Child Care, Choosing

I’m in my second trimester and starting to check into day care. How did you do this?

Our Mommy MD Guide’s reply: I was very particular about choosing my daughters’ day care. I knew very clearly what I was looking for. As a doctor, you often work on instincts, and I’ve learned to trust my instincts. I had to walk into the day care and right away feel comfortable. For one thing, it had to have lots of sunlight. And of course it had to be very clean, and the providers needed to be very interactive. I also wanted to make sure the other children seemed happy and well cared for.

I went into one day care, and when they showed me where the children slept, to me it looked like they were in little cages in a dark closet. I couldn’t get out of that day care fast enough.

The day care I chose was more expensive than the others I had visited, but it had a great reputation for enhancing education, and they had very strict hiring requirements. I had talked with other parents who sent their children there and gotten good reports. My instincts about that place were very good.

—Alicia Brennan, MD, a mom of three daughters and Medical Director of Inpatient Pediatrics of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Pediatric Care at Princeton Health Care System in Princeton, NJ