Choosing a Daycare or Nanny with Madison Fugere from Serene Moments, LLC

Making the decision between daycare and hiring a nanny for your baby when you return to work is a significant choice that should be approached with thoughtfulness. It is crucial to prioritize your child’s safety and well-being while you are away. In this episode of the Baby Pro Podcast, hosts Shelly and Maria delve into this topic and offer valuable perspectives and advice.

 Later in the conversation, Madison Fugere from Serene Moments is introduced in the podcast as an expert who shares insights on choosing between daycare and a nanny. She discusses the advantages of having a nanny, such as personalized care and flexibility. 

 However, she acknowledges that nanny services can be more costly compared to daycare. Madison emphasizes the importance of conducting comprehensive background checks and interviews when selecting a nanny or daycare center. This ensures that the caregiver possesses the required qualifications and aligns with the parent’s values and parenting style.

 Make sure to stay tuned for this informative episode so you don’t miss out on valuable insights!

In this episode, you will learn the following:

•  Explore different childcare options, such as daycare centers, home-based daycares, and the concept of nanny sharing.
•  Ensuring a smooth transition from the nanny to the parent is crucial for the well-being of the child. 
•  The difficulties parents face in finding affordable childcare and the long waitlists that have become even more prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic.
•  The guidance on how to assess daycare facilities, which includes inquiring about the ratios of staff to children and the safety measures in place.
•  When hiring a nanny, it is crucial to consider factors such as finding someone who aligns with the parent’s parenting style and effectively communicates expectations.
•  The discussions about breastfeeding, mastitis, and the advantages of napping for children while they are in daycare.

Connect with Madison:

 Madison offers both daytime & overnight, in person, postpartum support in northern MA & southern NH area as well as sleep support virtually to families from all over. If you are interested in hiring her for support, she offers 30 minute free connection calls that back be booked by following this link.

https://SereneMomentsLLC.as.me/

Additionally, you can connect with Madison on social media

 Instagram: @SereneMoments.Duola

By listening to her podcast:  ‘The Postpartum Plan’ (The Postpartum Plan )

By joining her monthly membership program!

Connect with Shelly: 

my website:  Massachusetts IBCLC | Lactation Consultant – Shelly Taft

Instagram: Instagram (@shellytaftibclc)

Resources Mentioned: 

 Article: Rate of US teen pregnancy hits historic low:

   Teenage birth rates in the US reached historic lows in 2022, CDC report finds

Transcript:

Madison Fugere 0:00
You want there to be as much of a seamless transition from nanny to parent at the end of the night and in the morning as possible for the child. So that’s, I think, really, really important. And so asking, you know what their disciplinary style is, and you know what they’re comfortable doing and not doing is important.

Shelly 0:20
Hi, I’m Shelly. And I’m Maria. And you’re listening to the baby pro podcast, where we talk about everything in anything related to pregnancy, and through the first year of your child’s life. Every episode, we will discuss an interview experts and all the answers to the questions expectant and new parents want to know, such as creating the perfect birth plan, infancy, and tips and tricks for parenting a newborn, and welcome to the show.

Shelly 0:45
Hey, Maria. Question When you had Morgan, did she end up going into daycare?

Shelly 0:53
Yes,

Shelly 0:55
I had to go back to work for three months, like a lot of people are at 12 weeks, I should say.

Shelly 1:01
What kinda like was it like a center? Was it an in home?

maria 1:05
It was a center? Yeah, no, we didn’t ever do any in home daycare services. They weren’t really, this is the first daycare center that we utilize, was actually like across the street from the office that I worked at at the time. So it was really convenient for me to just like, drop her off and pick her up every day. The second daycare center, she went to what is like, less than a quarter of a mile from my house. So it was it was all about sort of convenience. We never really looked into home daycare options or anything like that. My mother in law did help with

maria 1:42
childcare for a little while. For the first couple of years. Did you have a good experience with the daycare in general? Yeah, for sure. As far as like, No, I take it back. I was gonna say, but,

maria 1:57
but like, it’s been so I mean, like, it’s been 10 years, basically. Yeah. Well, I had to think about that for a second and be like, No, not really wasn’t the case? No, I did have a good experience with them. Gosh, I don’t even remember who they were, who they were called. It’s a fairly well known chain.

Shelly 2:14
I think it is, but I can’t think of it.

maria 2:19
But I did. They had no issues with me breastfeeding or like right there. dropping her off for the day. They were super lovely with engaging interactions with the kids. And you could tell they really enjoyed the babies and

Shelly 2:34
huh, yeah, it was good. Now you have your kids go to daycare. We actually couldn’t afford to,

Shelly 2:43
like it would have been more than my paycheck. So I just switched to evening shifts.

maria 2:47
Yeah. Which sucked. But you know, you do what you have to do? Yeah, no, but I mean, Ram. That’s a pretty common issue.

maria 2:59
Pretty much everybody in this country, especially now, just it like unobtainable

Madison Fugere 3:06
as asking because this week’s guest is Madison from serene moments, and she’s talking to us about how to choose a daycare or a nanny for your baby. When

Shelly 3:15
you go back to work. I totally wish I could have afforded a nanny. No. And one of the things that we’re I wanted to ask Madison about is like nanny shares, which is still pricier I think, than other forms of, of daycare. A friend of mine, actually a very good friend of mine has a nanny.

maria 3:36
And she has participated as a shared nanny. What works out well for her, I don’t know, on the family end of it if that’s if it’s more challenging.

Shelly 3:48
I’m sure you have to find like the right family to share the nanny with.

Shelly 3:53
That’s important.

maria 3:55
Yeah, for sure. I would think they would need to be like a close family friend or somebody who are at least really familiar and spent time, you know, outside of like everyday stuff.

Shelly 4:06
Well, before we speak with Madison, did you hear the news about teen pregnancy?

Shelly 4:11
No, tell me all about it. So

Shelly 4:15
the teenage birth rates in the US reached historic lows in 2022.

