After meeting with Alma for an interview and checking out her place out and asking all the questions we had, everything seemed fine so we decided to take her there. My daughter began attending Alma's day care in North Salinas on Sept 30th, when she was a few days shy of 6months. Within the first couple weeks There were some things that I saw that kind of made me uneasy and brought me to question if I was doing the right thing by continuing to take her there. I will go more into detail at the bottom. I will begin with what just happened to me.
On Monday 12/2/19I notified the provider that my daughters last day would be on 12/18/19 and will be cared by someone else in January. On Wednesday afternoon after picking my daughter up and getting home she sent me a text message stating that her last day would be Friday (Today 12/6). She was only giving me two days notice after we had agreed that 12/18 would be her last day. The least she could have done when I gave her 2.5 weeks notice, is told me that she was going to start looking for another infant ASAP and it would possibly be her last week.
After receiving her text message I decided to call her. I was caught completely off guard and this was not how a business owner should communicate. She did not answer my phone call so I decided to just go the daycare and just pick up my daughters belongings. It was obvious she didn't want her there anymore so I did not feel comfortable taking my daughter there for the remaining days two days she had given me.
After picking her belongings up I went home and got her daycare bottles out to wash. There was a very bad smell coming from them. It was MOLD! the next day I went to pick one more bottle that was left behind at the daycare. I knew that If the 2 bottles she first gave me had mold, the third one that was left at her home would also. I showed up and showed her the bottles with mold. Alma and her sister denied it and said the bottles were not given to me like that and that I brought those moldy ones from home. She handed me the third bottle so I opened it right there in front of her and and showed her the mold. She said she would buy me new bottles but that was NOT the point. The problem is that they were not washing the bottles properly and were feeding my daughter with the moldy bottles. If you have any infants I would not recommend taking your baby to her daycare.
Other Things that happened during the time my daughter was there was that she got sick and throwing up and had a UTI, within the first two weeks of being there. after getting home from the hospital, I unpacked her daycare bag and saw her bib had berry stains all over it. My daughter was only eating rice cereal at the time so I asked if they gave her anything different and they denied feeding her any berries or anything other than rice cereal. They denied it and said maybe my son stained it. My son is 1 year and 8 months. There is no way he put the bib on and fed himself without me knowing. If they accidentally put the bib on another and been honest I would have been ok
Also, when I first started taking my daughter with Alma I did not take her the full day. The first week I picked her up at different times and everytime I picked her up all the kids were sleeping . Out of the 2 months my daughter went there. I only saw the kids awake 3 times . They don't have a set schedule . During thanksgiving week I had my daughter with me and asked Alma if she can tell me what her schedule was like in regards to naps and feeding so I can keep her on the same schedule . She responded "we usually feed her when she's hungry, she sleeps in the morning and in the afternoon" .
I do not recommend Alma's daycare . read more