The French Creche aka Free Goverment Daycare

(This picture is pretty funny. Where are the screaming babies???)

I am currently awaiting the answer of whether my child will be accepted into a state run creche, also known as creche municipale. I signed up when I was 7 months pregnant last August and ill not find out until mid May or June almost a year later! If you are a pregnant foreigner in France I recommend that you sign up at your local Marie right when you are six months pregnant. Most foreigners make the mistake of waiting to sign up for day care until after their baby is born. I would have made the same mistake had a friend not told me to go as soon as possible.

After your baby is born you will receive 7 acte de naissance (birth certificates) from the person who comes to register your child's birth at the hospital. By the way if you don't have these you can order as many as you want from your Marie whenever you want. You have to send these certificates to your top 4 choices of creche's that you made when you signed up at the mairie while you were pregnant, as well as to the Mairie itself. You have to remember to send these as soon as your baby is born to complete your file and put you on the list awaiting a place in the creche. The city compiles the list for the kids accepted at the end of the school year for the coming September.

After your file is complete you basically just have to wait for the response from the Mairie. You also have some other choices however, just in case your child does not get accepted in a municipal creche. You can do garde partage with another family. The way this works is that you share the cost of a private nanny at either your or their houses. The nanny is your employee and you can discount the cost of her salary in your taxes if she is properly declared. Another option that I am exploring is the halte garderie. These places also run by the state accept kids only part time. So you can probably get your kid in for up to three days a week. The third option which I am in the process of finding out about is the creche parental. These are day cares run by the parents of the kids attending. I will post about this as soon as I attend the open house next weekend. There is also the option of taking your child to the house of a specially trained babysitter who can watch up to 4 kids. I am learning more about this and will let you know as soon as I find out more.

Just a quick note...the reason everyone wants a place in the creche municipale is because it is the cheapest option. Garde partage is super expensive (about 900 a month, 9:00 to 19:00). Halt garderie is somewhere in the middle, but the catch for this one is that it is not full time. You can only sign your child up for up to 3 days a week.