What age did your child start nursery ?

[CJ98]

My daughter is currently 17 months old and hasn’t yet started nursery. Over the last few months my MIL has been asking when are we going to our daughter into a nursery and suddenly it got me worried that my daughter should already been there.
Since I returned to work the childcare routine that we have has been working fantastically and I’m worried that putting her in a nursery would mean some of the grandparents would lose out on time with her, especially my MIL who only has my daughter once a week. She really looks forward too it & im worried that putting her into a nursery would mean they’d lose out on their time together. Both myself and my partner have our daughter separately throughout the week & then one of the weekend days we have her together but I’m worried about being late to putting her into a nursery.
do I do it when I’m ready ? Is there an age when she has to be in a nursery.
she’s my first child and I’ve never been told about putting her into a nursery 😬

If your DC is getting good quality care (including learning experiences) from family she doesn't need to go to nursery at all.

However for socialisation the year before reception it could be good to be in preschool.

I do agree that MIL might be asking due to it being too much for her.

If care is just plonking her in front of a screen, then nursery may well be better than family.

11 months old when I went back to work.

29 months - 2 months before little bro arrived, wanted him settled in before that happened

16 months - 1 day a week at first just so I could have some peace :)

20 months - was retraining to return to work at this point

If you don't need childcare they don't need to go to nursery. I don't understand why people do this. My 4 just went to pre school mornings 5 days a week the year before they went to school to get them used to the routine of going

I agree. If she’s asking “when” OP’s DD is going to nursery then I think it’s fairly clear she’s assuming she’ll be going at some point.
My youngest goes to nursery 3 days a week and to my PILs for 2 days - if they asked “when will DD be going to nursery for more days” I’d absolutely assume they wanted to stop/reduce childcare. Obviously we’d check with them before signing her up. But I wouldn’t be going down the route of “well I don’t want her to go more and I wouldn’t want PILs to miss out” which seems to be OP’s approach.