Being pregnant can be a beautiful life changing experience. Whether expected or not, this time in life can feel overwhelming. Having a baby can have a ripple effect on your entire life. Whether you have the loving support of a family, in any context, or doing it solo, there are supports to help.
I personally feel that having a baby is kind of like renovating a house. It doesn’t exactly come with a manual, you can read all the books and get all the advice from experts and friends. Its always changing and evolving, you’re trying new things and learning from mistakes. In the end you hopefully have a relationship and environment built on love, dedication, commitment and support. This is life changing work and when your child reaches adulthood, you’re not the same person you once were.
Back to the support part. There is a gap in the support during child rearing ages from birth to 5 years old. In Canada, you can take a variety of weeks off work, ranging from 15 weeks maternity, 40 weeks standard parental, and up to 69 weeks for extended parental. This needs to be shared between both parents to receive the full time off, and you take a pay cut. In fact, you have to be off work and apply for Employment Insurance through the Government of Canada. The amount you are allowed to receive is also capped, so you should plan to save extra for the whole period off work. Assuming you and your partner take the entire 69 weeks off work, that brings the child’s age to 18 months.
The costs can rise quickly as diapers and formula are always rising in price. The safety regulations on baby ‘furniture’ meaning crib, car seat, bedding, are always changing and some items have a safety expiry date! Did you know that? Making hand-me-downs a tough go sometimes.
Combine the income decrease with the lifestyle cost increase and you’re in a world of stress over money.
So now your child is 18 months and its time to return to employment. You need to find child care resources either 'Center-Based Childcare' or 'In-Home Care'. The Government of Canada does offer some child tax benefits and credits to help with costs of raising children (link below). This can be put towards the daycare expenses and other expenses.
Applications need to be filled in for every daycare and each location can choose which children are accepted into their program. The next hurdle can be hours of operation. If you are a parent working shift work or even a 9 to 5, it can cause havoc trying to time manage your new family. Some daycares will work outside of ‘regular hours’, accepting children at 6AM, or staying open until 7PM.
This extra service can also come with added costs, which still doesn’t help the family bottom line. Some centers can ask for a new application each year, so your already accessible daycare could change the following year. There can also be a shortage of daycare centers in some communities leaving families struggling.
Kindergarten starts the year your child turns 5 by the end of that year (Dec 31st). Registration usually begins at the beginning of the year, and school boards organize by district to determine which school your child should go to.
Some unexpected bonuses to having children is friendships. Having a child in daycare can help you connect with other families as well as build strong social skills at an early age for your child. Connecting with other parents in these early years can help create supportive groups between parents, building a sense of community through discussions and sharing of resources.
Placing children in a daycare environment can help them learn to interact with others by developing critical thinking skills, thoughtful behaviors like learning to share, patience in waiting their turn and lots of other practical skills. These learned skills can develop into healthy behaviors to help your child advance and excel in future developmental years.
Having a baby and raising children can become overwhelming and feel harder than necessary when we don’t have those much-needed supports. If unemployed, become a single parent or the pregnancy was unexpected, we can feel worried, fearful, and sadness come to the surface. It can be misleading to think those strong feelings come from having a baby. Those feelings are misdirected, because those feelings are actually very personal to the parent themselves, regarding the unpredictable, unreliable or unsafe position now faced with this change in their life. Please know that its okay to feel those things and there are community programs to help you through those tough emotions.
We've tried to compile a list of local community programs that provide free or low cost formula, diapers, classes on pregnancy or child development, mental health and other supports a new parent may need. **
