My husband and I are trying to continue our house cleanup that we started in the spring. It really isn’t going as fast as I would have liked to… First, there are our summer vacations which ate 2 weeks and 3 weekends of the summer. Then there’s all the family and friends get together on frequent weekends. But all this is really necessary for our mental and social well being. And there’s the fact that I don’t have that much energy either, so I don’t get as much done as I would normally. I have heard the stories of women who become super women when they are pregnant, starting all sorts of renovation projects and being full of energy. It’s not my case I guess. My doctor had to prescribe some Iron supplements to me as I suffer from anaemia. That surely has something to do with the fact that I often feel tired, and loose my temper from time to time… Luckily, my husband takes it to a second degree being aware of my condition. But I’m not proud of myself when I get upset for no important reasons. I am now in my eighteen week of pregnancy, so maybe I will finally get to feel better in a few weeks.
I have visited 2 day cares so far. One of them is subsidized by the government, so it comes down to 7$/ day to send my kid there. The other one is private and it costs 30$/day and I get a taxes reimbursement, so the cost of day care comes down to 22$/day in my case. I find that the difference is huge. I know that by living in Quebec, I am quite lucky to be able to get day care for so cheap. But I also pay a lot of income taxes. So my husband and I will have to measure pros and cons of both daycares. The private day care had a really nice program, whereas there was no mention of that in the public day care. Also, the private day care looked much tidier, cleaner and better organized than the public daycare I visited. There are other public daycares in the neighbourhood but I didn’t have a chance to go and visit them. I am thinking that before we set our choice on a place, we will have to go and visit a couple more places. I am planning on taking a year off, which is the standard in Canada. I will receive a governmental benefit which will be topped up by my employer for the first few months, than it will reduce. It is a percentage of the salary up to a maximum salary which I believe to be $60,500 this year. I am also planning on taking an additional 3 months off, for which I won’t receive any salary. But if we decide to send our kid to a private daycare, I might just go back to work after my year off. My husband also gets 5 weeks of paternity leave that he can take any time during the first year. I think he will take these weeks mostly at the birth of the baby. I am quite pleased with this. It is specific to the province of Quebec and many fathers have benefited from this governmental program so far. There is apparently a mini baby boom in Quebec, which it thought to have something to do with all these programs put in place by the government.
