to be sat here crying at the thought of putting my baby in nursery

[pinkyp]

my 2nd ds is 10 months, i've just gone and got myself a good job only problem is they only had full time available. I start next week. I'm sat in floods of tears looking at all the nurerys online - they dont look good enough, cant bare the thought of going to one, no one will be able to look after him like i do. What about when he's being naughty they wont love him they'll dislike him for being naughty.

I feel like running away, tempted to go get in bed and hide. Please help me get a grip.

Again Im interupting .

As a nursery nurse I can absolutely tell you that we do not leave babies to cry,can you imagine the stress to those poor babies all crying for a basic reason?.

I have sat for many hours with small babies that just need comfort,I have sat for many hours with toddlers that just need comfort - Ive also accompanied children to A&E with their parents after accidents at nursery when their child cried for me.

My Dh refers to me as a 'professional stand in mum',even these days in my sahm status (which is a choice based on ds health than an anti nursery view) Im asked to support local mums with their new babies and more recently teens with issues (this doesnt mean im supermum I struggle with my own ds2 -it just means im human).

If you are lucky enough to be in a job you love and you are very good at it-it makes sense for you to do it,and nursery nurses dont do it for the money (thats for sure).

I can cut hair im not fantastic at it but I can do it .........I can do acrylic nails im not fantastic at it but im able ......I can deal with my elderly fil and the running of his home -im good at that but I am a nursery nurse - so you working mums who have a valuable contribution to the many areas -you work as that and I and my colleagues will do what we do best -look after your babies.

Its not about facilities,its not about equipment in the nursery its down to the nursery nurses they are the heart of the nursery.

You're so right nickschick - none looking for a nursery should be blinded by amazing interiors and fantastic toys. Check for cuddling and giggling instead!

Ds has been in a nursery since he was about 8 months. He is now nearly 2 and loves it! Regulary when I pick ds up he has been sat cuddled with the staff, often staff members have little babies asleep on them. It's lovely!

Sounds like some of you have had fantastically bad luck looking at nurseries. I drop in on mine at all kinds if random hours and there is always lots of cuddling going on, and I've never seen a child left to cry except a tantruming toddler.

I am gutted i may not be able to afford a nursery for dd2,dd1 got so much out of it that i wouldnt have been able to provide for her.I loved it of i arrived early and she was sat with her friends having tea. I got divorced during her time there,the staff were amazing and so supportive and helped explain to her what was going on and provided two of everything so we could both have cards and pictures. I also cried when she left and we pop in from time to time to visit.
I did look at about 10 tho before i decided on one and made that choice within a few minutes of entering the building.
DD is 9 noow and has lovely memories of her time at nursery.

I do think tryingtoleave has a point that no-one thinks their child is in a rubbish nursery, but a sizable proportion of nurseries are rubbish. I did supply work in nurseries for a while and out of five, I'd say two were appalling, one was ok but the set-up wasn't great for the under 2s, one was good but I wouldn't have sent my own baby there, and one was brilliant. I'm sure though that if you asked the parents, the ones sending their children to the appalling nursery would have been just as positive as the ones at the brilliant nursery.

As for cuddling/bouncers - even at crap nurseries there is some cuddling (I've always cuddled babies who need it) but if you are pressed for time with a 1:3 ratio then inevitably cuddles are pretty rationed. And non-mobile babies spend a lot of time in bouncers chairs because what else can you do with them? My ds spent a lot of time in a bouncer at home before he could crawl too.

There are good nurseries though, and it is much easier to provide good care for older children ime. I do sit with and soothe any children to sleep, I do help them to eat, I do cuddle children, especially those just settling in. But it's a lot easier to do that with a group of 2+ year old children where only a few are likely to need your immediate attention at any one time than with babies who are much more labour intensive to care for.

A couple more points then I'm off to do the nursery run and go to work :

Firstly - we may be working parents but we are not delusional and I take exception to the implication that parents believe what they want to believe. There are plenty of childcare options out there - why would people need to convince themselves something is ok if it isn't? If people say they are happy with a nursery then it's because they ARE happy with it.

Secondly - of course the care is different from that you get at home. The care my mil provides is different too. Different doesn't mean better or worse. The 1:3 ratio - there are a significant number of parents who have that ratio to some or all of the time. I personally know one family with that set up. I think the mum would be pretty hurtto hear the view that she must have rationed cuddles.

Sorry, I haven't read the whole thread, but I wanted to give you my personal experience FWIW.

