Balancing parenthood and a career can be difficult. Then there's the high expense of child care, which puts moms like Emma Sirak left to make some hard decisions. 

"It was so expensive, and then I had my second, and we could not afford it at all. We were just over the cutoff for assistance, so we didn't get anything. So, I had to leave that job, and I loved it there, and I had good benefits, and a pension, and everything you could ask for," Sirak said. 

Sirak is a mom of two, and she left her job at the Crawford County Correctional Facility to get a job at the daycare her kids go to -- that way she could get the employee discount. 

"I couldn't afford to be a stay at home mom either. You need those two incomes in today's world with the rising prices of everything," Sirak said.

The U.S. Department of Labor said the estimated cost in 2022 for infant child care was over $10,000 thousand dollars for Crawford County. So even though Sirak receives a discount, the average wage for a childcare worker still makes it a number crunch for her family.

"You would expect them to get paid more, but it's not. It's still hard keeping up with bills and everything," Sirak said.