Help- Nursery Advice desperately required - what would you do??

[confuseddotcom1]

I have a dilemma - My daughter is 6 months old and I will be going back to work full time shortly. I have a full time placement at a local nursery that I am not overly happy with. The place feels dirty and has been lacking good management until they recently got a new manager a week ago! Their Ofsted report was OK but only OK. They have also recently been bought out by another company, so lots of change could be on the horizon.

I have also been offered 2 days a week (Mondays and Fridays!) at another local nursery that seems amazing and has had great Ofsted reports. They have said at some stage full time will become available but can't guarantee this until Jan 2010! I would desperately love my daughter to go to this nursery but if I take this part-time option I will need to find another solution for her care mid week, possibly with a child minder.

Will this chopping and changing between her carers effect her in a negative way and be very unsettling for her?? She is a very easy going baby and adapts to things quickly but am I being unfair on her - even if it is only until the end of the year?

Does anyone have experience of a similar scenario and how did it work out? How did you child adapt? Any advice would be most welcome...

I don't think I would want to send my baby to a a nursery that I had reservations about (as you obviously have).

If you are thinking about finding a child minder anyway why not consider employing a child minder full time - that way there is no "extra" resettling?

If you prefer the nursery longer term then swapping her from 2 days at nursery to 5 isn't really chopping and changing as she's just spending more time in an environment with carers she knows - she just won't see her childminder any more. And I would guess that a young baby isn't going to notice that too much.

I certainly wouldn't send her to the nursery you aren't happy with. Is there a particular reason you aren't considering just using a childminder full time (I'm not knocking nurseries there (mine are both in nursery FT) but it does seem the obvious solution so I wondered if there was a particular reason you didn't want to do it)?

Agree with redskyatnight about the swapping of care aspect. If it came to January 2010 and you were happy with how things were you could presumably just keep her in split care anyway?