Part time nanny - part time nursery?

I've worked in early years for a long time and I'm not necessarily against babies in nurseries, but I would caution that 8-6, 5 days a week is much longer shifts than the adults will work. It is a full on environment and that's a lot for anyone to cope with.
Also means the babies will transition through a lot of caregivers in a day - the people doing the early shift might not be the same people working that room in the day or doing the late shift.

When I first started working in early years in the days of Sure Start, group size was a big priority for quality for under 2s care. Research showed that a max size of 6 babies per group was ideal and it shouldn't go over 8, regardless of the adult:child ratio.
Sure Start nurseries were always 6 babies max.
Unfortunately the funding and interest in high quality care for babies disappeared under the Tories and group sizes crept up and up.

If I was looking for a nursery for my own baby I would never choose somewhere with 12+ babies in a room.

My daughter went to nursery from 10 months, for 3.5 days a week. I worked compressed hours which meant I had one day off and my mum had her a half day. Could compressed hours work if they won’t let you reduce to four days? As in, full time hours over four days? I made it work but it did mean slightly longer days.
My daughter experienced no ill effects whatsoever from nursery so the scaremongering on here is ridiculous. Or else you all experienced some rubbish nurseries. In ours, there was a dedicated 3 or 4 staff for each room, so the children were all seeing the same few familiar faces. This is what I’d advise you to look for. They definitely did not violate the 1:3 for the babies. They had cameras in each room that parents could check on and they encouraged drop in visits at any time! I decided against a childminder because I didn’t want to be tied to her holidays, sickness etc. Plus the couple I visited seemed to spend a lot of time driving around also doing nursery and school drop offs and pick ups and I didn’t want my baby spending half the day in a car!
having said that I don’t think sharing the care with a nanny is a bad idea at all. If you spend some time getting to know the nanny and getting baby used to her/him how is it any different to a child being looked after at nursery some days and a grandparent some days? Good nannies come to feel like part of the family don’t they?

I've done nursery work for 20 odd years. 8 to 6 for 5 days a week is madness. That's longer than staff hours. They need home life as well. Nursery is loud busy chaotic. Most establishments are over run with additional needs kids. It's a nightmare. You need a child minder who can offer a home environment for comfort and support. If that's not possible get the nanny to break it up.

A nanny wouldn’t offer those same social benefits.

A good nanny offers a very sociable life. They should be taking children to playgroups, organising play dates etc. When mine were small our nanny had a huge network of nanny friends to hang out with them and their charges.

A Nanny share is another more affordable option.

Mine started nursery at 1 (4 days/week) and he seemed to really enjoy it. Always came out with a big smile. But he’s quite outgoing and wants a lot of stimulation. If you have the option to use a nanny for some of the time, why not. It would give your child some downtime if needed. I don’t think having an additional carer is an issue, in other families it would be a grandparent who takes care of the child 1-2 days a week. Another advantage of a nanny might be that it would reduce the days you have to take off due to illnesses. I’m not talking about the occasions when a child is really poorly and wants mummy, but we often have the situation that my son gets send home from nursery because of a temperature or a loose poo, but then two hours later he’s absolutely fine. Due to nursery’s sickness policies, they have to stay off for 24-48 hours more, so I often lose two days of work looking after DS who shows no sign of illness and could have easily been with a nanny.

To your questions, yes and yes. They stay in one hut and around it. Perhaps you should google this topic if of interest.

We did a nursery/nanny split when the kids were younger, it was great. They had full busy days at nursery then days where they didn't have to be up and out early because the nanny came. They enjoyed both and were very settled.

It also meant we could use nursery for extra days if our nanny was on holiday and our nanny could help if they couldn't go to nursery...

Great question and the answer is that it changed over time. My top tip on childcare is to make the arrangements that work for you now and be aware that you may need to adjust it as life changes.

We originally had 3 days of nursery and added 1 day of nanny when I increased to full time then added a 2nd day of nanny when my husband returned to full time.

Pretty hard to Google when you're given something as vague as "tribal communities" and you don't answer the question of who did the study.

What about indigenous Peruvian people who carry their own infants near-constantly until the age of 1 and the studies in Western cultures that were inspired by this that show babywearing improves maternal bonding?

I'm not at all saying one culture is better than the other. I'm just saying that there are many people groups who do things in very different ways and you can use that as justification for almost any practice you like!

Try using the phrases "hunter-gatherer communities" and "raise children cooperatively" in your search. I don't tend to write down the sources of my random reading to use in arguments with random strangers on the internet.
If this is genuinely of interest to you, the information is easily discovered. If you simply want to engage in an argument for the sake of defending an ingrained belief, I'm probably not the best person to assist you with that.

