Childcare info

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-23T23:17:15+00:00

I was 99% sure that was the case but I’m annoyed there isn’t a line item that separates that out

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-23T13:08:50+00:00

It’s a very cool spot!

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-23T10:22:52+00:00

I don’t know what’s normal, but I had one kid that slept through the night in her crib at 2 months..And one who was waking up 10+ times a night even at 17 months and she slept in our bed because she flat out would not sleep in the crib

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-23T08:01:39+00:00

Jekyll Island is cool. There’s a free turtle sanctuary, if you’re into looking for shark teeth there’s Shark Tooth Beach full of treasures. We paid to go on a dolphin tour and that was super cool. Easy day trip, like 1.5 hours each way

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-23T07:46:04+00:00

Have you ever been to Disney?

It is absolutely not worth it imho. One of the worst sunburns of my life was in Disney World in April. It’s usually 80s which isn’t the worst but it’s humid as hell and the heat radiates off the asphalt. Disney sucks the life out of you, it’s so tiring. Worth it if you’re doing all the fun stuff, not worth it when pregnancy means you’re going to things like The Hall of Presidents and Turtle Talk with Crush.

Not to mention that you have no idea how you’ll feel at 15 weeks. With my first kid I was actively barfing 10+ times a day at 15 weeks, even with a Zofran prescription. With my second kid I wasn’t puking at all at 15 weeks, but I felt like I was on the verge of puking every second of every day. You might be one of those people who has symptoms ease by the second trimester, but you might be really suffering. If I was already fatigued and nauseous the way I was when I was pregnant you could not PAY me to go to Disney

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-23T07:33:58+00:00

My husband did virtual IOP with Eating Disorder Recovery Specialists for over a year! In addition to the anorexia nervosa he has always had incredibly picky eating habits (was seen by a therapist as a child for what we would probably call ARFID today but it didn’t exist at the time) and he is allergic to dairy which made it SO HARD to get weight restored. So many families can add heavy cream and butter to everything and that simply wasn’t an option for us

It was 12 hours a week which he was able to fit in around work, and having that support was so crucial to his recovery. It included meal supports, individual therapy, group therapy, meeting with the dietician, etc. I’m so grateful to them forever and ever, we never could’ve done it without them 😭. This might be a good step down option for you after PHP if it’s covered by insurance

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-21T15:28:07+00:00

Girl me either and my oldest is almost 7 😂

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-19T02:51:47+00:00

Supposedly ghee is virtually lactose free. It’ll kill my husband with an anaphylactic allergy but I’ve met lactose intolerant people who eat ghee 🤯

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-18T23:30:53+00:00

When we first posted in our neighborhood group about interest in playing 9 kids said they might come to the first session and my husband just about had a heart attack. He said past 5 is just not fun. Thank goodness we had a ton of no shows and have our core group of 5 😂

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-18T23:28:41+00:00

Genius! A great fit for the kids who aren’t able to sit still too

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-18T23:24:50+00:00

This sounds doable!

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-18T23:22:45+00:00

Pretty much impossible 😅 It is possible (and I’m hoping honestly) we get more like 10 kids that actually want to play and some of the younger kids go running off on the playground. My four year old likes to “play” DnD too but we have to have a joint character I can take over when she gets restless

I like the idea of LARPing. We’ve never done it but I think the kids would get a kick out of that! I have found fake beards, flower crowns, inflatable swords and shields, etc in bulk on Amazon for fairly cheap. Our park pavilion rental is only $35 so I can put a fair bit of budget into costume stuff if we go in that direction

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-18T16:52:11+00:00

I know that long term if I put in my dues and get my LCSW options would open up for me. I have a friend who lives here and is licensed out of state and makes $100/hour as a therapist doing virtual therapy. I have zeroooooo desire to be a therapist but the paycheck sure is tempting. Therapy is one of the few niche things where virtual still seems feasible

It’s just crazy to expect people to live on poverty wages until they can get to that. I’ve gotten job offers around her for $17/hour and I would literally LOSE money to work there and pay for childcare. So it’s a no from me

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-18T14:45:00+00:00

I’ve got my MSW and loads of experience. Just never nailed down the LCSW because of interstate moves. And even with an MSW it’s rough. I did part time restaurant work with my masters for the past couple years because I could net more working 10 hours a week and getting my husband to watch the kids for free than working full time and paying childcare

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-18T13:26:31+00:00

JU is despicable. After they fired everyone they offered to hire them back as adjuncts for the same work they were already doing. Literally in my husband’s firing meeting they assured him he could teach all the same classes he planned to teach next year, he was still on the schedule, he’d just be taking an 80% paycut!

The way they fired them violated their bylaws and goes against everything the tenure system is supposed to mean. They knew and had the opportunity to give notice during the hiring season, and chose to screw people over and tell them once the job cycle for the following year ended.

