To think childcare should accommodate varying shifts?

[Somanyproblems]

I'm really struggling. Expecting first baby next year and am starting to look at childcare options.

(A nanny is not even a remote possibility, neither is an au pair.)

I have to start work quite early - at 8. The good thing is that I finish fairly early as well. However, this massively limits my childcare options. There is only one nursery that I've found we could use that opens before 8, and it really doesn't look very nice at all

Is this what people have to do - leave their baby somewhere they aren't happy with?

I'd go hve another look at the nursery you're not sure about, with fresh eyes, you might think you could make it work for you. Then think very carefully about how you'll cope with school, most only have before and after school clubs from 8am, it'll have to be childminder or au pair/nanny. (that they do longer hours was one of the reasons a friend of mine went private, she was used to paying a grand a month in childcare anyway for nursery, she couldn't make the state schools in the area work with limited wrap around care, it was prep or giving up her job.)

Sorry, supermum, I'm past 24 weeks so terminating my pregnancy isn't really an option.

I suppose I could look into adoption

My commute is entirely motorway based; coming off the motorway would add a great deal to the commute. I think it's best for the childcare to be at the beginning of the commute or the end.

OP apologies if I have missed it, but why do you HAVE to start at 8am? Are you aware of the flexible working legislation? Your employer will have to come up with a very good reason why you cannot start later and finish later, or slightly change your hours so you can have childcare that suits.

Yes, thank you, I am, but would only be able to exercise flexible working in the form of full of half days. Going down to four days is a possibility but not five days starting later - my work doesn't 'work' like that [smile

Two questions OP

1. do you work far from home and have you looked at nurseries close to work? This can be very handy (IME) as it means you are there sooner in the evenings and can drop off as close to your work start time as possible. Also handy if baby is sick and needs to go home.

2. have you advertised on any of the childcare forums/websites local to your area? Gumtree, FB local/mum/selling pages? In your shoes i would be bombarding all of these with your requirements and get the word spread that you are in the market for childcare. People will know of something and will point you in the right direction.

Surly, yes, the only nursery I have found with a 7:30 start is one near my workplace - thank you. I will probably end up going with that, and looking for a new job!

OP, you could use your ML to train as a cm, then give up your job and look after your own child, and others, with early/late/flexible times.

She would still have to go back to work for 12 weeks (or whatever is in her contract) or else pay back any additional maternity pay.

hibbleddible

I hate to break it to you, but the contract he wants to impose (ultimately on all NHS staff) includes normal social hours being 7am to 10pm Monday to Saturday, not Friday.

Iliked

Any chance you could ring payroll? They appear to have a rather different idea to yours on the payscale for fulltime consultants in a high level of out of hours work speciality....

The baby isn't born but you are judging nurseries already on how bright and garish they are? How do you know what will suit your baby? And how you'd like to return to work for that matter. Take a breather, revisit childcare options when baby is 4 months+ after the dust has settled.

It's tough OP. Luckily for me my life is much easier than yours for many reasons. I've had worked 4 days a week for the last 8 months with a 50:50 split of grandparents and nursery. I was naive so was surprised that my baby has had a lot of time off nursery for sickness. I'd guess at 2 days hand foot and mouth, 6 days d&v, and maybe 2 half days generally unwell, needs to go home early in that time. We've also had 3 days of mummy too ill to work and probably 6 days of daddy too ill to work in that time (all through catching baby germs). I think he would have been exposed to a lot less at a childminder so it would have been a safer bet. Sadly nothing is truly water tight. There might have to be occasions when you can't go to work and they'll just have to suck it up. I have a job where I can't really be replaced at short notice and it causes huge inconvenience to lots of people but sometimes it can't be helped.

Mumsnet is a strange place at times: had I left childcare until the baby was born I suspect I would be getting incredulously-worded posts along the lines of 'your baby is X months old and you haven't thought about childcare?'

It's true that I don't know what will suit my baby but I do have a preference and that preference is for a calm, nurturing and steady environment where my baby can rest, explore and play as and when he or she wants to - not crammed in with dozens of other children in a noisy and institutional environment. This isn't a reflection on others who may make different choices.

It's true that some illness and time off is inevitable and as such I obviously want to minimise the times when it could potentially be helped.

welcome to motherhood, whatever you do, someone will come along and tell you you are wrong. (I'm surprised there's not be a cackle of "why bother having a baby just to leave them in a 'day ophanage'?" with comments about feeling sad for your unborn baby type bollocks).

If you really aren't happy with the nursery near your work, can you make a nanny wage work? Is your DP/H available to do either end of drop off/pick up? (assuming then you'd be looking at childcare near your home).

First of all many of us on here have agreed you need to sort childcare now. I am 20 weeks along and #3 has been signed up for daycare from my 8 weeks scan. Others may laugh but I need childcare arrangements in place to be able to return to work so signing them up early is fine.

The questions I didn't ask when I was pregnant with #1 were the questions I should have been asking:

1 - What is your policy on monitoring the cleaning of each classroom? Who performs the cleaning each day and how often do you do a deep clean? Can you please show me a checklist showing the cleaning was completed and signed off as such.

2 - What is your policy regarding sick DC? Is there a place where sick DC are kept until picked up that is separate from the healthy children? What are your required wait times before returning? Are any allowances made to these wait times?

3 - How do you communicate a contagious sickness in the classroom to the other parents?

4 - Are you able and willing to administer medicine? Any times when you can't do this?

5 - What happens if I get stuck in traffic and can't be back for closing time?

