The Day Care Waitlist Debacle

The Day Care Waitlist Debacle.

By Bronwyn Lewis

02/10/2014

Maria: the bitch/the gatekeeper/the day care receptionist.

The hideous rumours about day cares are true. Not only are they more expensive than a round trip to Bali each week, but they’re harder to get into than Harvard Law and turn the strongest, most stubborn people into begging and blubbering messes.  What’s more is they seem to be on such high demand that they are bursting at the seams worse than my recycling bin is with wine bottles. The places are a colourful type of evil full of smug bastards that insist on dotting their ‘I’s with love-hearts. Gross.

It may surprise you all, but I am not a helicopter mum, which means I’m not particularly fussy about where Olive goes. Someone, please, just take her, keep her alive and then give her back when I ask for her. I haven’t researched the types of paints they use that she will inevitably drink. I haven’t demanded tours to assess whether the children have enough primary colours blasting each corner of the room, or whether their cots have Laura Ashley linen. Contrastingly, I have been forced to go on tours where I have been chuffed that they actually feed the kids and completely revolted by how much snot is all over all their grubby faces. Olive won’t look like that. She’s banned from snot – it was in the fine print when I agreed to be her mum.

Since learning I was pregnant with Olive, I have had her name down and countless day cares, but I have my heart set on one in particular. It’s directly next door to my house, so I’m planning on catapulting her over the fence each morning before I dart off to work. Time is money, people. I have been told that in order to secure a spot at a day care, you need to be on the dreaded waitlist before your baby is even born then literally harass them until they cannot stand saying no to you any longer. It’s Darwinism at it’s finest.

When I was pregnant a lady at work told me that the only way she got her daughter in anywhere was by turning up numerous times a day and crying hysterically to the apathetic staff. Christ! No thanks, desperado. How fucking embarrassing. Her terrifying anecdote was delivered with such pride that she ‘beat the system’ that I wondered if she was mad before she endured the shit fight of the Day Care Waitlist Debacle, or whether her sanity had fallen victim to it. I decided the latter and hightailed my enormous, swollen and sweaty body to the day care I decided Olive would conquer. 

Today, eleven months after scribbling down my unborn baby’s details onto the waitlist form, I have had this mad woman’s horrifically humiliating story ringing in my head. Would I have to bawl my eyes out? Nope, I just can’t see myself doing it. I’d much rather just plonk her over the fence each morning and hope they don’t notice they have a tiny Polish imposter. In this time, I have taken to casually popping in to see how their waitlist is going. They hate it and it makes me so nervous because if they start to hate me, they can scratch me off the list faster than Lindsay Lohan’s tragic downfall. I feel like the fat girl at school trying so hard to impress the pretty, cool bitches. Please like me, slags!

Countless times I have stood in the foyer with my oblivious baby hanging off my hip stammering and pleading to the cold, vacant stare of Maria, the hardhearted receptionist who spends her entire day pretending to pen important notes, but is most likely sketching pictures of dicks.  

Maria, I know you. I have reluctantly entered your realm of sourness and deliberate disregard of my existence far too many times for me to back out now. We have come too far together and I just need you to give me the nod and I will never talk to you again. Come on, Maria, finish the delicate shading of those pubes at home and give me a fucking answer.

At mothers group, we discuss who got in where and what unbelievable lengths they had to go to to make it happen. I’m convinced at least one mother has sold one of her child’s kidneys to get a spot. They do only need one after all, right? We are all secretly terrified that we will be the only dickhead who didn’t get into one and have to start begging strangers in the depths of suburbia to let our baby sit on their lounge room floor whilst they watch Ellen and cut their toe nails. Please don’t let that be our only option!

Needless to say, I’m still waiting to find out whether Olive has a spot next door. They seem to have hired Nimbin Town Council to help ‘finalise their list’ because this shit is taking forever and if they aren’t stoned off their heads over there then I’ll eat my hat. I guess if they don’t take Olive then I will be bringing her into work every day for show and tell. Luckily she is about as quiet and reasonable as Janice Dickinson after a kilo of MDMA. Work is going to love it.

So we desperate mothers wait with baited, wine tinged breath for that bitch Maria to pick up those dusty waitlist forms and give us a call and say that we can go and have adult conversations again. The system is disgustingly flawed and seems to be designed to eradicate the tiny slither of dignity we parents have left. I seem to feel more confident walking down the street with Olive’s vomit in my hair and one shoe on than I am about Maria’s capabilities of letting me have a part of my pre-baby life back.

Come on you pack of sour Maria’s out there – finalise the fucking lists and while you're at it empty my recycling bin you are solely responsible for me filling. Cheers.