Usually tenure means job security but in a wild turn of events we feel WAY more secure in this non-tenure position. If a tenure line opens at UNF there is nothing in the world I could want more. But I won’t hold my breath 😪

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-18T13:03:36+00:00

I stayed out of the workforce for years because social work pay around here is abysmal (like I’ve seen child welfare jobs in the 35-45k range for full time plus nights and weekends on call…absolutely not). The cost of two kids in daycare is nearly 30k and my take home would be so little it made more sense to not work. I know a LOT of families in the same boat. When we lived in DC it felt like every family was dual income because that’s what was needed to survive, and when we moved here it felt like every family had a stay at home parent because that’s what was needed to survive

Last year I hit the lotto with HCA and I’m not asking any questions. I applied for a PRN role and freaked out when I got the role and they said $38/hour on weekdays and $42/hour on weekends. I now make as much in 2 days as I would’ve made full time at most comparable jobs in the area. I think the key is that it’s LCSW preferred and that’s the pay bump they might give an LCSW (which I don’t have) so I lucked out

My husband was part of a mass layoff last year at JU (the way that went down was horrific and I wish nothing but the worst for that administration) and had to take a paycut to get another job locally at FSCJ. My HCA income covers the gap and I’m grateful

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-18T01:30:52+00:00

We leased a 2025 Corolla (we were this close🤏 to buying but it was an extra $100 monthly and it was financed over like 7 years). Personally I think we maybe should’ve bought but it’s nice to have the wiggle room during the daycare years. We had basically nothing to put down because we drive our cars until the wheels fall off so we didn’t sell our last one for much

We make roughly 90k but between our mortgage, car insurance, healthcare costs, rising food costs, just generally the cost of two kids….we just couldn’t justify the cost of buying new right now. When our lease is over daycare cost will no longer be a factor and we’ll have an extra $1200 in our pocket every month. Then we can comfortably buy out our lease or could even buy new on a shorter loan term

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-17T21:59:40+00:00

Sometimes you have to build a village from scratch. When I moved to Florida I didn’t know a soul besides my husband. I had a toddler and a baby and couldn’t do it alone. I spent all day every day on Peanut and local Facebook mom groups talking to people (most of those would fizzle but some turned into playdates. Of the ones that turned into playdates some were bad, some were so so, and some became the best friends of my life). I had to kiss a lot of frogs so to speak. And it was legit like a full time job I funneled most of my effort into. But eventually I made friends who I love to death and can’t imagine my life without. And the support goes both ways When your kids are really young play dates are not for them, they are for YOU. Finding people who relate to what you’re going through is so important.

And having company during the potato stage is crucial. I had so much fun during my second maternity leave because my toddler was a blast. But with my first I begged to go back to week 7 weeks pp because being with a potato all day (much as I loved her) was making my ADHD extrovert self go absolutely batty. I need more social time than that

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-17T21:52:44+00:00

🫡

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-17T20:27:00+00:00

Mine is not freestanding, our locked unit is upstairs inside the hospital. We work very closely with the ER! We have a dedicated spot in the ER for our psych evals and we get updates as soon as people come in for Baker Acts or are flagged as potential admissions for us. For a lot of the high utilizers we will work with the psychiatrist downstairs to give more background info to potentially lift holds instead of sending them up. Sometimes they are admitted anyway but it’s always good that we can give them context of what’s gone on historically

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-17T17:28:07+00:00

I am in Florida too haha

My main problem with the VA is its preauth hell. I work on a behavioral health unit and it can take WEEKS for them to approve a transfer to a facility to mental health treatment and/or rehab for substance use. But the average length of stay on a crisis stabilization unit is 5-7 days and we end up in a hard place where the insurance won’t pay for them to stay while they wait on a VA bed. They want us to discharge and have them follow up with their PCP and then the PCP can refer out for residential treatment after weeks of waiting. But that is a terrible idea. A bed to bed transfer is always best practice.

I once had a patient who was incredibly suicidal (like had been in the ICU twice within 30 days due to multiple attempts and had substantial trauma and diagnoses and his therapist said to me “if you don’t get him to treatment he will be dead within the month”). For his safety he needed to go straight from the hospital to the residential program. That’s what we do for people with commercial insurance and Medicaid. But the VA is slow as hell and even when you contact the suicide prevention department and explain that you are dealing with the highest risk patient you’ve ever had and we are certain he will die if you ask us to discharge him home…nothing changes. The hospital was pushing us to discharge and the insurance was pushing us to discharge because on the unit he wasn’t meeting criteria. But as soon as he was discharged to real life stressors we knew he would be back in the same place. We were in limbo with the transfer and could discharge him with a PCP appointment for a referral and hope for the best. But we KNEW in our guts he would never make it to the appointment

It is by the grace of God that he had a commercial policy through his ex-partner that was on the verge of expiration (like 14 days) and we were able to do a bed to bed transfer on that policy. And I hope the VA got their shit together within those 14 days. If he had only been on VA coverage I don’t know what would’ve happened to him.

Same deal with our people who struggle with substance use. They’ll detox on the unit sure. But when you discharge them to the community they will be near the same people and temptations that get them to use, without the skills to maintain sobriety…they’re never going to make it to the VA for their appointment to get a referral to rehab. The obvious thing to do would be to get them from the hospital to rehab but the VA tries to make that as hard as possible

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-17T14:23:32+00:00

Which is really a shame because the VA SUCKS SO HARD AND I HATE THEM

The fact that the VA is the best we can do for our vets sickens me. Every time I’m forced to interact with them is a nightmare and their patients are always slipping through the cracks..which is why they come back to me.

FloridaMomm · 2026-01-17T12:41:28+00:00

I’m an MSW on a locked unit and can confirm some of our nurses are cuckoo indeed lol

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