Nursery chat - he’s not even started yet, but we got an email this week that it’s going up to £57.20 a day in January - the week he starts
It was £51 when we reserved just before he was born and has just crept up and up
For 4 days a week term time only it works out at £594.82/month after tax free childcare. Although realistically we will have to add some holiday weeks too, we don’t actually have enough AL to be off all the hols even if we stagger them and are never both off at the same time.
Hoping I can have baby #2 next year. Be off all 2024 with them both. Then have two in nursery 4 days from Jan 2025 with current Baby SodIt getting his 30 free hours.
Then to figure out the weird spell with one in school and one in nursery. When they’re both in school I’ll go back to 5 days so I can do either pickup or drop off every day and only have to worry about paying on one end. But with them split I’ll have to suss out whether it’s better doing condensed hours and saving a day of nursery but having 4 days of double wraparound care. Or paying the 5th nursery day (atm full time is ‘only’ £28/week more than 4 days) and sparing having to find and pay for care at one end of the school day.
Hi yes I’m an over thinker, currently planning my 2026 logistics x
Currently just boobing the night away as per.
We don’t usually leave the baby, I don’t like it. My parents live on the next street so we’ve occasionally had him there for an hour or two while we do a big job at home, but otherwise we’ve only left him twice. Once because people kept pressuring us to go on a date and do something as a couple
so we begrudgingly booked a lunch but then it snowed so we stayed at home and took a nap. And once because a pre-covid spa voucher was about to expire.
I really don’t like being away from him. I want a cook/cleaner/handyman/gardener/PA as help, not a babysit. (Deffo harbouring residual anxiety about him being taken from me a few hours old
and that’s swirled up with my feelings about no longer being on mat leave and made *me* the clinger)
But out of obligation, we went out in Manchester for the day as our friends are emigrating next month. Baby didn’t have any of the expressed milk I left for him, so he went 7.5 hours without - longest stint he’s ever done. 300ml of hard won milk down the drain
so obv he’s more of a limpet than ever now we’re reunited.
For those giving expressed milk, how much was/is your little one taking around 12 months?
I hate making the effort and it being wasted, and in typical circumstances I think I’d be fine just leaving him to manage with solids and tap water when I’m busy, but with his food allergies I don’t like the thought of not leaving an option on standby. But I can’t gauge how much to be making up for him, especially if I’m having to defrost.
I mean it’s moot because he won’t take it, but yanno