Excerpts
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Chow is a piano teacher who works in the evenings, and her husband is an emergency-room doctor on a rotating shift at nearby Cape Breton Regional Hospital. They've had a hard time making their schedules line up with Mira's care.
"Both of our families are in Ontario, so we don't have grandparents close by to just kind of drop off the baby occasionally," Chow said. "The first year was really 24/7."
So when Health Park started offering round-the-clock child care for health-care workers in January, it was a blessing for the Chows.
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"I spoke with a single mom who was going back to work," said Helen Gamble, who owns Health Park Early Learning Centre. "She had to put it off because she didn't have child care. She was here and she was in tears, she was so happy.
"It gave her the ability to go back to work and provide for her family."
Gamble is able to offer the service because of a recent collaboration with the Nova Scotia government. The province covers the wages when extra staff are required, food for the evening program, and a quarter of the operating costs of the daycare, such as heat and electricity. It also subsidizes half the daycare fees for parents.
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"I know far too many families who have quit their jobs, in health care, because of child-care shortages," one person wrote.
"Women make up the majority of jobs in health care. It makes sense to have child care at their employment with health-care flexible hours."
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In November, Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey announced the province would create 160 new child-care spaces within six months, with hours that were suitable for health-care workers and an eventual goal of offering 24/7 service.
As of early April, Newfoundland and Labrador's Education Department told CBC News the four sites were still under development and would be open by the end of the year. Officials said the number of expected spaces is now 180, but they couldn't say how much the project would cost.
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Gamble said the service isn't profitable yet for her small business. But she thinks that will come.
"Eventually it will, it will be viable," she said.
The provincial government has said it plans to evaluate the program later this spring to determine if it's working and if any adjustments should be made.