Nursery - Paying for 5 days and using 4?

[Lixon]

I’m waiting for final confirmation still but it looks like I can go back to work 5 days a week, however, unfortunately my nursery does not offer a 4 day week - only 2, 3 or 5.

We don’t have local family so it seems our options are:

1. Pay for nursery for 5 days a week - it’s on our way to work, gives me flexibility to move days at work around/travel for work if and childcare on my day off if needed.

1. Pay for 3 and use a nanny/childminder on the fourth day.

We haven’t found any childminders that are close enough but a local nanny share could do one day a week, which would add around 15 minutes onto our commute each way. The increased cost of paying for nursery for 5 days is about £180 per month.

Our initial thoughts are that although the cost is really bloody annoying, paying for nursery is the easiest thing to do. I worry that two sets of childcare with one being for only 1 day a week is quite a lot for a 1 year old to deal with and the extra admin/commute time etc would annoy us.

Any thoughts/things I’m missing?

Thank you!

I would definitely go with the arrangement that make your, and your child's, life easier.

In this case it seems nursery for 5 days a week.

I think it's better to stick to one nursery/childminder. It's difficult for kids to settle at nursery and multiple places might be stressful for both of you. Is there an option of going for another nursery that offers 4 days?

When my son went to nursery this was their policy, it was because four days and five days were, for some reason, the same cost.

It was very handy if I needed to swap my days or needed childcare for any reason on my day off.

If it works financially I'd go for it.

Going against the grain here. I'd use a nanny share and pay for 3 days at nursery. I think it'll be nice for a change, nanny can do different things than nursery. You might also find nanny could be more flexible as baby gets older - an extra day when you need it maybe, after school care or babysitting, or even if she can't, tapping into the nanny's network might be useful.

I guess they don't allow 4 as they can't 'use' the extra empty day, as people don't tend to want only 1 day a week as that isn't frequent enough to settle properly.
If you can afford it I'd pay for 5 as that gives you consistency and flexibility.

Why not use a cm for four days?

When DS went to nursery the way that they costed it meant that there was a 20% discount for going full-time, so 4 individual days cost the same as 5 days. It was quite handy really as I could put him in on my non-working day if I needed to (he loved nursery so he was generally a bit miffed that he was stuck with me on Wednesdays).

It would be easier to just take up a full-time nursery place, once you start juggling things then to get complicated.

Put your child in 5 days per week and use the time for downtime and relaxation :)