Starting Daycare at 4 Months

Hi All

Oliver is due to start daycare full time on Monday 11th August, he will be almost 4 months old. He has been for 2 x one hour visits, and his first 2 hour visit this morning. First visit was fine, second visit he cried when I tried to leave him, so I settled him and then he was fine. But this morning when I went to pick him up he was bawling. He had woken at 7am, been fed at 7.30am and normally I would have then put him back to bed for a catnap. But instead took him to daycare for 8am as that is when I will be dropping him off when I have to go to work. I told them he would be due a sleep pretty soon after I left.

When I arrived they told me they couldn't get him to sleep in the cot (he normally is wrapped and has a safety sleep at home) and so they rocked him and he fell asleep in one of the carer's arms for about 25 minutes. Well of course by the time I picked him up at 10am he was waaaayyyy overtired. But still only took me about 5 minutes to get him to sleep once I got him home and into his own bed. (he is still asleep now!).

Now I know he will get used to it eventually but does anyone have any tips for how I can help daycare get him to sleep...? I don't want to try and tell them how to do their jobs   Thought I might buy another safety sleep for daycare to use for him.....maybe?

Sorry for the novel and any advice welcome.

Amanda

If he is going fulltime, then I would personally get a 2nd safety sleep for them to use and you want to be as close to an enviroment as he is used to.

Maya started at 5 mths, I used to take her safety sleep (altho if you can afford it, a second one would be a good idea coz it's a PITA taking it on and off the cot twice a day!) and her wraps so they could follow her normal sleep routine with her.

I agree with the others re: giving the routine in writing, I found I had to be really strict on them with settling coz to start with they were patting her to sleep which we had never done at home and I didn't want her getting into that habit as she was a happy self settler.

It didn't take Maya long to settle in, she coped far better than I did lol! The biggest problem we had was feeding as she refused to take a bottle so I would have to go breastfeed her in between classes.

LOL I could see Maya's daycare from my classroom and I used to sit and look at it out the window and imagine an ambulance coming to get her coz she'd died of cot death or something dire and when my cell phone rang in class once and I saw the daycare number on the caller ID I was almost too scared to answer it! Crazy stuff huh?!

Emma - I am sure I will be the same! Daycare is about 2 minutes drive from home and about 5 minutes drive from work. But those "what if" scenarios still keep popping into my head! Am off to trawl through TM for another safety sleep....