Childcare question

[Morelaur288, BSN, RN]

Hey fellow nurses!

So I am happy to say I just recently passed the NCLEX and I’m officially an RN. Whoo hoo! Now that that hurdle has been overcome, I now face another one. So I’m a single mom to a 5-year-old girl who is starting Kindergarten next week. I was hired onto “varied” shifts so I’m going to be working days and nights depending on the month. Where I live there are hardly any daycare places that open early enough for me to be able to drop her off before school and even if there were, they don’t bus to her school or provide drop off services. To add to that, the earliest I can drop her off at her school is 7:20 AM, which isn’t going to work on the days I have to be at work at 7:00 AM. I do have help from her grandma and dad on the days he doesn’t work but he’s an EMT so his schedule is crazy as well. Anyway, I wasn’t sure where to post this but I just wanted some advice from other nurse parents with little ones. How do you do it!? Thanks in advance :)

[Morelaur288, BSN, RN]

Oh I also want to add she gets out of school almost days at 2 pm. So on the days I work days, I will not be able to pick her up or be home for her. The afterschool program at her school is completely booked up and she’s on a waitlist. So yeah... not sure how this is all going to pan out.

[Jory, MSN, APRN, CNM]

I'll be honest, varied shifts is almost impossible to do with young children if you rely on outside daycare. You need consistency. My husband was away quite a bit when my children were small, we had no family nearby, and it was hard when I was on a consistent shift.

[JKL33]

You should look for a position where they can assign you to a primary/particular shift. Hopefully the child's father is also scrambling to work out a schedule where he can provide reliable availability.

It seems that the difficulty of finding consistent and reliable outside help would be increased significantly if you have to periodically assume a completely different schedule.