RANT Nursery / childcare
Soon to be first time mum here & my brain is just perplexed by the lack of nursery spaces for children under 2 years old…
I thought looking at 25 weeks pregnant was insane, but friends pushed that I needed to look early. We viewed our first nursery today and they said they have openings in their baby room from November 2027 (?) but advised us to join the wait list. By this point my baby will be 14 months old and the baby room only holds children until 16 months old
I’ve managed to find 2 other nurseries a close drive away, in neighbouring areas, but definitely nothing walkable. Most of the nurseries I’ve found only take children from 2+
Am I panicking about nothing and a spot will free up? Or is there a chance that when it comes to returning to work, next year, that I won’t have anywhere for my baby to go?
One of the practitioners told me they had someone viewing recently that was 8 weeks pregnant…
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Moral of the story, if you haven’t started looking, you probably should 👀
They are bonkers. With my 2.5 year old, we reserved his place at nursery in July when he was born in December. With this one, because I know how nuts the places are I inquired when I was 12 weeks for a Sept 2027 place and was told that was literally when they were starting to have places opened up. It’s mental
That’s crazy! I sent an email in January and my son started in April🤣I don’t live in a very big town and there are a few nurseries so it probably depends on where you live but I hear it’s quite common for nurseries to have a huge wait list
We went looking when my son was 5 months old... But we live in the middle of nowhere with few options around, so it really could have gone pear shaped 😅 but we did a full time place, and then I ended up to going back to work for 3 days a week and they were fine with that. If you're in a big town and the nursery is super popular it might not be as easy as areas such as mine. It's so hard to know! Maybe you could talk to them on the phone and get a realistic idea of how the wait list tends to go for them?
I learned the hard way with my first and this time around I applied in my first trimester (still waiting to hear back). I can’t get my head around it.
I would as prepare back up options if you can
Would you consider childminders?
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