Shelly 4:21
So the birth rate

Shelly 4:23
among 15 to 19 year olds in 2022 is 13.5 per 1000 females, which is a 3% drop, since the numbers and from the numbers in 2021, and is a record low in the United States. That’s awesome. And it actually has been steadily declining since 1991. Gave birth control. I know let’s keep our fingers crossed that we continue to have access to that. That’s just going crazy.

Shelly 4:54
Productive half. Yeah, that’d be awesome. And let’s next do Our question of the week,

maria 5:01
my favorite

Shelly 5:05
This week’s question was Samina Instagram. And this question is I’m having a lot of pain in my breast and when I pump, my breast milk is lumpy is the safe to feed to my baby. Oh, so I actually learned about this. I know recently, if you have lumpy breast milk, it could be a sign of subclinical mastitis.

maria 5:30
Yeah, yeah. I also learned about that recently.

Shelly 5:34
And I know a lot of people think, Oh, I must have had a plug duct and then it loosened up and I just put in pulling out dried milk. But if you really don’t have time, like signs of a signs of a clogged duct, and your milk is lumpy, or it’s, it’s lumpy in both breasts, or it might be that you’re starting to develop an infection, a low grade infection,

Shelly 5:52
especially with pain.

maria 5:53
Yeah. And I mean, maybe have a definitive answer to this, but my thought would be it shouldn’t be harmful

Shelly 6:00
for the baby at all. And my tastes weird.

Shelly 6:04
Today me like the mom is noticing in this case, because she’s pumping. Right? But if she wasn’t, would have been even noticed how many babies out there are drinking milk like that. And nobody knows, because it’s straight

Shelly 6:19
from the tap.

maria 6:20
Right? And that’s kind of my thinking is that. I mean, if a mom has mastitis and she’s being treated for it, we certainly don’t tell her to stop breastfeeding and factory, like empty that breasts more frequently. So it if we’re telling mom with known mastitis, that it’s okay to breastfeed. And in fact, please do it frequently, because it will

maria 6:43
help. I don’t see why pumping it and bottle feeding, it

maria 6:48
wouldn’t be any different.

Shelly 6:50
I agree. 100%. I would recommend though, if you’re seeing this, you know, at the very least get yourself on a good probiotic like Target the back Claire Labs has been shown to help with mastitis cases and definitely connect with your OB. And even if you don’t have a fever or any other symptoms, it might be worth getting an antibiotic just to make sure.

Shelly 7:09
Yeah.

maria 7:11
So wonder if the lumps in the breast milk would be difficult to go through a bottle nipple? That’s a good question.

Shelly 7:18
I think when I’ve seen it, it doesn’t. Or it may get caught. Like when I’ve seen it happen when moms are pumping. Sometimes they can kind of collect and get a little caught in the duckbill valve. Like if they’re pumping with spectra. I imagine the same thing can happen in the bottle nipple.

Shelly 7:34
But I think you know, the baby can probably suck it.

maria 7:41
Yeah, if they’re bottle feeding, well, they can probably might be like a sick milkshake where they just have like a raw oyster. Yeah, I mean, the only reason I would think you couldn’t feed it to your baby is again, if BT was somehow put off by the taste of it, which I mean, if your body is fighting an active infection, there’s probably going to be a slight change to your breast milk flavor, according to the infant or a volume can drop your supply that too for sure.

Shelly 8:19
But yeah, that was that was a great question. And if you want to submit a question for Maria and it answered on the podcast, you can do so on Instagram just DM me I’m at Shelly Taft ibclc and next up we’ll be speaking with Madison.

Shelly 8:37
Today we are talking all about finding child care for your baby or child. And for this episode I am bringing on Madison from serene moments. She provides support to families as a donor certified postpartum doula as well as the Center for Pediatric sleep management, certified sleep consultant. But additionally, she holds her bachelor’s degree in Child and Family Studies and as a prior nanny in daycare manager utilizing her experience education and knowledge. Madison supports families as a daytime and overnight postpartum doula and virtual sleep consultant, as well as hosting her own podcast the postpartum plan where she helps educate families on all things postpartum.

Shelly 9:20
Hey, Madison, how are you? I’m good. How

Madison Fugere 9:25
are you? Good. I know it’s thundering and like, is it lightning there to where you are? Oh, yeah. I don’t know if you could just hear that. It just sounded like the entire house shook. Loose. I don’t think I should lose power. But no, it’s definitely thundering and lightning here. I feel like the weather has been either completely sunshine and humid or absolute downpours.

Shelly 9:48
It’s ridiculous New England. Oh,

Madison Fugere 9:50
so frustrating.

Shelly 9:52
So tell us a little bit about yourself.

Madison Fugere 9:54
Yeah, so I am a postpartum doula. So I do daytime and overnight so Pour. I’m located in Lowell, Massachusetts. So I’m up by the New Hampshire water. So I do in person in, you know, all of Northern mass and some of Southern New Hampshire. And then I also am a certified pediatric sleep consultant. So I work with clients virtually for that. So I work with people from all over the place. And it’s super fun. But yeah, so I kind of have been doing this for full time now for over a year. And prior to that I was a infant teacher and then a daycare manager. So I’ve been in the childcare world for quite a bit now.

Shelly 10:33
That’s great. And I know when I’m working with families, either through lactation or for sleep, one of the most common questions or topics that gets brought up is daycare or childcare in general, because right now, the childcare finding childcare is wild. It’s absolutely insane.

Madison Fugere 10:54
I yeah, I mean, I got out of college, and I went and worked as an infant teacher, because my my plan originally and for my whole life was that I was going to open my own daycare that did not happening. But I loved being in an infant room. And then I went to a different daycare that was larger. And I absolutely loved it. But it was a lot. And I loved the one on one, which is why I ended up leaving, but oh my gosh, I remember when I was managing our daycare had about 240 children a day, we had 18 classrooms, over 60 employees and not clients. I’m sorry, employees and people that worked there. And it was great. But oh my gosh, the people that would come in for tours, I felt like some of them would even come in barely pregnant, like their families didn’t even know because oh my gosh, the waitlist was crazy long. You’d come in in like the beginning of the year, and we’d already be on a waitlist for the Fall insane and talk about pricing of it all too, right. It’s just so I found so impossible, I’m sure to find childcare nowadays.