@PancakeCloud i sent my dd to both nursery and childminder from jan this year, 2 days full days nursery and 3 full days with childminder, she was 13 months. My dd who was at the time v sociable and resilient settled into both very well and never cried with either setting so I don’t think having two providers is a problem imo. However, I was never fully happy with the nursery despite it being outstanding rated, it lacked personal touch, they didn’t notice certain things about her development that the childminder did and they were a bit showy in that they had lots of incredible resources but really lacked other things I valued like consistency, attachment, personable nature. She was constantly sick as well and I know most of the illnesses were form nursery as the manager would let us know in the group chat when something was going around. The childminders mindees were rarely ill.

Anyway, fast forward to now and I’ve decided to take my dd out of the nursery and just keep her with the childminder. She was extremely distressed when they moved her to the toddler room this autumn and started to catch every illness again so I just thought what the hell am I doing. She will likely go back there for preschool part time if I can’t find anywhere better but it will just be to get her ready for school and I’d only send her 2-3 days at most.

Most year round nurseries operate 8-6 and expect you to send dc at least two days so this afternoon nanny set up wouldn’t suit I’d imagine. Term time nurseries tend to operate 9-3 or mornings only which I don’t think you are looking for.

I know a lot of people spout the line of teachers can tell which children have or haven't been in childcare.
Please ignore.
There is little benefit for a child being in childcare until over 3. They need to be with their primary carer, wherever possible, until that age.
So much evidence around about the damage being done to children through long hours in noisy nurseries. It's just not popular to comment on it.
Short periods away from parents is fine but the hours proposed by OP are too long.

There is simply no evidence to suggest any damage to children from 'noisy nurseries'.

I probably wouldn’t go for a childminder for a baby to be honest.

Childminders have multiple children of different ages and tend to try to get them all on the same routine with sleep. Nap conditions have recently been made much stricter so this has compounded this problem. It’s nice to think it’s a cuddly home from home environment but it isn’t really, it’s just a different type of institution.

We had a balance of both. It added flexibility and DC were fine with it. Nanny would do things like take them to classes, swimming lessons, hanging out with nanny friends and their children and do cooking etc with them. Nursery gave them different experiences.
Nanny had the advantage that she would look after them on days when they wouldn’t be well enough for nursery for example.

Three under 5s in a family home is pretty much the definition of a home from home environment.
It definitely isn't an institution 🤔
The slightly stricter sleep rules haven't affected most childminders.
I had 3 under 5s of my own and of course you try to work their naps around each other, if they all were on different schedules it would be a nightmare?

It isn’t, because at home with three under 5s isn’t monitored by OFSTED. With your own children, you can do as you wish. Childminders can’t.

I think it is quite normal around me. Both my kids have been to nursery doing those hours 5 days a week since 10/11 months old and they’re fine. We have quality time at the weekends and see each other in the mornings and evenings. Quite a few people I know do the same and others do the same but maybe only 4 days.

mumsnet is weird about nurseries but if you can’t drop your hours / days then there is no other choice. Our nursery is quite small and nurturing and they definitely get something out of it socially - my youngest has just turned 18m and she has formed great bonds with the staff and other babies. She is happy going in and absolutely thriving.

The only articles I could find about hunter-gather communities raising their children co-operativly stated the very opposite of your assertion - the adults outnumber the children and the children were held for many more hours a day than they would be in Western societies - especially if that child were to be in a nursery. Children were also soothed very quickly when they began to cry.
Where it talks about "childcare" away from the mother the set-up is described as "multi-aged" so not one hut for babies and another for toddlers and another for pre-schoolers.
The study was suggesting (not stating as fact) that this may be the model to which we are biologically primed.
So definitely not promoting western childcare models.

I don't know what you read but I suggest you double check your sources before using it to defend your ingrained belief.

Haha, I love the thought of hunter gatherer societies practicing gentle parenting 😂

So we don’t have a nanny but we do split the week between nursery and childminder and days with me and I think it works really well. We could now just have my 20m old in nursery but she loves her day with the childminder and the kids she sees there (childminders daughter is the same age as her) and I feel it gives a nice balance for her for the week - a day with me, a day at the childminder, 2.5 days nursery and 1/2 a day with DH. She is absolutely fine with the different settings and settled really really well. So splitting nanny and nursery could be really beneficial for the 1:1 time they’d get from the nanny.