I don’t live under a rock, and if you don’t either it’s no surprise to you that finding childcare or daycare for your baby or toddler is tough. I’d long read stories of insanely long wait lists in Toronto, and had figured that arranging childcare should be a priority during my mat leave, but I (wrongly) assumed that finding childcare in Hamilton would be easier than in cities closer to Toronto. Today I’m going to share why I recommend starting the childcare search while you’re expecting, whether or not you have decided if you’ll take mat leave, how long your mat leave will be, or even whether you’re going back to work.
As I’ve mentioned many times, I was new to Hamilton when I found out I was expecting, and we moved into our home when I was 8 months pregnant. Because of that, thinking about childcare for my unborn baby wasn’t top of mind. I was unfamiliar with the area where we’d bought a home, I didn’t have any friends who could make recommendations for good daycares, and honestly, I was still wrapping my mind around being responsible for another living being, let alone thinking about a year in the future.
Then I had my baby, and of course those first few months are unscheduled and rather chaotic… and it felt like jumping the gun to start thinking about how I was going to farm him out during the day when I was at work. My mind didn’t want to go there. I was madly in love with the idea of being a parent and staying home for the year with my baby, and I didn’t want to think about leaving him.
Alas, I met a neighbour friend who asked where I’d be sending our little guy after mat leave, and she mentioned that she got on the daycare list for Pumpkin Patch on the Mountain while she was still expecting. Whoops. Was I supposed to have done that? So, I stopped by Pumpkin Patch one Thursday morning for their weekly tour where I found out a lot of information that would have been very useful months before. First, I inquired about the likelihood that my baby would get a spot in 8 months time if I registered that very day. I found out he’d be around 200th on the wait list. Again, whoops! I also learned that the City of Hamilton has a Childcare Registry which is a one-stop-shop for finding and registering for licensed centre and home-based daycares in Hamilton.
So, I went home and with my first available time to myself I frantically logged into the system. It turns out you can put your child on a wait list for five centres, so I quickly searched for five centre-based daycares within close proximity to home and my workplace. Phew. At least he was on the list, and then I could go from there. It really felt like I couldn’t afford to wait another second when I found out that we’d missed the boat on Pumpkin Patch.
Once you’re on the wait lists, your work is not done! Here is where I found the process to be even more disheartening– some centres still operate wait lists and selection criteria outside of the Childcare Registry system. For example, one group of centres had a 3-tiered system. Tier 3 was the city’s Registry, Tier 2 was to fill out and send back their application form, and Tier 1 was having to go for a tour. Only after achieving Tier 1 “status” would you start receiving emails about openings at their daycares. And then, you’d only get a spot if you were the first person from the Tier 1 group to email back. So, it was really hard to juggle all of these additional requirements of the various centres, and some that I visited completely disregarded the Childcare Registry, even though the system was accepting applications for their daycare’s wait list.
Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that in order to get my guy a spot in 8 months I was going to have to contact each centre (including more than the 5 I had been allowed to register for) and find out their individual criteria. It turned out that some were charging “administration fees” which seemed like a way for the centres to develop a wait list of people who were serious, while skirting Ontario’s ban on daycare wait-list fees. At several, I was told the fee was fully refundable if I decided not to enroll my child, but in the meantime it was being used for processing his application.
So, over the summer months I ended up touring quite a few daycares, including:
Little Angels Infant & Toddler Centre
Monkey See Monkey Do in Waterdown
Childventures in Ancaster
Ultimately I was really lucky and came upon a daycare that was brand new and would be opening soon after I went back to work. I really wouldn’t have had much choice otherwise– I only heard back from one of the daycares from the list above saying they’d have a spot for my baby when I went back to work, and I didn’t find that out until about two months before I went back to work. The only other one I could have secured a spot with is Kids and Company because luckily my employer has an agreement with them that as long as you give 6 months notice they’ll have a spot for your child– but that guarantee comes with a hefty, non-refundable deposit. I struggled with that one right up until the 6 month mark, because I didn’t love what I saw during the tour, but it could have been a guaranteed spot, freeing my mind of worries until I went back to work. Ultimately I let the date pass and didn’t take the guaranteed spot, because I just didn’t see it as the right place for my little guy.
Back to the daycare we selected– I got extremely lucky from several perspectives. I found out about the new daycare from my mom who had been listening to my woes and suggested I check out a place where one of her friend’s grandkids went. I was delighted to find that that very day, the daycare posted about a new location that would work out perfectly for us. Let me tell you– I sent an email immediately and managed to secure my little guy one of the first spots on the waiting list for the Infant room. I wanted to make sure that the owner knew I was serious so I touched base about once a month to see whether the centre was on track for opening on schedule, the type of supplies I’d need to send and more.
As it turned out, the daycare centre opened on track, about a month after I went back to work. We were extremely lucky that my mom offered to come stay with us to look after the baby until the daycare opened. It was actually a great transition because he got used to being looked after by someone other than me, being put to sleep by someone else, taking bottles throughout the day, etc. It also really helped my transition going back to work because I knew he was in the hands of someone we trusted and I could check in with my mom regularly, as well as spy on them using our Nest cam.
I share my tale of finding licensed childcare in Hamilton with you because I’m hoping to save you some of the stress and worry I went through in the months leading up to going back to work. Here are the key takeaways from my experience:
Start touring daycares and getting on wait lists before you give birth. It seems extreme, but I’m telling you, it’ll save you a lot of hassle once baby has arrived. The last thing you’ll want to do is tour daycares.
It’s ok if you don’t know what kind of daycare philosophy you prefer for your child! Just start touring daycares and you’ll get an idea of what resonates with you and what won’t work with your parenting philosophy and values.
Use Hamilton’s Childcare Registry, but follow up with each centre personally. Ask if you can have a tour, if you need to fill out an application, and how their wait list works. Do not wait to hear from them– it probably won’t happen!
Keep in touch. My experience, and what I’ve heard from others, is that wait lists are flexible. There’s nothing governing how wait lists are kept and used, so it seems that a parent’s persistence and communication touch points may go a long way to securing a child’s spot at their desired centre.
Keep a spreadsheet of your options! After touring a few centres I became confused as to what was what. On my spreadsheet I tracked things like drive time, rush hour drive time, whether it was on the way to work, hours, food provided, cost and tour dates/times. I was able to do a lot of the research ahead of time and to use the information to try to narrow down our top choices.
For more information on finding licensed child care in Hamilton, you can visit the City of Hamilton’s website. I didn’t look for unlicensed home daycare options so I won’t take it upon myself to provide advice on those.
Please share your experience with finding childcare in Hamilton. Did you find it as stressful as I did, or did I just wait too long and look in the wrong places?
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