Help me make a decision please 🥹🥹

With my first child I built it up gradually over 2 months. I was going back 3 days a week in September, so he did one day a week in July, 2 in August and then started the full 3 days from September. Personally that was just the right decision for him at the time. This time around I’m back to work from Jan, but he’s only doing 1 day a week in December (due to their availability) and then will be straight up to 3 days a week from Jan, which makes me a little nervous!

I went back to work in September and my little boy started nursery the same week. He goes for 1 full day and 1 half day and my mum has him 2 days a week for me. He was being left before I went back to work so he'd get used to it then before he started nursery he had settling in sessions and honestly he absolutely loves it. The advice the nursery staff gave me was the younger they are the easier they settle and it's best to have consecutive days. Once his funding comes in, I'm looking at increasing his half day by and extra 2 hours to get the full 15 hours a week.

I’m just not sure about nurseries at all…. Is it true they get sick very often? If I’m going to end up not going to work cause she’s poorly what is the point ?

I’m doing exactly the same as you and using my holiday to go back in February. My LO is starting 3 days a week (as I’m going to only be working 3 days) on the 6th January and I go back to work 3rd of Feb. Means she’s got 4 weeks of settling in and catching all the germs before I go back to work 😂. I did the same with my eldest too, she did 4 weeks at nursery 3 days while I was on leave before I went back to work. Seemed to work great for her so doing the same this time.

@Fátima at the start, yeah I found he did get sick fairly frequently. But it doesn’t last, I found it settled down quickly and then he was just catching colds every now and then but almost always well enough to go into nursery. Of course there were exceptions to that where he couldn’t go. I balanced the sick days with my husband so it wasn’t always me taking the time off, but even with the sickness it was still worth it, it wasn’t like I was missing days of work every single week.

@Fátima it can be rough to start with with them catching things but it does settle down fairly quickly. My eldest went to nursery for nearly 4 years and in that time I probably had a total of about 12 days off work when she was sick (and 5 of those she was in PICU, not related to nursery). But it has meant now she’s started school she’s not caught anything so far 🤞 because she’s already been exposed to most things doing the rounds.

My LB did two settling sessions and went straight into his 3 day week at nursery, i went back to work the following week - i personally found leaving him very difficult and emotional, but being straight back to work took my mind off it, as the first week was horrible sitting at home when he wasnt there🥲 Hes been in over a month now and has had a cough/cold but nothing that has stopped him from going / me going to work xx