DS1 in full time nursery from 12 weeks old. I was able to see him at lunch time to BF. As he got older DH and I were able to reduce our working hours and he was in nursery less.

DS2 in nursery 3 or 4 days a week since he was 10 months. Again I could go over to see him to BF.

It's the same nursery (DS1 is 12 and DS2 is 2) and I love it. I've had staff cry when DS2 has moved up to the next room they get so fond of them.

The most important thing is to find a nursery you are happy with.

Then once things are in place maybe you can try and see if there is any way you can reduce your hours.

I'm sure parents are happy with it, but it might still be a crap nursery. Doesn't mean they are delusional - just that as a parent it isn't always possible to have a full picture of what goes on in a nursery.

And yes, it's inevitable that you can't always cuddle every baby that needs it when they need it. If you have 9 babies and 3 adults, and 1 adult is changing a nappy, 1 adult is trying to put a baby to bed, the other adult is left with 7 babies and 4 are crying - you can't possibly deal with everyone at the same time. I have been in the situation myself of jiggling a baby on each knee, bouncing a chair with my foot and hoping none of the crawlers hurt themselves in the next 5 minutes. So yes, there is rationing, not everyone can be dealt with as quickly as you would like, and sometimes the quiet/"good" babies get overlooked. That isn't to say nursery workers aren't doing the best job they can though.

My feeling is that there are things that can improve baby rooms though - no more than 6 under 2s in a group, ideally a 1:2 ratio (I accept this is unlikely to happen in private nurseries), a bigger range of ages within the group.

I have no doubt that my son loves his one day with his granny a little bit more than his 4 days in nursery. After all, granny dotes on him and likes to spend all day playing with him. However granny gets very tired after one day and so I doubt this standard of play and attenton would be kept up if he was there all week. Nursery works for us the rest of the time and although there are sometimes crying babies they are not just left. Yes, they may not be rushed to immediately unless they are in danger or hurt but they are not left to cry it out either.

Not quite the same position, but I took DD1 for her first taster session at nursery yesterday. She is 2, nearly 3 and I have been lucky to just have family looking after her until now. I was dreading having to put her in nursery, but she has done a term at preschool (2 mornings a week) whilst I have been on maternity leave and has thrived, her confidence has grown massively, everyone comments on it. She will have to go to nursery when I am back at work in 2 weeks as my mum can only cope with one, so I am leaving DD2 with her and DD1 will be in nursery.

Anyway I dropped her off with no tears and she came home from the taster session and said "that was fun". She loved it. They do things with them that i would never do (mainly lots of messy play etc.) and she gets to play with lots of little ones rather than just boring mummy all day. I can honestly say I would be happy to put her in full time if I had to and even DD2. I don't have to which is fortunate from a financial perspective. .

What I always find a bit odd on these threads is that the people who don't like the idea of nursery always seem to see nurseries where the care is apparently poor. You rarely get someone saying 'I don't like nursery care personally but I did see one where the children seemed happy and the care was good".

Is this because people form their opinions of all nurseries based on the poor ones they see? Or is it because if you go in with a pre-conceived idea of how terrible something is, you will tend to see what you want to see? Or is there a degree of exaggeration going on?

If I had visited a nursery where the babies appeared to be left to cry in bouncers then I wouldn't have used it - but I wouldn't write off every other nursery on the basis of that experience. Our nursery is very relaxed about parents turning up at unexpected times so there certainly isn't anything going on that they aren't happy for us to see - and I have never seen babies left in bouncers. They are always being entertained and engaged unless they are sleeping.

I think people need to be a bit more open-minded about the fact that care presumably varies widely between nurseries. If you went into a cafe and had rubbish service you wouldn't assume that all cafes are like that, so why are people so ready to write off an entire branch of childcare based on limited experience?

When I worked at the nursery (it wasnt a fabulously equipped one nor was everything sparkly new) we had our own 'family' of children for whom we were responsible for - they went into other groups into different areas of the nursery but if a child from my 'family' was sad or nor quite himself he came back to me for a bit.

I did whilst pregnant spend a lot of time with the babies (nursery class were my 'speciality' I loved the inquisitive nature and the discovery stages in prep for school) as the OIC thought the babies would be less stressful for me .....none of our babies cried really,they fussed for milk etc but generally our routine was so consistent the babies were content if there were issues (more nappies than norm) or if a baby was teething or unsettled we had a floater member of staff who would come in and assist also even the cook,cleaner and admin were well versed and checked to be able to help.

My days at the nursery were very happy and I see lots of the Mums and children who came and they remember it fondly.

Tbh it was rundown,things were done on the cheap but it was filled with love.

