To think nurseries are not safe for young babies

[Luxell934]

I've read about two very young babies dying in nurseries recently. One who choked after being given inappropriate food and one who was left to smother to death.

As a new mother it's absolutely terrifying to think about, I have also worked myself in nurseries for a number of years. It was a very well respected chain of nurseries and we were always understaffed and over ratio, I remember caring for up to 9 babies with just two staff and were told team leaders were "in the office, if needed" which basically meant get on with it and don't bother us. I also remember feeding 4/5 babies at a time. Looking back I was so young that I didn't speak up.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13438725/Nursery-nurse-Kate-Roughley-manslaughter-convicted.html

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqennjjllpqo

I am, it’s just that I have different views to you. I am entitled to that.
Nursery workers are strangers.
A few settling in sessions doesn’t change that for the baby (it might feel like it changes things for you but essentially they are still a stranger- you can’t possibly know someone even remotely well after a couple of sessions!)
Then nursery workers have a very high turnover. New faces are coming and going all the time. So yes. Strangers.

Pretty sure my kids need their dad too...

Yes of course but IMO it’s mum they need first and foremost in the early weeks and months.

Thanks for that.

My choice was:

1. Continue in career job and be able to pay the mortgage and bills, also being the main earner in the house by the time I had kids
2. Don't carry on working, don't pay the bills and lose the house.

Fortunately I was able to work slightly fewer hours and only use professional childcare 3 days a week, one day a week with granny, and still pay the bills. And I was also able to do jobs working from home at some stages so there were fewer hours of childcare to pay for.

And if young professional couples, married and owning a house shouldn't have children, then who should?

Apart from in sub Saharan Africa and parts of Asia, the birth rate is very low.

I wanted to continue working also because I love my job and don’t want to spend all my day with a baby/toddler. Feel no guilt for that at all I’m afraid.

How about you wait until you have enough money between you to look after your baby yourself for the first year at least? There are choices! For those that can’t then more shouod be provided to help new parents stay with their child for the first year, not push back into work.

Settling in sessions were much easier - I waited until they were settled and snuck out. My youngest smiled at drop off from day - 1 I honestly think he had watched his brother go in and out so much that he was happy to join him. It was really distressing handing them over during Covid with no settling in sessions. My son went to a setting I never set foot inside for a short while. Hindsight is wonderful but I wish I just had an extra year off when it all kicked off!

Let me take a guess. Well earning husband who can cover all the bills and you live off his wage? You need to get in the real world.

That sounds difficult. Sorry you had to go through that.

All our worlds are different. We all makes choices and sacrifices to do what we think it’s best I’m sure. My world is no less real to yours or anyone else’s.

@PoppingTomorrow i think it's hard to compare nursery vs childminder and you get good and bad in both category.

I think a good childminder would be worth her weight in gold, but sadly they are few and far between, and you are right that they are often just left to tag along after the older ones.

My younger child had a childminder for a while and it was ok, but nursery has suited us much better.

People talk about a childminder being "in the home environment" but they are missing the point. It's not a home environment. It's just a house. A home environment means being at home with family who love you. Unless you find a fabulous childminder, it's really just being in a house with a childminder and a collection of other kids.

I think it'll come down to what you have locally. Spend some time in the park and you'll see the local childminders and can observe their routines and relationships with the children. Visit nurseries and childminders and form your own opinions.

Good luck.

I actually have though part time only subbing in for a few weeks. We had 8 babies at the time and 3 staff and there was usually one or 2 babies asleep at any time during the morning so 5 or 6 awake. If ratios are adhered to in a small room it's not stressful I don't think. It was (to me) nothing as bad as being SAHM to baby twins trying to cook clean and do school runs and homework with an older child.

I am 100% sure our nursery do a better job of looking after my DD (3yo) than I do! They are experts with 20+ years of experience, multiple qualifications, first aid trained etc. Im a first time mum making it up as I go along !

Im due twins next week and won't be able to offer them as many days in nursery as we've done for my DD as it's just too expensive; I really feel like they're not getting the same opportunities as her!

