Childcare while job hunting, what worked? - what worked for you?

The daycare near me wants more than I can pay. I have read a lot of threads here and could not find my exact situation. I looked into subsidies but the forms are long. Is there an emergency option?

I swapped afternoons with another parent. It took some planning and saved us both money.

Thanks for writing this out. I went through something close to it last year, and it got easier once I kept a simple log of every call and form.