Shelly 11:57
Do you think the waitlist situation has become worse because of COVID and the labor shortage?

Madison Fugere 12:05
I think that it definitely could be a big factor in it. I didn’t work in daycares. Prior to COVID. I was always a nanny and like babysitter prior to all of that. And then when I graduated college, it was December of 2020. And so at that time was when I went started working at daycare, so I don’t know what it was like for them prior to another a very established daycare that I was working at. And so I knew that they had you know, people coming in, and they were definitely filling their rooms. But I think so many I said should say I know so many daycares did close, especially smaller ones during COVID. Because it just wasn’t financially feasible for them to stay open. So I know that a lot of options have been kind of taken off the table, which has caused, you know, larger establishments to have insanely long wait lists and inquiries for sure.

Shelly 12:52
Yeah, and I don’t have any statistics or anything in our area. But I know waitlist for daycare centers and such have been an issue in in cities and high population areas for quite a while. But I never really heard about it outside of the city area, until recently until through COVID. And after COVID. Where’s all of a sudden, I mean, all you have to do is just look at the local parenting groups. And you’ll see posts every day like I need help finding a daycare for my baby, I’m going back to work and I’ve been on a waitlist and it’s not opening up. And do you find that to be true in your area as well.

Madison Fugere 13:31
100%. And I find that when I’m working with clients, for postpartum, I talk to them a lot. I’m like, you know, what’s your plan for childcare? Are you going back to work? Because if they aren’t already on waitlist, they’ve gotta get on them. As like an administrator when I was at daycares I, it was a lot easier to find people spaces for us if they were more flexible. So I would always talk to people about you know, are you flexible on doing possibly part time to start or on the days of the week or things like that, because there were opportunities at those times that you could get higher up on the list. But with my clients, I’m always talking to them about, you know, daycare options. We talk about the opportunity of having you know, there’s the public daycares that you can go to, there’s oftentimes, like if you’re looking for more preschool like age students, a lot of times the public schools will have stuff. And then there’s obviously home, daycares, and nannies and things like that, too. So I talked to my clients a lot about all the different options and the pros and cons of them, but also like, what could that look like financially difference?

Shelly 14:32
So yeah, and that was actually my next question is what are the different types of daycare and childcare? What are the key differences between them?

Madison Fugere 14:41
Yeah, so typically, you’ll find like those larger big daycare companies like Bright Horizons or KinderCare, or things like that. A lot of the times in those there are a lot more of them and their curriculum and their standards and everything like that is you know, done by corporate so in that classroom, teachers may not be creating their own curriculum, they might be getting it or they might have standards that they have to meet that are according to corporate. So it really comes down to kind of what you’re looking for out of your child’s care. Some people are just looking for somebody to love on their kid and other people are looking for a true like educational experience. So that can also depend on what you’re looking for can also depend on, I guess, influence what your timeline for getting into a daycare can look like. And then there’s obviously smaller daycares that might just be like, you know, Joe Schmoe opened a daycare, which can also be really great options, because a lot of the times they might be family run, or they might have been there for generations and things like that. And they definitely know what they’re doing too. I find that sometimes the corporate ones can be a lot like transactional in a way. Sometimes it is nice to feel a little bit more friendly and you know, family, like with your childcare provider, because you know, they’re taking care of your kid. And then there’s obviously, home daycares home, daycares are different for our different and licensure for Massachusetts, then public daycares. I believe it is like that in all states. But if you have children that you’re caring for in your house, you still have to be licensed. So if you’re looking into home daycares, you want to make sure that they’re licensed. You can also ask, you know, what their ratios are. Massachusetts regulates the ratios every state does. But the Massachusetts ratios for public childcare is one teacher to three infants, or two to seven. For toddlers, it’s two teachers to nine toddlers. And then for preschool or 2.9. And up, it’s one teacher to 10 kids. So that’s all regulated by the state. Some people have extra teachers in there just because. But for home, daycares, it’s totally different. Because you have I don’t know the exact numbers, but it’s something along the lines of You can have certain amount of toddlers, a certain amount of school aged kids and you know, a certain amount of infants, and you have to have, you know, one adult or two adults and certification is different. So it’s definitely a question you kind of have to ask people when you’re looking around, and then nannies, which you know, a babysitter or nanny, I feel like way back when, I mean, you can add to this if you know, but like, I feel like way back when daycares, and sending your kid to childcare was like, you know, the fancy thing to do. And it was like the more money thing to do, and keeping them at home and having a babysitter was like cheaper. And I feel like it’s totally reversed. Now, having a nanny is like very much something that is more expensive, especially if you’re looking for somebody to not just be caring for your kid, but for educating them to.

Shelly 17:44
Yeah, and doing enrichment activities with them.

Madison Fugere 17:47
Yeah, exactly.

Shelly 17:48
And that’s something that I see in the groups all the time when people are like, I’m looking for, you know, inexpensive, quote, unquote, Nanny, and it’s like, well, you’re looking for someone that will do stuff with your kid are you to be kind of like to blind, are you just looking for someone to just keep your kid alive until you right until you come home, and you don’t really care if you get plopped in front of the TV, because that is going to be a difference in in how much you have to pay.

Madison Fugere 18:17
That’s exactly I always mentioned like if you know, if you’ve like friends that have children around the same age or anything like that you should look into like nanny shares, those are great options. It’s essentially the idea that like two families come together and hire one nanny to care for their children together, which is great for socialization and for finances. Because oftentimes, rather than paying your nanny 30 to $50 an hour, you only each have to pay 15 an hour, which is much easier to pay. Granted, you have to be more flexible in the fact that like, you know, you have another kid in your house for half the week, or, you know, your kid goes and stays somewhere else at their house for the half the week or, you know, work out that kind of an arrangement. But it can be really nice for socialization and for the financial aspects, financial aspect of things. So, I mean, that’s a great option to that I find that a lot of people don’t really know exists, but typically that’s up to families to kind of find another family to partner with and then together they’ll do an interview process.

