AIBU for being mad at nursery re. Carseat storage?

[Claudine4]

Hi all.
LG #2 (10 months) has just started nursery today! My husband and I are both shift workers and apart from rare days whoever drops off doesn't pick up due to the shifts.
My husband dropped her off this morning and left the carseat there. No biggie right?
I picked her up and they told me that we couldn't leave the carseat there because they didn't have a dedicated storage room.
Now, I didn't ask when registering her if we could leave the carseat, but I've never known a nursery to not allow you to leave a pram/carseat! I toured a lot and all the other nurseries in the area have storage for prams/carseats - I guess I just forgot to ask 🤦‍♀️ We can't afford to buy another seat and have one in each car. AIBU being mad at them?
I'll probably have a word tomorrow and say we'll have to move her somewhere else if we can't sort out something out until she grows out of the size 0 carseat (we have two of the size 1/2/3 seats already) so it won't be a problem in 3 months but I don't want to come across as a drama queen...
Thanks for any input/advice!

Former nursery worker here. This is something you should have discussed with the nursery beforehand. There is usually no space for storage. I had my own child in my nursery and used to leave the buggy outside in whatever weather.

Both the nurseries we used would if they could store fold up buggies and car seats for the limited number of parents that needed it - both in towns/cities in the NE so not just a London thing.

I specifically chose a nursery that had a dedicated indoor storage room for prams/scooters/car seats. It wasn’t the norm when I looked around a few places so that was a big selling point for me. It does amaze me that so many have no storage whatsoever.

I'd say your situation of a different parent doing pick up rather than drop off is totally normal, it's hard to do your full hours at work otherwise. You will need to find a way to store the car seat at home or get another one though

Oh, and it was an extremely well used facility, as it was a city centre nursery (NE) where a lot of parents used public transport to travel in. So a heated indoor room you could leave the buggy in for the day while you went to work was perfect.

If you can afford a baby and nursery costs then chances are you can buy a second car seat. But having said that every nursery around here has plenty of space for pushchairs.

We are in London and most nurseries we visited had a buggy park in a little bike shed thing outside or a small room for umbrella folds only inside. But to be honest, i would not have wanted to leave a car seat in there out of my sight anyway - what if it got dropped and noone told you? I'd be worried about its safety being compromised.

I voted YABU because you should have checked before choosing that nursery so its not fair to be mad at the staff.

How far is your DC off moving to a group 1 seat if you already have two of those? Can you manage until then? If not i think it is a case of just sucking up the cost of a second infant carrier. If you go for a belted one, it will be at least cheaper than isofix.

Our nursery didn't have space for buggies or prams. We only had two (expensive) car seats, so used to swap cars during the day! We both parked at the station and travelled onwards separately to separate workplaces, so we each carried both sets and you took the car with the seats if you were taking kids, and the car without if not! Meant we each arrived and left the station car park in opposite cars each day!

Just buy another car seat. That would be cheaper and easier than the fuel and time used in going home after drop off each day, surely?

I've worked in several nurseries, and used others for my own dc. I've never heard of buggy or car seat storage. It must be different in different parts of the country.

Where I work now we have 75 children a day.
They are not all babies, obviously, but all children under 5 should be in car sears. We could store possibly 1 or 2. But don't, because it wouldn't be possible to offer that service to all 75 children.

These places must have whole huge rooms dedicated to storage.

You are being ridiculous. Imagine if every single parent wanted to leave their car seat? You need to buy a second one.

People are definitely being harsh. Just because it was their experience to not be able to store them at nursery, doesn't mean it's not the case for others.

you just need to buy another one

They don't need to be huge as in practice only a few parents need to leave stuff.

We had two or three car seats each day in storage. It wasn't a problem, they were just bulky and annoying!

YABU here

We have same scenario, in that I drop off and DH does pick up. This isn't unusual at all. The way we all cope is to have car seats in both cars. Joie carseats are quite cheap and good quality, or there are even cheaper brands out there too.

Aside from the fact it would require nursery to house upwards of 70 car seats for all kids in all rooms (which is ridiculous), I don't think i could be arsed with faffing about each morning and night moving a car seat in and out of the car. It's hard enough hurding my toddler and all his bags into nursery, without hefting a car seat along with us!

My nursery have a shed for prams and scooters etc. so that’s not strange. You have to fold them down and it’s very clear you leave them at your own risk (although had no issues over 5 years with 2 kids). I’m not sure car seats would fit too, I think you need to suck it up and get another one.

I e worked in 3 different nurseries and only 1 of them would store a car seat due to storage space, the other two have no space for them.

the nursery I work in just now is huge but the builders didn’t think of storage space or staff space very well. The play area is huge but other spaces aren’t.

No they wouldn't. At my DCs' old nursery if the shelter was full, you were out of luck. It's a workplace nursery so people could take foldable buggies and park them in/near their offices I suppose but you learned to get there early to grab a space. They also had a bike shed as quite a few people cycled to work/nursery but that was more spacious than other nearby sheds so the days I cycled I was grateful to be able to use their shed!

I'm not sure why people think that 70 children in a nursery = 70 car seats or buggies.
Say there were 90 children at my DCs' old nursery. About 1/3 came on the bus and of those 30 probably half were old enough to walk from the bus stop. So that's 15 non-walkers; if 10 of those are umbrella strollers they'd need to store 5 double/pram type buggies IF they all came in buggies. I think probably of the 15 maybe 5 used slings, 7 used umbrella buggies and that leaves 3 larger buggies/prams.
Then probably 45 came by car of which 40 would be dropped off and picked up in the same car and 4 had car seats in both cars meaning only 1 had a car seat swap (I think we had to do this once in our time at the nursery - due to a car being serviced).
The remaining 15 came by bike and if 15 bikes wouldn't fit in the shed, the 8 that use bike seats (rather than trailers) could put the bikes elsewhere.

So on any given day the pram shed needed to fit 7 umbrella buggies, 3 larger buggies, and one car seat. Thinking back to the look of the pram shed, that seems about right, and the same for the bike shed.

75 children is a massive nursery - the ones DS went to had between 20-30 children. Some of the older ones scooted or rode their bikes, some younger ones went in slings. So generally 5-10 pushchairs, which had to be folded. No room, tough luck.

Out of interest does your nursery have a space for children’s bikes/scooters? Just wondering, because that is also something universal round here. But maybe not somewhere where everyone drives.

If its a service the nursery offer, they need to have capacity to offer it to everyone.

Imagine relying on it months, then one day you arrive abd there is no space for you, because someone else arrived 2 minutes before you.

@Stopthatknocking in theory you could say that however in practice that is not the case because some nursery's can and do offer this without having or needing the capability to store stuff for everyone.
Where I think the OP went wrong is to assume that this would be ok without asking in advance - communication or lack of is the key issue with most of this kind of frustration/upset.

75 isn't a massive nursery round here, it's about mid sized.

Most come by car as parents are driving on to work.

We don't have space for scooters etc either. We are a 10-15 minute walk from the closest bus stop, so no one does that with their children, and not v practical for getting to work either.
I guess it's just the demographics and geography of the area.

And yet my DCs' nursery offered this to everyone who got there on time.