Settling in at creche

Not going back to work after having a baby was not an option.  We would get by financially but I would resent having to give up my career and be dependent on my partner.  Ultimately a happy mother makes a happy baby and we thought my going back to work after 6 months, when Baby has had at least the minimum recommended period when he is exclusively on breast milk, was the sensible thing to do.  Having been back at work for almost a month, I can confirm that this is the right decision for me.  I have to be super organised to fit everything in, and this is with lots of help from my very understanding partner, but it is worth the effort.

In order for me to be able to return to work we needed to find a creche for him during the day.  This would be somewhere for him effectively 9 to 5 every week day so it was a priority for us to find somewhere that would be nice for him.  The creche at work has an excellent reputation and I put my name down for a place as soon as I confirmed that I was pregnant.  However, the 18 months waiting list meant that we needed to find somewhere as a stop gap.  We visited a few and settled on somewhere close to my partner's work.  Unfortunately, his office moved in the interim and, as we didn't like the other nurseries we saw that much, we had to enter into a marathon creche visiting session about a month before I went back to work.  We eventually found one, via a friend of a friend, called My Nursery.  

Baby has been there full time for about a month now and he has settled in very well.  We chose this one because the premises looked good, the kids we saw seemed happy, the staff that met up with us seemed confident and knowledgeable, and the brochure and web-site were well thought-out.  This was also the only place where the parents we bumped into (while we were visiting to have a look around) spoke with us on a whim, as if it was the most natural thing to do even in deepest, darkest London, and told us how much their kids liked going to the nursery.  This last point sold it to us and so far I am very happy with how Baby has developed since he started there.  It is reassuring that he smiles at his key worker when we hand him over in the morning and it is comforting to have someone to which we can ask questions, e.g. about weaning, who deals with kids all the time and knows what they are talking about.  I never went through the crying when I left baby at nursery phase because I was so sure he would be happy there.  I cannot recommend this place enough and it really is a god send. At this point I cannot imagine us uprooting him to go to the nursery at work when a place comes up.

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