Shelly 19:18
I also know of a lot of I have a lot of clients who had nannies themselves who did this or are hiring a nanny who did this where they brought their own child along and therefore paid, you know, a disc quote unquote, discounted rate is that I you see quite often too.

Madison Fugere 19:33
Yeah, I know a lot of people have done that. And it’s a it’s a big option that I think a lot of like single parents do, or a lot of you know, stay at home parents might do that, you know, my like some extra money. The big thing that comes along with like doing that or doing any type of nanny or babysitting work is you have to go into it, you know, as a family and then I guess if you were providing the childcare too, but you have to go into it deciding on if you want to do something like that on the books for under the table, because that’s the big, the big difference, which a lot of nannies are going to look for things that are on the books they want, you know, paid vacation leaves, and when you go away, they want to be able to be paid because they’re even though they’re not working, or they want to make sure that they can have insurance or things like that. And I find that a lot of families don’t think about that, because they’re like, Oh, it’s just someone caring for my child. But, you know, I find that the people that you would hire that don’t want to be on the books are often either younger people who, you know, don’t need the, on the books payment for mortgages, or you know, financial reasons to make it look like they’re making money, or the insurance side of things, which can be great because some younger people are great. But there’s also a lot of turnover when you work with younger people. That goes for the same for in daycares. There’s definitely a lot of turnover in daycares. It’s a high turnover, you know, establishments, because a lot of the time you’re working with high school and college students or young people who are doing this as an in between thing. So that’s also something else to think about too. If you’re going to hire somebody to kind of like prepare for that some people will hire nannies and let them use the family’s car or have an additional car that they use, give them allowances to go out and do excursions with the children. That kind of pulls me into the idea of I’ve had clients who have hired and brought in all pairs from other countries, which is basically a nanny that lives in your home. And you know, it’s much discounted because you’re giving them a place to live and, and all of that. But in a lot of those cases, they’re from other countries. So you’re bringing somebody in and you’re having to pay a phone for them or teaching them how to use the public transportation or drive your car, things like that. So I mean, there’s plenty of options. But the options are not all, often readily available. Like we said, There’s waitlist set a lot of places.

Shelly 21:56
Right? Yeah, that’s a good point. And I do have a friend who uses our pairs, and has for years. And as family, they love it. And they save a lot of money, especially because they have four kids. So four kids in daycare would be crazy expensive.

Madison Fugere 22:14
Oh, it’s insane. I know. Somebody told me that they were a teacher. And they were like after the second kid, it made no sense going back to work.

Shelly 22:21
Oh, yeah. Yeah. When I had when I had my babies I, I worked at CVS as a supervisor. And we would have paid more in childcare that I would have made. And our solution was I just switched to evenings. And that meant I didn’t really see my husband. But that was what we had to do. We had to do what we had to do.

Madison Fugere 22:44
Yeah, I mean, you make it work. But that doesn’t mean that it’s fun.

Shelly 22:49
Right? Yeah. If parents are, let’s say, evaluating daycare facilities, and they’re there, they’re doing the tours. What should they look for when it comes to safety measures that they want to make sure are in place?

Madison Fugere 23:03
That’s a great question. There’s so many things. I mean, so when I was one of the administrators I gave, I was basically the person that would give the tours unless I was like in a classroom, because as I’m sure people can already tell, I love to talk. So it worked out well for me. But yeah, so I would give the tours. And so personally, I would always try to touch upon everything but so it kind of takes me back to all the things that I would touch upon I remember, the first thing I would always say, with the you should ask for or myself when I was giving tours was, you know, even if you’re coming in with like a toddler, or you’re looking to come in, in preschool or something like that, definitely still look at all the age groups, right, like, just because you’re coming as a toddler doesn’t mean you just want to look at toddler rooms or toddler through, you know, pre K look at the infant rooms, too, especially if you know that you want to have more children because no one wants to go to two different daycares to drop their children off. So to see the whole facility and to feel like you appreciate like, want to be part of that whole community is really, really important. So I’d say See if you can get like a full tour, including being able to go into some of the classrooms. So if you have an older child, it’s also great to always ask if you can bring them along. Because if you do end up enrolling, it’s a great opportunity to, you know, let them see the space before they’re actually in the classroom, and all of that. So, yeah, I mean, seeing all the spaces, maybe even going into the classrooms, having your child’s come along with you are all great. You want to ask about their ratios. Like I said, they are typically state regulated, but that doesn’t mean that people aren’t going to and companies and daycares aren’t going to have extra staff. For example, I worked at a Bright Horizons one time and as an infant teacher, there only needs to be two teachers to seven babies but during the daytime from about I think it was 830 or nine o’clock until four we had three teachers at all times. So the great part about that was that we were able to cover our own lunch breaks. So, you know, we could, especially in infants, where we kind of ran off of their schedules, rather than having a classroom schedule, it was really nice to be like, Okay, we have three babies that need to eat at this time. So like, nobody’s gonna go on lunch from this hour to this hour, we’re gonna go at this time instead, which was lovely. Whereas when I worked at the other daycares, we had what we call floaters, which is essentially assistant teachers that would go around to cover lunch breaks, bathroom breaks, and whatnot, that was a little bit trickier. Because you didn’t really get to pick when they came in, especially with a large Senator, you would just be like, Hey, this is your lunch break our and this is when someone’s coming in. It always worked out and we would make it work. But it’s nice to ask those types of things. I’d also say, especially if you’re talking about infants, asking how they run their program. So typically, infant rooms are starting anywhere between two and a half and three months old is when children are typically able to enroll into daycare programs. And according to the state of Massachusetts, children are considered infants until 15 months old. So some daycares are smaller, where there are children that are three months old in the same room as children that are 15 months old, other daycares are larger, so they can divide by age bracket a bit more. So if that’s something that’s important to you, you can ask about that. There’s benefits to both. I find that some people love having littles and bigs because they get to kind of watch each other and they interact really well. It’s also helpful to the teachers, they can give the babies more one on one focus feeding, rather than rushing around and feeding everybody at the same time. And then there’s also benefits to having an age bracket, you know, they’re really close in age. So they get to make friends and stay with those friends as they grow up into the next classrooms. So that’s kind of something that you could ask about, but overall safety wise, I mean, you can definitely ask about locks on the doors, how to enter the the buildings, a lot of them will have keypads. Some of them have individualized keypads, some have a keypad that, you know, one code for the whole building that everyone gets, you could ask about pickups and drop offs and what that looks like. And if they were to have somebody else pick them up. You know, typically IDs are checked, but you can ask what their protocol on that stuff is. A lot of people would ask what the protocol on sicknesses is, as we know that, like every single child is going to get all the sicknesses when they first start. But getting to know the sicknesses and the protocol for that is great as well. And then yeah, I mean, the only other thing that I could think of with safety wise, is most daycares will require some sort or two things, I guess, nap checks. So like if infants are sleeping, you can ask how frequently they’re that teachers need to check on their babies to make sure they’re sleeping properly. I know for Massachusetts, everything is regulated that, you know, every baby has to get placed on their back. And if they’re not, teachers are being written up for those types of things, obviously, and, and often asked to leave. But we’re obviously using tightly fitted sheets, things like that. So everything is regulated that way. But you know, the nap checks, timeframe wise aren’t regulated by the state. And the second thing would be like transitional checks for safety. So with our toddlers, a lot of the time, when you’re going from classroom to playground, you have to count the children X amount of times and make sure that you have the right children with you. So no one gets lost. That’s not state regulated, either. So if you wanted to ask about safety with that, you could ask that as well.