I haven't written off every nursery - my dcs go to one three days a week. I dont think it is perfect but it was the best I could find. Also my dcs are older now and less reliant on cuddles and affection from staff. They are also verbal so can tell me what is going on.

But do you think that the parents at the crap nurseries I saw knew they were crap but sent their dcs anyway? I don't. One friend had her child in a cc where they neglected to feed him his bottles the first days; she found him with his head stuck in a toy; he cried when she dropped him off for the first 18 months (he was just 'putting it on'). And yet she not only kept him there, she recommended the place to me! She needed to work so she convinced herself it was fine and normal. We do all see what we want to see.

I have another very good friend who worked in child care for a while. She is generally sweet and loving and very fond of children ( she didn't go to work in cc because she loved them though; she went because she dropped out of uni and had few options). Anyway, I think she must have been somewhat desensitized by working there because she told me things that shocked me but didn't seem to bother her. She said the director shouted at children when no parents were around but cooed over them when the parents were there. She said a girl escaped from the centre once and no one noticed. She was returned by a neighbor. When the mother came to pick up her children the sister said 'x ran away today!'. The director said, 'don't be silly, x' and pretended it was a story. My friend is having a baby soon and I will be interested to see if her attitude will change.

that is a really shit nursery tryingtoleave and your friend sounds crazy to have not only continued to put her child in the nursery but to recommend it to you. She sounds like a pretty crap mum to be honest, sorry to be harsh.

How come you are friends with these people! I would be really upset if I had friends who behaved like this.

I agree kungfupannda I often wonder what it is about people which makes them want to pass on anecdotal 'evidence' to people who are already making difficult choices. Is it really because they think they are helping or comforting? Or is it more likely some kind of strange crusade to make parents see the error of their ways?

Most people who are any good at being a parent will do the right research and do what is best for their kids and for themselves. Using a nursery doesn't make a parent neglectful.

It's a bit too easy to say only bad parents leave their children in bad nurseries. Plenty of people who are good parents send their children to bad nurseries because they don't realise they are bad.

You probably don't mean me? What my post was trying to say was only bad parents will leave their babies in a nursery they know is bad as described in the previous post.

I lived in a place and in a social group (middle class, educated, professional women) where it was simply expected that all women would return to work within a year of their child being born (in fact, in my university department, it was 3 months and I presumed I would be the same) So, I observed EVERY mother I knew going through the process of settling a baby into childcare, heard their stories about the things that went wrong (babies crying, stopping sleeping at home, not being given their bottles, etc) and also heard them telling me that I should be putting my dcs into their nurseries and, in many cases, seeing friendships diminish because I did not choose to go back to work right away. So yes, I could say these women were crap mothers, but I try not to because that would cover almost every mother I knew. And in most cases, I think these women really didn't think they had a choice. Everyone they knew went back to work, everyone was dealing with essentially the same standard of childcare and it was just expected. And, as I learnt, it was socially isolating and looked down on to do otherwise.

Eventually, after having being at home for a while, I did meet mothers who chose to stay home. But they were very few, they were a different type of woman, and they were often struggling because of their choice.

Good nurseries are very few, and even a good nursery is going to be difficult for a baby or young toddler (as opposed to older preschoolers who do, I agree, often love the experience - my ds does). What I have described is not a few anomalies. I visited almost every nursery in my part of town and, like RitaMorgan, I can't believe that there are that many uncaring parents to fill all those nurseries. I really think people just rationalise the situation.

Usually I don't say anything about this subject, whether IRL or on threads like this, because I do know it is a difficult decision for people. But it was just the amount of bs on this thread about masses of cuddles, and more difficult for mother than baby, and how they look after babies better in cc that got to me.

nickschick, thank you so much for your posts

OP, there are really rubbish nurseries out there and no doubt that some of the anecdotes here will be representative of some nurseries, but not all.

DS spent WAY more time in a bouncer when he was at home with me at that age, nursery would set up multiple baby gyms, take him outside to interact with other children and with plants in the garden and did loads of stuff I neither had the equipment or the patience to do

Where my son is sounds very like nickschick's workplace and this was why we chose it over some others in the area specifically because:

It was a small setting with a limited number of children meaning that all the staff and children are familiar with each other, they will only have 6 or less at any one time in their baby room.

The daysheets are detailed, you get lots of info about what they've been doing (I also get lots of verbal feedback but this especially helps now I am seperated and ExP doesn't aways remember to tell me everything they say when he picks DS up_

The staff ratio in all the rooms (one for each age range, babies, toddlers, preschool) is 1:3 meaning that for every 3 children there is 1 member of staff often more in the baby room - iirc CM can have a 1:5 ratio, and to be fair it is 1:5 in the preschool.

