Help - Advice needed regarding sleeping at nursery

[confuseddotcom1]

My 6 month old baby is due to start full time nursery in 2 weeks. I'm quite concerned - she's a big sleeper, usually having 2 hours in the morning and 2 one hour sleeps in the afternoon - at nursery she will only get 30 min in the am and then 2 hours in the early afternoon.

The nursery have said that they can put her to bed earlier than the others (who are 4 months+ older), outside of scheduled sleep time, to allow her a bit more than scheduled. Although they are making an effort, the cots are in the room with all the babies and will be quite noisey and i'm concerned she won't get the restful sleep she needs to maintain her extremely personable and relaxed personality.

Can anyone offer any advice with dealing with the nursery and getting my baby the sleep she needs??

[ches]

I can't see how half an hour is anything close to enough time to get all the babies off to sleep, let alone for an entire nap! I also can't fathom that they would wake a baby up. 6 months is a huge developmental leap for babies; they get mobile, very active and start weaning. She would probably naturally reduce her amount of daytime sleep over the next few months regardless of nursery's routine.

Babies slot very well into the nursery routine and maintain their home routine at home. DS for months had one mid-day nap at nursery but had two or even three naps at home. He'd be comatose at home by 9am, but didn't nap at nursery until closer to noon.

[Kazzi79]

How many other babies will be in the same room?

I'm quite shocked at the nursery's attitude towards a 6 month old if I'm being totally honest, the nursery I used to work at, on a daily basis would have around 9 babies under 12 months and the room had 4 cots in it. In the baby room there was no set routine for daytime naps (as at that age each babies sleep needs are different) we would simply let the child sleep when tired and leave them to sleep until they woke up (unless parents specifically asked for their baby to be woke up after a certain amount of time).

The routine for the under 2's room was more structured with each toddler laying down for a kip on the sleep mats after dinner, the majority would have an hour, when one wakes most of the others tend to wake up too.

Have you looked around other nurseries in your area? You may find that different nurseries have different policies regarding babies sleeping, in the case of a 6 month old I personally believe a more relaxed approach is needed from the nursery.

[littone]

I think you have to go with the flow of the nursery you have chosen, put her to bed earlier and expect big catch up day time sleeps at the weekend. I visited a nursery with cots in the rooms when choosing a nursery for my DS (who started nursery at 11 months) and was told he would need to be in nursery routines within 6 weeks - this was the same for all their babies regardless of what age they started. Instead I chose a nursery where they followed the babiessleep routines in the baby room - timings, whether in cot or bouncy chair etc (up to 16 months) moving onto nursery routines when they moved to the next room. In reality he found nursery sooo exciting that he rarely went for a morning sleep there and was happily in the nursery routine of one sleep after lunch for those in the other rooms. I am sure your baby will adapt to the new routines and sleeping in the room with other babies - though expect her to be very tired to begin with.