Shelly 28:31
And are there any red flags or warning signs that you might warn a parent to look for? Or to watch out for when they’re visiting a daycare center?

Madison Fugere 28:41
Yeah, that’s great. I would say, definitely ask to see all the rooms, right. Like, as you’re walking by the rooms, a lot of them will have, you know, either doors that have the windows on them, or actual windows into the classrooms, like watch the teachers interact with the children, if you can hear them, like listen, ask if you can go into a room that your child would be that age bracket for and just kind of like hanging out, you can even talk to the teachers if they let you. That’s really great. You know, obviously, if it’s busy, we don’t want to do that. Because we don’t want to take attention away from the students they have. But being able to listen in is great, because you can then kind of see, how are they handling discipline? How are they handling, you know, conflict? Or how does their classroom run? Are they big? Like, you know, are the kids running around? Or are they a lot more like regulated and going center, a center or something like that? In the infant rooms? You know, are babies crying? How long are they crying for? Are they upset for you know, are they able to feed everybody in time? How do they keep track of things, all of that kind of stuff is really great. And a lot of it is questions that you could ask and you’ll get answers to I’m sure. But it’s very different to see it than to just get an answer. And I’m sure very different to ask a teacher that question and I’m sure you’ll get a little bit different of an answer because it’s not very robotic. As somebody who gave tours I can tell you I said this same things over and over that it does feel robotic after a while. So I’m sure getting it from a teacher would be a bit more candid. If they like you, obviously, red flag wise, it really depends on kind of what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a very like, fun kind of play school, then you might not be looking at curriculum, and you might just be making sure that they’re handling, you know, discipline and how the children are treating each other. Whereas if you’re looking for a daycare that has a lot of curriculum and educational aspects to it, you might be, you know, looking to make sure that they have structured activities going on, or, you know, asked to see the curriculum that they read wrote up for that week, I had one client who was giving a tour who came for a tour at one point who had allergies, so they would ask a lot about those protocols. So obviously, if you have an allergy or experiencing something like that in your family, you will want to know that. And that’s I guess, also think makes me think of something else you can ask when you’re looking at daycares is some of them provide food, meals, snacks, some of them provide laundry, and we’ll you know, provide crib sheets and things or we’ll wash all your laundry for you. So you don’t have to take it home something else you can ask. There’s so many things, I feel like I could talk about it for hours.

Shelly 31:13
And then to kind of pivot the conversation a little bit. If a family is more interested in the nanny route, like an in home Mini, what are some tips that you would you would give them for interviewing me and things like what kind of questions they should ask what things they should look for?

Madison Fugere 31:26
Yeah. So finding nannies can be difficult because you really want someone to match your vibe I’ve done. I’ve been in any before I’ve been a babysitter before I kind of like know some of the things that people look for and don’t look for. So that’s kind of like cool, because I have another perspective to it. Like when I interview I know what I want to know from the families. But there’s a lot to it. So I think the first question would be, you know, sitting down as a family deciding if we want to do this something on the books off the books, what tasks are we expecting of the nanny? Are we expecting them to just take care of our child? Are we expecting them to do light housework in relation to our child like dishes that they make? Or the child’s laundry? Or things like that? Are we expecting them to be more of a house manager where they are, you know, doing grocery store runs, and they are handling daycare drop offs and pickups? Or, you know, I guess they wouldn’t be doing daycare but like school if they had an older child? Or are they expected to do some vacuuming and cleaning when the kids are sleeping? Those kinds of things? You know, what are you comfortable with? Are they comfortable? You know driving your child? What are you comfortable with? Are you comfortable with them driving your child are medications? There’s lots of things that you have to kind of figure out before you ask them because you want to know what your perspective is on it. It’s up to you. And if you ask it as an open ended question as in like, are you comfortable driving our children? Or if you’re saying you know, we’re looking for someone to drive our children, would you do that that’s different. But it’s important to know kind of what you’re looking for and what tasks you’re expecting of them. Now, I think that on the other side of things, it’s also good to know, their experience and like professionalism and things like that. It’s great to ask what experience they have with children. And if you’re looking for somebody who is more educational and is more curriculum based, I’m going to be doing activities and things like that with them. I would definitely ask questions specific to that. Even asked to see examples of things that they’ve created or things like that, because a lot of babysitters will then think that they want to be nannies and babysitters don’t typically do that kind of stuff. And so not to say that people shouldn’t be given a first shot because how else do you learn but if you’re looking for somebody who’s definitely established, then you want somebody that, you know, knows how to put those types of things together has developmental understanding of children’s age brackets and what they should be learning when. So I think that that’s that’s really important. But I mean, overall, it really depends on what you’re looking for. I think that nannies really has it similarly to postpartum doulas when I talk to clients, but you’re bringing someone into your home in a time where you really need to trust them, right? As opposed partum doula you’re bringing me into your home during a vulnerable time, in a similar manner, you’re bringing a nanny into your home in a vulnerable time where you’re trusting them to help raise your child, in a lot of circumstances, that nanny is going to be with your child more than you’re going to be with your child. So you want to make sure that not only are they able to follow your parenting style and what you’re looking for, but like, ideally, that’s how they would parent this child anyway or handle this child’s behavior, you know, how are we handling handling? You know, getting in trouble and discipline, how are we handling sickness, you know, all of these different things, you know, screen times all of the things that a parent would typically be doing. This man should be doing the same. You want there to be as much of a seamless transition From a nanny to parent at the end of the night and in the morning as possible for the child. So that’s, I think, really, really important. And so asking, you know, what their disciplinary style is, and you know what they’re comfortable doing and not doing is important. I don’t know if you can technically do that anymore. Because I know like, when we were in the daycare, we weren’t allowed to do them. But like working interviews are really cool. Or like a trial period, I guess, to like, have them come in and like, see how they interact with your child, I think would be a super awesome opportunity. But I think we probably might

