Starting nursery and night sleep

[snugglejunkie]

So DS (very nearly 11mo) starts 2 full days at nursery next week and I'm getting really twitchy about how it'll affect his night sleep and wondered if some people could come and share their experiences - positive & negative - so I can see if there is a 'trend'!

I'm pretty twitchy about his night sleep as it was horrific from about 4.5 months to 7.5months - and he has only recently (past 3 weeks) started genuinely sleeping through.

His am nap is now more of a catnap, if he has it at all, but does have a big lunchtime nap of 1.5-2hrs, though as this has to be in his cot in his blackout-blinded room after a settling cuddle in my arms, I have no idea how nursery will be able to get him to go down.

So please - tell me your stories of how night sleep was affected (or not) by nursery and what you did (if anything)

Thanks!

BTW - he only has 3 settling in sessions of 1hr each. First one was today. Apparently he was fine for the first 45min - then someone went out the room and he must've realised I wasn't there & started crying.
When I came back he was almost asleep on one of the workers have had a good 5-10min cry.

I didn't want your message to go unanswered,

I work in a nursery and although i don't work in the baby room anymore i have in the past. Often sleeping patterns do change, when the enter the new environment, in a baby room there are lots of things going on and babies tend to not want to 'miss out' on anything, in older rooms children all go down to sleep at the same time so it easier to get the children off when they see there peers doing the same. Also being a new environment with new smells and new sights is bound to keep him more alert.

Personally our baby sleep room is darker than the main room, but not black out blind dark, so if your nursery is the same it is something he'll have to get use to. There should be cots in his nursery and he will get use to it, we (i speak for most nursery nurses) have had lots of experience in this.

Hth

My DD has been a terrible sleeper for all sorts of reasons, including medical problems, and she has been in nursery 3 days / wk since she was 7 months. I have ALWAYS found that she sleeps better the night after she has been nursery, even if her sleep patterns during the day there have been different from home (eg at home she would do one lunchtime sleep, at nursery one am sleep and one lunchtime, but shorter, sleep). I think this is simply because all the interaction with the other kids / stimulation simply exhausts her in a way that I can't do at home!
I understand your concerns - because DD was a nightmare in the night I too was really stressed about her starting nursery and worried about her routine there etc - but try not to worry too much about recreating exactly the same environment as at home.... the nursery staff will have loads of experience in dealing with this. Hope your DS enjoys his first week!

Thanks for responses.

I guess I am just stressing a bit too much about it. They can be more adaptable than we give them credit for, and I'm sure the nursery staff have seen it all before. It's just it's quite a big nursery and though they are all in different rooms, he'll still be in with quite a large group as he's going on the busiest days so I'm just concerned he's going to be so wired he'll have really unsettled nights.

Thing is, it's my second choice nursery as the smaller community nursery I wanted was full. That's not to say that the one he's going to doesn't seem nice - all the children/babies where playing with the staff and the older ones ran up to the manager to say hello when I was being shown round & it had a good atmosphere etc. It's just the other one felt calmer and more homely. Ah, I don't know...

Anyway - think he's trying to jinx the whole idea as he's decided to come down with some weird lurgy so I'm pretty sure he's not going to be well enough for his final trial hour tomorrow and it's looking dodgy for Tuesday. Good job DH is (just about) able to work from home on Tues as is would be pretty rubbish to have to call in on my very first day!

We have a nanny but our experience might be relevant - when my dh went back to work after having been at home with our son for the last year, ds started waking up at 6 a.m. every morning, I assume to get some time with his dad who leaves for work at 7.30! Before this, when dh was at home, he was sleeping until 7.30 or even 8 some days. He has also completely stopped sleeping during the day at the weekends and on the days I am at home with him, but still sleeps for a good 1.5 hours on the days with the nanny and then stays up later in the evenings with us. It seems that he has adjusted his sleeping schedule to maximise time with us - can't work out how he manages it, particularly the 6 a.m wakings. So it might not just be the nights, you might find your morning and evening routines changing too.