Is this level of disorganisation and understaffing normal at nurseries?

[BottlesAndHandcream]

I have an eight month old that started nursery nine weeks ago. Since then, we have been noticing a few things that make us uncomfortable. I was wondering if this is normal in all nurseries or if we should find another one.

Basically, most of the problems seem to be centred around them being a bit understaffed.

• Our baby hasn’t been assigned a key person, even though they told us this would happen.
• The settling in process was very weird, with the baby room manager taking care of two other babies while we briefed her. I think she barely registered what we said.
• Communication is weird. Sometimes they update the app, sometimes there are no updates at all and they can’t event tell us when he slept or had her milk.
• Always different members of staff receiving him and handing him over. The nursery has about six members of staff looking over the children, and they rotate days. They don’t always seem to pass our messages between each other.
• They don’t always manage to get LO to sleep, because there’s always different people trying to get her to sleep. Some are good at it, others can’t be bothered.
• They keep swapping our bottles with other babies’ bottles, and often misplace them, even though they’re labelled. The other day, we were giving LO a bottle and the teat collapsed. They had given us a lower flow teat from a different baby.
• They don’t follow certain instructions. For example, we told them our baby is learning to drink from an open cup and provided the cup. DH went there today and found them giving him water from a sippy cup. They never seem to take out cup out of the backpack, even though we mentioned it a few times.
• Sometimes he comes home with food all over her face.
• I ask them to top up my breast milk with formula if he finishes the bottle, but I’m almost sure that they’re not doing it.

Now, our LO doesn’t tend to cry when we leave him with them, which is a positive aspect. They often send a daily update at the end of the day, with photos and a summary of what the babies did. He’s usually content when we pick her up, but very tired and hungry.

I have other nursery in mind, but am afraid to put my baby through a settling in process again only to find out that it’s the same.

Is it normal for nurseries to be like this?

Oh yes, our baby never went back after I wrote the post! We found an excellent childminder.

In retrospect, I was just trying to validate my own decision. 😅

That’s great that you found a childminder. For me, they were so much better than nurseries.

They seem to work better for our family too. It’s a more relaxed setting, much more personal and they really do care about our child. He loves them and is having so much fun, eating and sleeping well, which is all we wanted. 😊

The parents we met at the nursery really seemed to love it and it has great reviews online, so it’s different for everyone. I was left wondering if other parents had similar experiences, but I’ll never know.

If you want more personal care such as consistent person id try a childminder. Thevkey worker system is supposed to allow this but is impractical in an underfunded setting....as most rely on government funded places.
The mixing up bottles is very dangerous for allergies and giving babies the wrong breast milk.

Doesnt sound great - but some of it is what I experienced for DS1 going to nursery.

I wish I had done a childminder