Shelly 35:32
I have families who’ve done that for Yeah, where they interviewed a bunch of news that kind of narrowed it down to two. And then they did a couple days with one end a couple days with another nanny, and then kind of made the decision. Yeah, Matt.

Madison Fugere 35:44
Yeah. Because they might both be great. And the child might end up just like, gravitating towards one. And that’s kind of nice to feel. But also, I mean, I think everyone can agree that you can look great on paper, right? Like, yeah, answer all the questions the right way, really want that job. But like, with time, how much fatigue like the fatigue of like, faking, it goes away? So you really get to know what there really are. So, yeah, I mean, I know that’s a lot of information. And it’s also kind of generalized, because it really depends on what you’re looking for. But I think that there’s a lot to be to be part of that. And I’m sure that the nannies if you’re hiring a good nanny, and you’re interviewing good nannies, if you ask them, if they have questions, ideally, they have questions for you. Right? It might be about insurance, and you know, payroll type things. It might be about leave and whatnot. But ideally, they also will be asking, you know, what is your child like? What are you looking for? And like, it should be kind of a two way interview.

Shelly 36:44
I’m gonna guess that this is based on the type of childcare and their goals with childcare. But are there certain qualifications and certifications parents should look for, like you mentioned, if you want someone who’s going to do more educational stuff, you’d want them to have at least a background in that area. And I’m also guessing that CPR is is an a no brainer, like whoever you’re having watch your child should be CPR certified. But are there any other qualifications you would want to look for?

Madison Fugere 37:11
So there’s a couple things. I mean, if we go back to kind of that daycare topic, the state of Massachusetts is certified by the early education and care, they’re amazing. But they do all the certification stuff. So when you go to interview or to walk around at daycares, you can ask them, but it is required by the state of Massachusetts that there is at least one certified teacher in the room. In order to be certified, you have to have a certain amount of classes, a certain amount of hours, you have to renew things every few years, you know, there’s expectations held. And then there can be assistant teachers who may not have these classes under their belt, but are able to be in a room if they’re with a certified teacher. They can’t be alone with the children. It could be a similar question that you could ask as a nanny, though, if they’ve worked in a daycare before, they might like the one on one. And so they might have left and now they’re looking for nannies that have no law during COVID. Because in daycares, daycare teachers don’t get paid nearly the amount that nannies do, because there’s no overhead and they get to charge a bit more because it’s more of a luxury to have a nanny. So it the money goes straight to them, which is great, because that really kind of helps to fix that wage gap that’s happening for a lot of educators. But like I said, a lot of them left daycares during COVID and went to nanny work because daycares were closed and never went back. So if you’re interviewing, some of those nannies might have teacher certifications, or director certifications or things like that. So you can definitely ask about that. CPR. Yes, it like didn’t even cross my mind, because it is like a given I feel like in a way. But yeah, there’s typically first aid for first aid and CPR courses that are kind of combined. So you can ask about that as well. If you’re working with an infant, it would be really great to ask if they have infant experience. Now, I’ve heard through a handful of friends and people that I know that a lot of like people and nannies when they’re interviewing clients are asking them like, oh, how many years do you have with infant experience? And a lot of them are like, Oh, we’re looking for somebody that has X amount of years. Right? But it’s tricky when you’re like talking about years of experience with a certain age group. Because personally, I would think I would look for somebody that has, like accountability and stays with that family, right? Like you want longevity rather than hours and years with a certain age bracket. Because to me, if you’re asking, you know, how many years have you worked with infants? Well, I’ve worked with five years. Well, that means how long have you been working in total? Right? Like how many families how are you are you jumping from? So that’s kind of important too, but you want them to know some sort of infants experience if you are having infants specifically talking about safe sleep, you know, Are you understanding and do you know the new regulations or the updated regulations of safe sleep? You You know, this is what we’re doing, like, have you done that before or before even tell them what you’re doing? What kind of practices have you had in place with infants before that you’ve worked with for safe sleep, and kind of seeing kind of testing their knowledge a little bit. So they can’t kind of fib. But I think that that’s really important. If you’re doing, you know, solids with an infant, and you want somebody who is familiar with, say, you’re doing baby led weaning, and you want someone familiar with that, you want to ask them about that, you know, you know how to do the hind leg for food, things like that. I think there’s lots of little things that come with infancy that you want to make sure you know, that people are comfortable with which typically, if you’re going into an interview with an infant, you haven’t been experience, but it’s, it’s good to double check for sure.

Shelly 40:47
Very true. Do you find that nannies often have a contract? They want families to sign? Did you have a contract as a nanny? Or do you think that just really depends on the family and the nanny? Like, what is standard? In your?

