they got OVERTIME when they worked more than 40 hours a week [meaning $40-$52 for each hour over 40]. So after some quick math, I was starting to consider leaving my job to become a stay-at-home parent since the delta between my ACTUAL income and the ESTIMATED EXPENSE of a nanny was slim.