I’ve been gone for a little while this week. Gone mentally. Gone emotionally. Gone physically… I blame lack of sleep on that one.

Gck-1 is having issues at her daycare. I’m having issues with her daycare. Daddy B is having issues with her daycare.

I wish that we could afford for me to stay home and watch her. Me and my little buddy. I always thought that that would be the plan but right now we just can’t afford it financially. And it’s sad to me to think about how she’ll probably be in school by the time I could possibly stay home with her.

I need to share my story with you about her daycare because it’s got me down and it’s got me questioning my ability to pick out people that I can trust to watch my daughter.

We started her off in a home daycare when she was 5 months old. *Sarah (name changed just to protect her although I’m debating if she needs protection!), was a younger woman, late late 20′s or early 30′s I don’t recall anymore. She already had 5 children of her own with the youngest being 18 months at the time we put gck-1 under her watch. It turned out to be more of a “drop your kid off and I’ll babysit them” instead of a “drop your child off and she’ll be taught and cared for” type of place. I remember the day gck-1 came home with a blood blister on the bottom of her big toe that covered the entire bottom of the toe. How did she get this? From being in a bouncer for an extended period of time on laminate floors with no socks on. That was strike one. Strike two was feeding my daughter ice cream and giving her regular milk instead of her formula when she was lactose intolerant… and telling me weeks later about it. That was not a fun guessing game at home that we had to play to try and guess why she was bloated and constipated and extremely fussy. Strike three was her telling me that she had a dr.’s appointment so her mom would watch the kids when she really actually had a court date! It wouldn’t have been so bad if she wouldn’t have lied to me but she did and three strikes means I move on. Super unfortunate that I had to but lesson learned.

I then moved her to what I thought was a good daycare mainly because it was state run so I figured they would have more rules and regulations and it would be held to a higher standard. I’ll start from the beginning of her transfer there but won’t go into great details…

While in the “infant” room:

She was given other childrens pacifiers. She’d come home with a diaper rash just about every other day. They never put a bib on her when they fed her so I was going through two to three changes of clothes a day. Her pacifiers would magically disappear and when I would inquire about them, they said they’d look into it but there was never any resolution and the pacifiers were never found. When she turned one, even though the contract I signed said that she would drop in price from $150 to $135, because she wasn’t walking yet, they still charged me $150. I fought and fought this but got no where until they finally moved her to the 1 year old room, when she was 15 months old. I believe I should get a refund for that month and a half but that’s a fight that I don’t have in me right now.

In the “1 year old” room:

There were days when I would pick her up and she’d be in the infant room and I learned that she was in there for half of the day. She’d come home wearing another kids diapers even when she had her own or diaper cream that wasn’t hears when she had her own. Her extra sets of clothing would go missing and I was never reimbursed nor were the clothes returned… all while they said they’d look into it. Literally every other week she’s come home with a runny nose or a cough. No lie, every other week. She’s had bronchitis twice. She’s had pneumonia three times. She’s come home with a diaper rash almost every Friday that I can remember. She’s been given another boys pacifier.

But here it was happened just in the last two weeks…

We’ve been trying to only give gck-1 her pacifier (or nuk as we say in our household) only at nap time or bed time so when I dropped her off at daycare on Monday morning (the 11th), I had instructions that she should only get it at naptime. I told her morning workers and they said they’d pass on the info to the afternoon workers. It was in her mouth when I went to pick her up and when I asked he afternoon lady why it was in her mouth if she is only supposed to be getting it at naptime, her reply was,

“Oh I know, but she was fussy for the last hour so I gave it to her.”

I was so taken back and shocked and stunned that I had no idea what to say or how to react, so I left.

Every day I dropped her off with the same instructions and on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, that nuk was in her mouth.

Um hello?! Are you people purposefully trying to make our lives difficult?! And what’s even worse… she had some other kids nuk in her mouth on Friday! I hadn’t noticed until we were at home and it was bed time because I had grabbed it out of her mouth and shoved it in my pocket as soon as I saw it. Granted it was very similar to the color of her nuk but it wasn’t hers. She woke up the next morning with the greenest snottiest nose she’s ever had, and this momma was not happy.

If her pacifier is in her cubby and she is only suppose to be getting it at nap time, how did her pacifier not go from cubby to mouth and back up to cubby?

Are they sharing nuks?

You’re around my child all day… you know what’s hers so why on earth is there another kids nuk in her mouth!? Agh!

That just made me a pissed off mom. Here’s what made me an irate mom:

When I picked her up on Friday and I looked at her daily sheet, I noticed that she poo’d at 2:30 and then she had diarrhea at 4:00pm. I just figured they gave her too much juice, didn’t think anything of it… until I got home and changed her at 5:45.

My only regret is that I didn’t take pictures.

From the middle of her inner right thigh to the middle of her inner left thigh she was burned. She had dime sized sores that were bleeding through the diaper cream and many many smaller sores spread from thigh to thigh. My heart sank and I felt sick to my stomach. This poor child. How long was she sitting in agony before they realized she needed to be changed?