Madison Fugere 41:01
Yeah, great question. So I’ve labeled myself as a nanny in the past, because I’ve done nanny like tasks, right? I’ve done educational things that have been with family is that I’m doing, you know, pickups and drop offs. And I’m more than just a babysitter that’s keeping your children alive and plopping them on the couch in front of a TV. With that being said, I haven’t been a full time nanny with one family so that I’ve worked with multiple families and kind of made my own schedule out of a couple families. So I’ve never used a contract or in any client before. However, if you’re hiring somebody for full time hours, it’s pretty much expected. When I was doing that with, with clients, it was so many different people that some of them were just occasional hours. So you know, they weren’t on the books, types of things, because it wasn’t a whole lot of much of anything. And that was just occasional, like here and there random stuff. But when you’re working with, you know, a family consistently and constantly, you shouldn’t be having anything on the books, because you know, taxes, all the things that nobody wants to deal with. But yes, contracts are very typical, it typically will have, you know, information on if they do need to leave how much time notice they need to give you, you really, really, really should list anything that you are expecting them to do. Even if you’re like I possibly might want them to do my laundry. So we’re going to add it on there just so that it’s listed. Because if down the road, they aren’t doing stuff that they should be, you can have like this is what we agreed upon, like we need to talk about this kind of a conversation. So listing that out, especially if it’s tasks not related to the children, because a typical nanny is doing baby laundry or, you know, cleaning up after meals that their children are doing and, you know, going out and getting supplies for activities that they need. But you know, if it’s non related to the child, and it’s more just house related, it’s really important to have that written down. You want to have information on there about like sicknesses and sick days and paid time off off and vacations and everything like that. In relation to vacations. If the family’s going away, is the nanny expected to join you Is she expected to pay her own way is that a vacation by vacation kind of differentiation? Depends what else, a lot of clients will add information on payment, you know, if it’s payroll or not, as well as any type of like petty cash fund money for, you know, curriculum activities, but also going out and doing things. Some people will add information about, you know, medication and driving for like a waiver or for you know, them to make sure that they have the ability. So if the family is away, I’ve had to do this in the past where I’ve cared for children and the parents have been away. That can be paperwork that states you know, if the parents aren’t available than any is able to make medical decisions if God forbid something were to happen. Yeah. Same thing with like driving, you know, if you put them on your insurance, and that’s different than if you’re giving them a car that’s different, but if not, you know, are they accountable? Are they not accountable? If there were to be an accident, if their car was totaled, or something with their car, they weren’t able to get there? You know, are you is the client in the family paying to help fix things if they were on the clock or not? I know some clients pay mileage. Other people will say, Okay, we kind of split the bills that go along with my car. So like I pay for this oil change, they pay for the next kind of thing, if they’re using their own cars, car seats, it’s really just best to literally think through like think through a day, a typical day, what what could happen and basically write down anything that you can think of, because the more detail you have on paper, the better it is for down the road. And it doesn’t need to be one of those like super legally binding contracts. I mean, that’s probably great. But at the same time, it’s probably just as good to just have something written down, just so that you have some sort of accountability. And just to kind of go from there from from that I’m sure can find, I should say, I’m 99% sure you can find contracts online that some probably are even free, but downloadable editable, Nanny contracts that you could you could do. There’s also name agencies you can hire that will do it for you, too.

Shelly 41:01
That’s a great tip. Yeah, yeah. When I see this typically with daycare centers, but I have a lot of families that are very kind of stressed out about feeding. And now if that daycare, like, for example, families were like, my baby will only contact nap, he won’t sleep in the crib. And they’ve never really wanted to stop the contact napping because it’s always worked for them. But now, you know, daycares coming up, and they are concerned about how the daycare is going to handle a situation like that. Or if you have a baby who’s not really taking the bottle and is being cut fed instead, like how do daycare centers in your experience handle situations like that? Yeah, something parents should be stressed about.

Madison Fugere 45:56
It’s tricky. I mean, don’t be stressed about it. But it’s definitely something that’s going to be have to change in a way, right. As much as I would love to sit here and tell you that daycares will 100% Contact nap with your child and they’re going to, you know, try to feed them in a million different ways and handle this. It’s important to also remember that if you’re choosing a daycare, yes, you’re choosing good childcare for your child. And they’re going to take care of your child. But your child may not be their number one priority the entire day, they’re your child will be their number one priority when they’re feeding them when they’re changing them, or they’re putting them to sleep. But there are likely going to be six other children in the room that need to be cared for. And if your child is the number one priority all the time, then the other children are going to be not being able to be that priority. And then their parents are upset, right. So that’s the give and take with daycares that you have to remember and understand that, like there is a group setting. So a lot of times, we would get people that that would bring their babies and that didn’t sleep very well or, you know, we’re struggling with bottles. If possible, I always urge clients to reach out to an ibclc to do a bottle console, or a sleep consultant to talk about napping prior to because I think not only does it help the child, but it relieves some anxiety for the parents. And it’s really kind of helpful to the daycare providers too. But I will say I’ve worked with a handful of both babies that have struggled with bottles and with sleep, when they’ve come to daycare. My typical suggestion is if you have the ability to send your child back a week or so before you go back to work, if that’s why you’re sending your child to daycare, please do so. Not only do your children often get sick when they first go to daycare because of their immune systems needing to get built up. Secondarily, I find a lot of the time that if they are refusing a bottle or a nap, that it’s really nice to ease into it. So for example, when I was first working in an infant room, we had a baby come in who absolutely wouldn’t take a bottle, you know, we would give her and she was pretty much basically exclusively breastfed from the breast. So when she came in, we tried the bottle mom bra. And you know, she would drink point two, five to a half an ounce, and wouldn’t do it and we would wait it out or she still wasn’t able to so then the next bottle we’re like, okay, we don’t want to waste the milk. Let’s just put a little bit into a different bottle and we try different nipples. And we tried different positioning and you know, distract the baby look at her Don’t look at her all the different things. And eventually, yes, baby would take some but definitely not enough that they would typically be taking per feed. And in those cases, you know, we’re often talking to the parents on the phone after every feed or every hour to calling because they would ask for updates and saying, you know, this is what we’re experiencing. You know, this baby is definitely not She’s not eating as much, but she definitely is going down for a nap. She’s tired. So let’s let her nap. And we’ll try another feed when she wakes. And if she still doesn’t take it, why don’t you come pick her up and we’ll make sure she gets fed. Same thing with napping babies, you have to expect that naps are going to go one way or the other completely when you get to daycare. Some daycares with infant rooms have cribs in the same room. So if there are children that are older that are walking or crawling, a lot of the times they’ll go up to the cribs and they can like somehow stir wake up babies. Other rooms have like a half wall or a crib room that they can be in so the other babies can’t reach them, which is great. But I find that either babies come in and they are not great sleepers and they get used to the noise because they aren’t used to the noise, right? They get used to it all and then they sleep great. Or they come in and their naps get shorter and at home parents are saying oh they nap two hours. We’ll hear they’re napping 20 to 40 minutes because they’re getting one sleep cycle. Sometimes with time that gets better other times babies just end up napping like that. And if that’s the situation in your case, definitely talk to sleep consultant because we can help you to adapt, you know, your nighttime routine to offset that daycare time because, again, there’s seven babies in the room so the daycare providers are going to try their Just to get your baby to go back to sleep after a sleep cycle, but if there’s two other screaming children that need to eat, that can be very difficult at times, I say all of this not to be scary or to cause more anxiety. But to give the real and raw of it, you know that some babies do great, some don’t. And it takes time. And a lot of it is a true adjustment for sure. So give them time and talk with your daycare providers. A lot of the times, they will call you often throughout the first few days or week to let you know how things are going. But they’ve also have seven babies in the room. And they’ve likely done this time and time again. So they might have some really great input for you. I know input I would give eight families from one daycare is different than the input I would give families from another daycare, because one of the rooms that I was in had no crib room, and the other one did. So things were very different. You know, so it’s great information to get right from your provider.

