Nanny Blues

Frenchguy woke me up this morning with a bad news. I have actually asked him to call up the French Embassy in Manila to get the requirements for a long stay / au pair visa for my sister. We've long entertained this idea at the first stage of pregnancy but with the feedbacks that we received from fellow bloggers and friends (like Philippine Government banning the issuance of this kind of visa), our optimism on this matter just died a natural death. We therefore looked seriously on other options.

We had our application for a crèche municipale (municipal nursery) registered since August but we had no feedback from them yet. The said crèche municipal is just four blocks away from our residence, open from 7am to 7pm, just the perfect comfort that we need. We tried to follow up our application a month ago just to learn that it's not a matter of an equitable 'waiting list' but evaluations are based on the age of the baby (whether they have an available slot for that age or not), the program we will adapt (part time or full time), and the financial status of the parents. Knowing how French Government works, I know that we are far from being the priority on the list. It's just raging to add that frenchguy had been paying taxes for xx years now, I've been giving xx% of my salary for taxes, we are considered middle class citizens and yet, we cannot even access to a minimum aide from the government!

With this, plan B was of course hastily considered. A good friend of ours recommended her nanny to us with whom we finally gave our word of engagement. Reliability is of course an important factor for us. We will not leave our much-awaited bébé to just somebody we don't know, right? The inconvenience of this option is that, the residence of the nanny is 15 - 20 more minutes drive between our house and our workplace.

Now, we go to plan C. Filipina as I am, I would of course prefer somebody I know, preferably from my family to look after my bébé. She'll have french lessons and leave the bébé at a halte-garderie during those times (sort of nursery but accepts part-time guard only). With the nature of my job wherein business travels play an essential part, I would be serene to leave my bébé in good hands. After using my convincing prowess to my sister, we finally started the processing here...till we get the bad news this morning.

I guess frenchguy and I should have 'You and Me Against the World' as a themesong. We cannot rely on French Government, and now Philippine Government just put a barrier on one solution we've been counting on to. Life is hard!

Bébé Update

Inside that big tummy is a 4.3 kg bouncing bébé. Induced labor programmed on Tuesday. Pray for me guys.