Rantings on Day Care

I am pretty sure I've been in denial about leaving little girl with someone else to watch when I go back to working at the office (I've been doing a pretty good job of keeping up with e-mail and projects from home - since very soon after she was born). There is a beautiful JHU-affiliated center (Bright Horizons) literally right next door to us, and I visited back when I was pregnant, but asked about part-time and they don't do part-time so I didn't put us on the waiting list, nor did I ask how long the waiting list was - I now count this as my first big mistake as a parent.

Do any of you out there know how long day-care waiting lists can be? Do you have a number of months in your head? Those of you who were thinking 3 months are super-duper cold; 6 months - pretty darn chilly; 9 months - tepid; 12 months - getting warmer. If you said 15 months, give yourself a gold star. Yes, 15 months for the only center affiliated with JHU. This leads me to two thoughts:

(1) Bright Horizons is the only JHU-affiliated center. The only one for both JH Hospital and JH University. There are apparently 12,000 employees of the Hospital system and 23,000 employees of the University. And one day care center. And it is not as though it is free or anything like that. Close to $1500/month. How are they not making money? You'd think in this free market economy of ours if there were a wait list that long, that someone would open up another center and make twice as much money.

(2) The infant rooms goes up until about 12 months. So I am not sure how people go about getting their infants in this room? Even if you put your name on the wait list when you first find out you are pregnant, you may have to wait another 6 months (after the 9 months of being pregnant) to get in.

We have a place for Ripley - at the Tide Point center across town, but I am not sure we would have gotten a spot here if the center hadn't told people earlier this year that it was closing down because it had lost grant funding. Many folks found other places so when the center found out it was going to be open, there were a lot of vacancies.

Still looking at other options, including a couple of smaller centers, but it is looking like it could be Tide Point until we get her into Bright Horizons. That could be next summer at this point, but I have a feeling this year is going to fly by...