6 - Does your holiday schedule change? If so, how much notice can I expect to receive?

7 - How are staff absences managed?

8 - What is your employee turnover?

9 - How often do you check toys for their condition?

With regards to the kids getting sick I would get them a good multivitamin and put your baby in the bath every night when they get home. My kids still have a bath every night and all clothes are put in the wash.

OP
How far away is the next moveup a grade in your career? Could you use the potentially not so great nursery until then and re evaluate your options when you reach that point?

Also, I can understand why you're not necessarily a fan of the 7:30 nursery, but some kids like a lot of structure and some don't and you probably won't have any idea what your DC gets on with until they are there?

Apologies if that's been said before!

I don't think that they "should" be open for longer hours as they are private businesses and they have the right to do what is most economically viable for them. If they were open for longer hours then they would either make less profit (staff costs etc would be higher) or they would have to charge people more for each day which would make them less competitive.
Although a lot of people do start work earlier than 8 a.m. I think that many people manage by juggling things around. e.g. I used to start work at 7.30 most days so DH would drop the children off and I would pick them up. IF he had an early meeting, I used to arrange to start later etc. Obviously you can't do that if you are a single parent though.

Regarding the nursery you don't like, I wouldn't go on your first impressions too much. You may not like bright, loud or garish but your child may have very different tastes to you. My dd's first nursery was like that. I didn't like it at all but decided to send her there as other parents spoke highly of it. I'm so glad I did as she loved it!

Maybe a change of job?

I had to do this due to having a child.

I worked ridiculous hours before my DS came along.

I changed job to suit DS.

Well, I am endlessly repeating myself now, but 8-4 isn't ridiculous hours.

Of course it's not

About as normal as you can get.

Cannot believe all the 'just get a different job' type posts on here.

You're Op was simple enough to understand.

Blimey

It is good advice to use a worker from the nursery to drop off or consider a childminder. Without support from relatives you will find that you need to develop a small network of known and trusted babysitters and child carers to help out. So there might be an inset day at school that you can't cover but their old childminder will help you out. Or a day in the holidays not covered by clubs but the student who babysits occasionally is free etc. If you reply on nurseries and clubs alone it is hard to make it work as they are often not very flexible.

Well, I am endlessly repeating myself now, but 8-4 isn't ridiculous hours.

They aren't ridiculous hours but it isn't that common for both parents to have to start that early. Usually at least one them is able to start a bit later. Therefore, in many areas nurseries don't have to be open for longer hours with the resultant increase in staff costs etc.

Ten years ago, when I returned to work after having DS1, the earliest nursery start I could find in my city was 7.30am (and that was charged at quite a bot extra, normal nursery starting time was 9.15 most places!). None were open after 6pm (and again the 4.15-6pm slot was a lot extra £). Childminders that I looked into generally started at 8am - 6pm. A couple I spoke to would take kids from 7am or until 6.30pm but they had no places free, probably because of this.

I worked 6.30am - 3.30pm some days and worked 1.30pm - 10pm some days. I also worked 3 out of 4 Saturdays, 12pm - 8pm. At the time I was very fortunate to have a DP who was self employed from home, so he was able to drop off/collect from nursery/care for DS when I was at work. If he'd been out of the house at work all day, I have no idea what we would have done. One of us would have to move jobs, I suppose. I've noticed that many friends, colleagues and neighbours seem to rely very much on the grandparents or other family to provide childcare, and/or they return to work part time. Neither of these options was even remotely possible for us.

When I had DS2 3 years ago, I researched the local options available. And nothing has changed at all. In fact there are now fewer nurseries as a few have closed, and fewer childminders around or that have free places. I remember the jobcentre saying to me that if I had to attend a jobseeking course, I could just get a list of nurseries and childminders from the council, so I could sort out temp childcare very easily. With a weeks' notice. Ha! As if. It was tricky enough finding available childcare with a few months notice, let alone childcare that was actually suitable and with a provider that I liked!

We need a massive increase in childcare provider places, that actually work with the hours that modern jobs expect their employees to work these days. The lack of this is a big part of why men outearn women by so much, and why women do not progress into the upper echelons of companies. Such a waste.

8-4 aren't rediculous hours, but they are going to be very hard for you to do long term with a child and no DP to share pick up and drop offs to childcare. Have you spoken to HR about moving to 9-5? If you could do that, the problem would pretty much go away (and even if you find a solution for now, it's only going to last 4 years hten when you will have to find childcare for school).

It is always worth asking if you can shift your hours, and in my experience, it's easier to find childminders/childcare if you need later than the norm inthe area (say needing 6:30pm pick up rather than 6pm) rather than earlier than the norm for the area.

Good luck! worth having all these conversations now.

Unfortunately, having one child on site at 7 or 7.30 requires two members of staff. The nursery would be making a loss unless they charged £15 per hour for the extra hour & this is about to get even more expensive.

I was lucky enough to be able to use a nursery linked to my local hospital which was geared up for shift working & early/late starts. Are you sure there is nothing similar closer to work?

As with most things, you just find something that works even if it's not ideal.

I don't see 8 o clock as 'unusual' and, while 2 parent families are the norm, one parent families are hardly such a rare thing as to be totally unheard of.

Starting later is not an option (I think I've mentioned that) and, while What I Will Do When My Foetus Starts School is going to be important in three years, right now it isn't paramount.

Thank you.

Well, I am endlessly repeating myself now, but 8-4 isn't ridiculous hours.

Agreed, but it just might not work for you for the next 12 or so years.