The children all have solid relationships with their keyworker, i.e. when DS was a baby 90% of his care was given my a lovely lady called Lou, who cried on his last day with her, as another poster said I know he got lots of cuddles and affection and would rock him to sleep, because I witnessed it by randomly turning up to check up on him varying pick up times. They are like family to the kids they care for, as demonstrated when my DS last week told me he loved his key worker and another staff member

And low staff turnover - for me, this was key and was the best bit of advice a friend who manages a nursery gave me, is that crap nurseries have a high staff turn over as the staff find it upsetting to see crap childcare. DS's nursery have had 3 leavers in the last 2 years, one was the assistant manager who went to manage another nursery, one who left to care for an elderly relative and another who has gone off to be DJ..

Ironically the massive nursery down the road (which has an outstanding OFSTEAD rating) has a huge turnover of staff, a collegue whose DD is there has said the staff change from month to month, the babies are 20 to a room and she never sees or gets any feedback from her DD's keyworker. For pre-school kids it's amazing, french lessions, yoga, swimming lessons and is a forest school

It's all about choosing the right setting for you and your child - go with your gut and if you really have any concerns about where you have placed him, turn up unexpectedly to see if you're getting told one thing and they're doing another and if you do think DS is unhappy you can always move him!

Also, lots of people critisie WOHMs for not spending enough time with their DCs to bond properly etc... But you don't hear people constantly clamouring that WOHDs should give up work in order to have a full and fulfilling relationship with their DCs - it's about quality time rather than quantity of time.

Why do we as women feel the need to attack each others choices so much? Maybe the OP's choice isn't much of a choice at all, but we should be supporting her not spreading horror stories and attempting to induce guilt by saying her child will suffer because she's choosing to provide financial stability over being a SAHM

Bit more solidarity, bit less judgeypants oneupmanship eh?

I agree MrsMoo - and yes staff stability is very important. Dd's nursery have had three leave this year - 1 promoted to manage another nursery in the group, 1 to work in a Montessori nursery as a career development and 1 on maternity leave. I think that's pretty good tbh.

Agreed. DD's nursery has only had maternity leave (both of whom came back!) over the year she's been there. it's also small which means the rooms interact quite a bit which means moving up a room and leaving a key worker is not an issue as they still see them all the time.

You can only go with your gut instinct at the end of the day.

But again, by referring to all the 'bs' on this thread, you are generalising based on your own personal experience. If I was to talk about 'plenty of cuddles' I certainly wouldn't be spouting BS - I would be giving a true account of my own experience. I certainly don't seek to suggest that because we have a good nursery, everyone with a negative experience to relate must be wrong or deluded. But there does seem to be a tendency for people who don't like the idea of nursery to dismiss any positives given by people with good experiences.

My DD went to nursery 3 days a week at a year. She had a lovely time and was very well cared for. She still loves it now shes 3.5. I am now at home after having my DS but he is starting nursery a couple of mornings a week and seems to love it too. They actually get a lot out of it - I don't think it is somehow second best for kids.

"Why do we as women feel the need to attack each others choices so much?"

I think people must feel looked down upon and that experience of being looked down upon by their peers really stings so maybe they feel better if they then turn right round and have a go at someone else? Maybe making other people feel shitty takes away some of that hurt a person feels about their own experience.

Well said Kungfu

tryingtoleave: My anecdote was that, an anecdotal account of my experience which contained a good nursery IMO (the one I chose) and a bad one - there was also a terrible nursery we saw where the manager stank of booze but we didn't go further than the front door there.

No one is saying that good nurseries, and good CM's for that matter aren't hard to find, they are - I looked at about 7 nurseries and really struggled to find one that fitted my needs and my parenting style.

But if the OP has chosen to go back to work (for whatever reason) and needs to find childcare, surely the best thing to say is try and find a good nursery/CM you are happy with, not make a blanket statement that all childcare providers are shit, which serves no purpose that to make the poor woman feel worse than she already does.

RE:Babies finding it harder than parents and visa versa, it depends on the age of the child. In my case my son was 12 weeks old, he had very little awareness of who was caring for him and only cared that he was warm, dry, cared for and entertained.
I have to agree that older babies/toddlers do take a while to adjust, as they do to any change in routine, but they adjust far more easlily that adults do because they don't have the huge psychological side to the change iyswim