Good or bad idea to split baby's care between nursery and childminder?

[YellowRoseofTexas]

I am starting back at work in mid August and have been planning to have my eight month old in a nursery, four full days per week. I spent a few hours yesterday at the nursery, and while the staff is caring and the facility is excellent, it seems that each individual child does not get the level of personal attention I want for my DS. Would love to do a nanny until he's a bit older but can't afford it. I have been calling around to local childminders and so far, most don't have availability for all four days per week.

I am considering splitting up his week between a childminder and nursery, maybe two days in each place. Does anyone have experience with this? Is it confusing for the child? Or could it give him the best of both?

Many thanks!!

Not done it with an 8 MO but that's what my DS does now but he's 3. I would do that as an interim measure and then when a FT place comes up at your CM you can move him out of nursery altogether if it isn't working out there.

LadyBiscuit--Just curious what your reasons were for doing both? How does his week break up?

We split DD's care like this.

She is at a very small nursery with only 10 children on Mondays and Tuesdays, and then we share a nanny on Thursdays and Fridays.

We've done this since DD was a year old.

Wasn't a conscious decision, more a case of building childcare around my increasing work load.

Works well for us - DD loves being in a small group environment and has huge amounts of fun, but doesn't really nap more than about 40 mins at nursery so it's tiring, whereas she does with the nanny. And her nanny takes her out and about to the Lido, singing group, childrens' zoo etc. So it's a good balance.

I'm a childminder and my 3year old mindee does mon, wed &fri at nursery and Tues, Thurs with me. His 17month sister does the same but comes to me on Fridays. It seems to work quite well. They can "chill" at my house and do family things but get social interaction at nursery. The 3year old knows which days are nursery days and which days are Riddo days but does always ask to come to me on his nursery days.

Because my mum used to look after him one day a week and 'retired' when he turned 3 and also I can't use the 12.5 hours of free childcare you get for 3YOs at my CM (not all councils have this rule incidentally). So he goes to CM Tues-Thus and nursery Mon and Fri. It works really well for us - he really enjoys the variety and the greater number of children at nursery (his CM only looks after 2 others).

Also my CM is a lot more flexible around time than nursery - I can drop off 10 mins early or pick up 10 mins late and it's fine whereas obviously you can't do that with a nursery so I find that bit a lot less stressful

Thanks so much...good to know this works out for some of you. I'll keep this solution in mind.