Nursery scheduling advice, please!

[Yellowlamb]

Sad to be going back to work in August, and putting my 11mo in nursery. Between me, my husband and my mum, LO will only need to do one full day (9-5) in nursery.

However, the nursery have contacted me and said that one day a week isn’t great for settling babies and that 2 mornings a week is preferable, and that it doesn’t matter if these are consecutive or not.

In the short term we could wiggle things around and do 2 mornings a week. Longer term we would need this to shift to either 1 x full day a week or 1 x full day and 1 x half day a week.

Would you opt to do:
(a) one day a week as originally planned;
(b) two mornings on a temporary basis before transitioning to 1 full day;
(c) a full day and a morning temporarily before dropping the morning; or
(d) a full day and a morning on a permanent basis?

I imagine a lot of this will depend on LO, and how long it may take him to settle and whether it dropping a half day would be disruptive. Would love people’s advice/ experience of navigating similar scenarios!

B as long as lo settles. I do think nursery are right. Babies can take time to settle and a week is a long time for the baby.

It likely will take them longer to settle at only one day a week at that age but you have to do what works for you too. Good luck with the transition

My DD started at 11 months, doing 3 days. It did take awhile to settle in so I would expect just 1 day to be harder.

I would do the most you can to start, then gradually drop.
I would try to do more than 1 day permanently though.

One day a week can be problematic because they don't go long enough/often enough to get used to it. To an 11 month old, one day there followed by six days not there - by the time they go again it's totally unfamiliar, they've forgotten and haven't got any sort of routine going. It can sometimes work, but some settings even have a rule that you need to book in for a minimum of two days because it tends to work out better for settling in etc than one day a week.