Nursery for 5 days - fellow full-time mums, please tell me it's ok?

[sellotape12]

Hi ladies. Did anyone else move to 5 days full time when their child was age 3 or younger and put them in childcare full time? I'm feeling awfully guilty about it. I got made redundant in January and just got a job offer, but it's definitely 5 days (I tried less, they said no). He likes nursery, and he's an extrovert. He's 3.5. But I loved my Mondays off with him, and giving them up makes me feel guilty, like I'm quitting him.
Any tips for ensuring you get as much quality time as possible? These are formative years after all. Will I be failing him by putting him in nursery/ childminder for a full week?

(I tried to secure a 4-day job but I am senior and most places are flatly saying no now)

Drowning in mum guilt

Assuming you've asked to compress hours to four day week or 9 day fortnight?
Lots of kids do this and you've done really well managing to be part time so far.
If I had to do this, I would buy in as much help as possible eg cleaning laundry meal delivery etc so that on weekends we had as much quality time as possible.
You might also consider child minder or nanny on the extra day so he has one that's more chilled out and he can stay at home for some of it.

Mine were in 5 days per week from when they were babies and weren’t unusual. They were fine with it. Once they got to school and saw lots of kids got to go home at 330 instead of going to after school clu. I then got a lot more grief and now finish a few hours early (make it up by working later earlier in the week). Establish yourself in new job and maybe it will be easier to do a flexible working request later. Make the most of it being easy now!

Ft at school is much much shorter hours than ft at nursery

DD was in nursery full time from 9 months. She is now an 11yr old, happy, healthy, bright, engaging, wonderful child who loves us and knows we love her. We have a great time together, she’s socially adept, confident and capable.

We regularly go past her old nursery and she talks about kids she was friends with and key workers she remembers fondly.

Yes, when DD turned 3 we moved to 4 days per week and then at 3.5 moved to 5 days per week. This was partly because to access the 30 free hours she had to attend 9-3.30 Mon-Fri. So she was in every day and then on Tues-Thurs stayed until 5pm while the other days me and DH took turns with the earlier pickup. Since she was there 5 days per week I decided to go up to FT.

This was all in 2020/2021 just post-COVID so life wasn't very interesting - it's not like we had mega busy weekends or loads of options of things to do so having 5 days per week at nursery was actually pretty fun for her and she thrived on it.

I also justified it by reminding myself that DS, who was an August baby, had been at school since just turned 4 and DD was just a few months off from that when she went FT.

I think it might depend on the child. Mine struggles with school now and I think full time nursery would have been too much for him.

However you need to do what you need to do.

I have a now 22 and 15 year old who both went to full time nursery.

They have both turned out well! Both husband and I have a lovely close relationship with them.

They also went to BC, ASC and holiday clubs once at school. I did have to make sure I picked clubs that they enjoyed so it was a little more expensive! I also did use more flexible time at school so we could be present for the special days! I even ran one of the school fairs (not easy and only did it once while also working FT!) We also made efforts between us to try and do school pick ups. Agreed it’s easier to work FT while at nursery and keep the flexibility requests once they at school!

My children always came first and if for any reason it didn’t work for them we would have changed it. But both girls have done really well. With my eldest who is autistic the routine of knowing which days ASC was better for her - she liked to know where she was going.

The guilt is hard but like I said they turned out well and independent.

Thank you so much for the kind replies everyone. It really means a lot and I wish I could say thank you individually. I think I will have to make it work. It also includes travel to another city probably once every two weeks but I can do that off-peak and be back for pick up. I think it’s just because he gets so tired on nursery days but that’s quite normal too I guess? He just dropped the nap so that’s contributing to my sense of ‘grief’! And another thing I learned from this thread is it’s play dates that exhaust me. Weekends that are full of play dates mean I’m not really spending time with him but supervising other kids..!

For people that mentioned childminders for school. Can I ask a bit more about that? We really struggle with laundry – the loading, the unloading and the drying / ironing. We do lots at the weekend but I feel like we need to do another load during the week. Do childminders sometimes do pick up, 4pm play at home and potentially a little bit of housework too? When I lived in the US, I vaguely remember some families having what they called a mommy’s helper – somebody that did 2-3 hours work a week and it was a little bit of everything/ anything you wanted. I don’t know if that’s the norm here? Possibly cos of employment law? And I lived there pre-kids so tbf of my memory is hazy.

Childminders watch the children at their own home - I think what you are describing is more like a nanny or a mother's help which definitely exists.

Hi OP,
I come from continental Europe and this is absolutely normal over there. Myself and my brother (as well as all our friends) were in full time childcare from younger even and perfectly fine:).
My nephew is now similarly in nursery 5 days a week and he's the happiest little boy!