The daycare closes at 5:45 so even if I wanted to call I couldn’t but that wasn’t on my mind. Nor was taking pictures. I wanted to calm my sobbing child and make the pain go away.

Why did no one tell me about this while I was picking her up and walking her out the door?!

We battled the rash all weekend with monistat and diaper cream and a naked lil bum. There was still evidence of the burns and the sores on Monday when she went back to daycare and even on Tuesday when she had a dr.’s appointment.

Think my ordeal is over? It’s not.

Sunday morning when I changed her in the morning I noticed a little bit of a squiggly line by one of the sores. I thought it was just part of the sore but by Sunday night it had doubled in size and even B had said something about it.

My daughter quite obviously had a worm or worms on her butt. I googled and thought maybe they were pinworms. I couldn’t find any good pictures of them so I did what someone online told me to do, go in at night with a flashlight and shine it on her butt. Apparently they come out at night to lay their eggs. I didn’t see anything which I was kind of happy for but kind of not. What kind of worm is this? I knew that she was going to the dr. on Tuesday so I would ask her then.

Monday morning dropping her off at daycare was not something I was looking forward to. Instructions on loading her with cream at every diaper change were told. I gave the nuk that wasn’t hers to her teacher and told her that wherever hers was, if it was found, not to give it to her because I no longer know the life that it has lived. There were no apologies from anyone about her burns. No one knew who to point the finger at.

I wrote a letter to the daycare to make sure that my concerns were documented and not just passed along through word of mouth. We’ve all played the game of telephone and we all know the outcome. I dropped the letter off at the front desk Monday night when I picked up gck-1 and stayed to talk to the front desk lady and go over it with her. She told me the owner (who is also a nurse) was working at the hospital for the next two days and that she’d go over it with her on Thursday morning. In the letter I asked for a phone call so that we could briefly discuss my concerns and set up a time to have a sit down and go over them further.

Tuesday morning she had a dr.’s appointment and thank God she did. She was given a prescription for an ointment to help with her burns and a some tablets to get rid of the worm which was a sand worm. She said that they were pretty common around here quite obviously because of the sand. She told me that the most common area for someone to get them is on the feet from walking around in the sand and dirt barefoot for extended periods of time. So why on earth was there one on her butt!? She even called in the other dr. to look at her butt because he had never seen it on a butt before either! Either way, she got the treatment she needed. And the x-rays showed that she indeed had bronchitis, again.

Thursday morning came and went and so did the afternoon. I spotted the owners car in the parking lot of the daycare when I went to pick up gck-1. It wasn’t until we were walking out of her classroom that I was cornered by the owner. I was hoping that she would say when she would be available to sit down and discuss my concerns, instead I was verbally attacked and the blame was put on me and one lady that works at the daycare who just happens to have also watched gck-1 at our house on 3 other occasions. There was no apology for the nuk situations. There was no apology for the burns… in fact, she told me that there was no way for her to get burned like that and that in the time frame that it happened it was physically impossible. There was no apology for the sand worm. She went on and on and wouldn’t let me talk. She kept raising her voice and I finally tried asking her what the steps where that I needed to take to get my child out of the care of the facility… but she kept interrupting me. I couldn’t take it anymore and with gck-1 in my arms we had to squeeze by her while she was yelling at us. As we were walking out of that room and into the next, I could still hear her yelling. As we were walking down the hallway to the front desk, I could still hear her yelling. I was embarrassed and I was in tears.

I wrote up gck-1′s 2 week notice today. It breaks my heart that she will be there for another two weeks but if I con’t give a notice, they will charge for for 4 weeks and send me to small claims court to get it. And they’ll keep my deposit and my yearly supply fee. That’s a grand total of $740. I can’t afford to take that hit right now. But there is a bright side to this… it’s not exactly bright but more like there’s a small glimmer of hope that my child will receive better care in these next two weeks than she has the entire length of her stay at the daycare center. You see, I received 3 apologies from 3 different people this morning when I dropped her off. Granted one was half ass and it felt like she was kissing my ass but that’s 3 apologies that I hadn’t received the entire 2 weeks before. All the workers were also instructed to put cream on her butt at every diaper change and to only give her her nuk at nap time. I guess when it comes from my mouth it goes to deaf ears but when it comes from the higher uppers, it actually gets followed. Either way, the owner feared that had I actually taken pictures, that I would send them to the Department of Children and Families. Had I known that that was who I could and should have sent them to, I would have. I didn’t know this until this morning though. I have a feeling there will be nothing significantly wrong happening these next two weeks and if it does, I have every right to complain to the state.

But all this being said, I still feel like a partial failure. I was the one who picked out both the home daycare and the state run daycare, and both happened to be colossal failures. I asked B to help me this next time because I can’t take another failure like that again.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 and is filed under the fam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.