Nursery

You could start by just looking at your local nurseries or pre schools. Ask to speak to them about their SEND offer or speak with their SENDCO if a preschool. They can advise you on any support they can offer or set up a LSP for children with additional needs. They can also help with a speech and language referral if you’d like. Also ask about communication apps or options. Regular updates, pictures or the option to call might ease your worries or anxieties.

You could then start to look around nurseries/preschools. Once decided you could trial one half day and see how she copes/gets on. You could always up her days as she settles in and becomes more confident. This will also give you a morning alone with your newborn without too much change to your 2 year olds routine.

At the end of the day, you might start her at a nursery or pre school and decide it’s not for her/you. Then you have the option to remove her. On the other hand she might love it and thrive there.

Why not ask your husband to go and visit a couple of different nurseries? That really helped settle our anxiety! All the nurseries we visited let us go in the middle of the day basically unannounced and showed us around, they took our drivers license/ids etc for safeguarding and that made us feel way more confident.
As well as that our nursery have said we can do sit ins and half days on the lead up to help with any further anxiety and the transition 😊

I started my child at half a day with a child minder when she was 11 months.
By 16 months. She did half day CM and 1 day nursery..
By age 2, I removed her from CM.ad wasn't happy and she outgrew it, so I did 1 day normal.nursery and 1 day montesorri nursery.
Within 3 months I realised she is learning so much more from momtesorri school and.nurery was just looking after her or.play..
So I took het 2 days montesorri..
Age 3 I did 2 days montesorry and 1 day nursery , a different nursery at a private school as we thought we might to send her then from age 5 and then shed have made friends already.
Age 4 we did.2 days montesorri and 2 days normal nursery 1 day at home with me

She has grown soooo much!!!
I have other friends who didn't send their kids to nursery or maybe only 1 or 2x per week, And they are slouch more behind!
She will now start school i Septermber and 5 days a week amd she is more than ready!

If it helps, my sons nursery workers are ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. I cannot fault them.
They care for the children like they are their own. I feel I really trust them now (it took me a while at first too) and would actually ask them to babysit at our house of we ever needed it.
Hopefully you'll find a setting where 1. You as parents feel comfortable and 2. Your child will love it it there too!

They really do thrive in group situations!

Nursery can really help kids with their verbal skills sometimes! I know of so many kids who weren’t talking before nursery as they were either the only child in their family or they just weren’t with the right age group! Definitely not a bad idea at all. Impossible I know but ignore everyone else, do what you thinks right!x