Shelly 50:53
And I found when I’m working with parents with preparing to go back to work, and these are not babies that are bottle refusers, they, but when they the first week at the daycare, they tend to eat a lot less. And the parents usually do message me in the pack in a panic. And they usually say let’s just see what next week looks like. Yes, because I always feel like there’s a transitionary period for some babies where they’re just like I am. So I’m busy looking around figuring out where the heck I am. What’s going on that they don’t eat that much. But then week two, they go back to their normal feeding amounts. Did you find that to be true when you are work?

Madison Fugere 51:31
Oh, yeah, the overstimulation is unreal. Like, I will tell you that depends on daycares. But like one of the centers I was at would allow you to like lay babies down on the poppies. And so if I could feed two children at the same time, so I would feed to each on the body and we will try our best to pace feed. But to be honest with you, when I was in the daycare, no one really knew about PACE feeding. I didn’t really learn about a lot of it till I was later. And now I look back and like you know if you’re feeding too, and they’re on Bobby’s kind of pace, feeding in a way, but a little different. It’s kind of like feeding twins. But yes, overstimulation to the acts between sounds, things to look at things that you see, all of a sudden, you’re drinking a bottle, and you see a child walking next to you like I can only imagine, you know, just being this tiny human, especially when they come at like, three, four months old. It’s so overstimulating. And that’s so typical. So talk to your daycare provider before you go, if you’re sending bottles about how do they prep the bottles, like are they warming them, and then what’s their protocol and how long that they can be used for. Because I know, like I said, with a bio bottle refuser baby, she only took like half an ounce. And we felt so bad because we couldn’t use the rest of the three ounces or whatever it was in the bottle. So some daycares will allow you to bring a bunch of empty bottles. And then here’s my milk and like you can fortunate some I had one daycare that didn’t let you you had to bring the bottle and that was what we fed. And then anything that was left we had to send home we weren’t allowed to dump it or anything. Some daycares dump it. So ask because some people want to save their milk to use it for bath time or other uses. But I had one person who because we had to have specific bottles, she was like, well, baby normally drinks four ounces, but she’s been drinking weird for you. So I gave you double the amount of bottles with two ounces in each of them. And that was great, because you know, we would warm one. And if she started chugging it, we just throw the other one in the warmer. So it was ready. But yeah, those are great. So many questions to ask. But typically they’ll answer all these questions before you can even ask them.

Shelly 53:33
Oh, great. Yeah. Well, this has been great. Is there any anything else that you think parents should know, when they’re deciding on a daycare or childcare?

Madison Fugere 53:43
I mean, I think the really big thing to remember is, like the whole gist of this, I think that you should take if you could take anything away is that every single family’s needs and hopes for child care are so different. And just because your neighbor loved one daycare doesn’t mean that it needs to be the right one for you. And just because your sister has a nanny doesn’t mean that you need to feel bad about putting your child in daycare, you know, everybody’s has different needs and wants and we shouldn’t be you know, parent guilting each other into different things. So you know, do what works for you. And if you are at a tour and it doesn’t feel right trust your gut, you know, and ask don’t be afraid to ask questions because we’re happy to answer them or at least I was used to be happy to answer all the questions when I was when I was managing one so for sure.

Shelly 54:29
Yep. Trust your gut. I love that parents instincts are always on point.

Madison Fugere 54:33
Oh my gosh, so on point for sure.

Shelly 54:35
So where can people find you if they want to connect with you and learn more about you and your your services?

Madison Fugere 54:40
Yeah, for sure. So like I said, I do in person daytime and overnight support for postpartum and also virtual sleep consulting. I think you’re gonna plan to put a link in the show notes. I do three free 30 minute consultation calls for both to kind of chat with people but you can also find me on social media at serene moments dot doula Oh, and then I also have a podcast called the postpartum plan. You guys can head over and listen to Shelley’s episode with me that’s over there.

Shelly 55:06
Great. And I’ll link to all those in the show notes. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. This was a this was a lot of fun. I love this topic.

Shelly 55:16
Thank you for joining us this week on the baby pro podcast.

Shelly 55:18
Make sure to visit our website Shelley Taff ibclc.com to check out more options for support for pregnancy and beyond, including the baby pro bistro group, our parenting community. You can also follow us on social media at Shellytaftibclc on Instagram. If you love the show, please leave us a rating or review on iTunes to help our episodes reach more parents like you. Thanks for listening