[edn88]

My wife and I had considered a nanny as well (many of our friends had gone that route) and at the same time put our name in for a daycare downtown (it had a one year wait list). We were completely on the fence - and could not make up our mind until a spot came open at the daycare and we had to make up our mind fairly quickly. The pressure of having to make a relatively quick decision gave us a lot of clarity and in the end we chose to do a daycare.

The problems we saw with the nanny was the problem with sick time and vacation (when your nanny is away you need a backup service or stay home with your kids). The benefits (and there were many we had not thought of) of the daycare is that there was always someone there. What we found after our child was in the daycare was that his socialization skills increased, and his ability to walk, talk, and pretty much do everything increase dramatically as he played with other kids and felt the posative effects of peer pressure. And as time went on, it was clear having a proffesional child care service was preparing him for life better than a single nanny could (yeah, I know that sounds wierd, but that is what you are doing - prepping your child for life).

We were fortunate as we had the best of both worlds - my wife only worked three days a week, so our child was only in DC for three days - and got four days of time with one or both of us.