Some people would be waiting forever
Some people don’t have the kind of careers that they can just leave for 1-2 years if they want to continue to progress and financially provide for the families

etc etc

I’m a single parent too and I understand how hard it can be when life doesn’t turn out as planned. I gave up my job when my youngest was very young (ie I didn’t go back after Maternity Leave). I used all my savings and then claimed some benefits. I gave up my house (owned with a mortgage) and went into rental. Again, that’s harder now, but it’s that (property and property prices) that needs sorting out, along with allowances for the parent(s) to stay at home initially not pushing babies and young children away from their primary caregivers.

I'm actually uncomfortable with this whole narrative; nurseries are worse for babies development than staying with their mum.
Look at France, 60% of women work, and the vast majority of babies go to nursery full time at 3.5 months. That's when French women go back to work.
Do you think French kids are worse off than UK kids for this reason?
Doesn't make sense to me.

If you want to keep your baby with you fine, I chose to keep my DD1 for 1 year with me before putting her in nursery, but I don't play into this narrative and I might not do the same for subsequent children.

So only those who can afford for at least one parent to stop work for 5 years should procreate? Is that the solution?

Of course you’re entitled to your own opinion. But you’ve come onto a thread derived from a baby dying at nursery and called parents who put their babies into nursery for any number of reasons “fucking entitled and selfish”, it’s tone deaf and quite insulting.

I will add that there is a culture of parenting angst and guilt in the UK around childcare (and breastfeeding) that I simply do not see when I speak to my French friends living in France.

I must be some kind of weirdo because I’ve been reading comments making the case against childminders because their mindees get taken out “to shops, the post office, out and about all over the place..” and that was one of the reasons I preferred our CM to nursery😂

Essentially she was doing stuff with them that I would have been doing if I’d been a SAHM. I went back to work when DC were a year old and didn’t have any interest in ‘socialising’ them in a nursery room at that age.

Alongside the occasional errands she also took them to play activities every morning and then afternoons were for lunch and home based play. We were lucky in that she was a well known CM in the area (she worked with the council as a coordinator for Ofsted registered childminders) and she often had other childminders and their mindees to play with my DC so it all worked out well.

Anyway it’s sad to see yet another one of these threads descend into women tearing each other down over childcare choices. If you are happy with your own decision then whatever other parents choose really shouldn’t concern you. Nursery did not appeal to me and I’m really glad we found an amazing childminder. Most of my friends did not want to leave their DC with a childminder and went for a nursery. Both decisions are fine!

After seeing some childminders turn up to baby groups with their charges, and me having to jump in numerous times to prevent nasty falls, etc. while they have a cup of tea, a catch-up, and check their phones, I am firmly team nursery.

(Have to add, this is just my experience of a select group I kept on encountering in the local baby and toddler classes. Am sure there must be some lovely and conscientious childminders out there.)

@Eastie77Returns I also think that is an advantage of childminders. Babies gain so much from being out and about. I know someone who worked for a nursery with tons of outdoor space but she said they rarely took the babies out of one baby room which just sounded so sad! (I know not all nurseries are the same.)

Where is the money going to come from? You are advocating a huge reduction in the workforce. Who is going to be paying the taxes? High earners? They are the only ones who can afford to have a sahp. Will they be able to afford it if they are paying for everyone else to have a sahp too? Taxing businesses? Their productivity will go through the floor because they won't have enough staff. Women don't just do pin money jobs anymore. They can actually have careers. My NCT group had a mixture of full time, part time ( me) and sahp's. Now they are all teenagers, you couldn't pick out who had a sahp or not.

So basically if you want to have a baby you should try and bag a rich man, like some 18th century debutante? That's not the ' real world'. You didn't make a moral choice to not have children until you could afford it. You married rich.

Just want to say for all the women who love their kids dearly AND use a nursery, remember this is an internet thread that’s been posted on a week day, and is being mostly contributed to during working hours, so of course it’s going to be massively skewed in favour of SAHMs.