Nursery cancelled!

I had to wait a day before I could write this post because I knew if I wrote it yesterday I would have come out all guns blazing!

Our beautiful twins were due to start nursery this coming Tuesday. Only 1 day a week.

Now, I’m not an idiot, well I don’t think I am anyway! I understand that it takes time for babies to settle into nursery and I know it can be a long process but surely you need to be 100% happy with the nursery you have chosen, right?

Well, I wasn’t.

After, the twins 1st settling in session, I left with quite high hopes. It was only half an hour and I was concerned about R. She is quite clingy and cries when I’m out of sight. For this reason when I arrived to drop them both off, I expected a few tears but I decided not to hang around, so I left pretty quickly so as not to have a long, drawn out goodbye.

R had a few tears but when I returned to pick them both up, I was happy to see they were playing with the toys and smiling.

The second session was for an hour. When I arrived, the nursery staff told me they were giving the babies a snack, so to seat the twins in high chairs and they would give them a snack.

I let the staff know that both girls had just had a custard pot so probably wouldn’t eat a snack.

10 minutes after I left, the nursery staff called to tell me that R had been sick after they tried to give her a snack. I asked how sick and they said quite a lot but she seemed happy now so no need to return.

An hour later, I was quite upset when I arrived to see that R had been swaddled in a massive blanket and put in a bouncer facing the wall, crying her eyes out with a nursery nurse bouncing the rocker with her back to R.

They explained that R had cried on and off and that when they tried to cuddle her she pushed them away.

Ok, fair enough I can imagine R doing that, but to basically ignore her cries really upset me. Putting her in a bouncer facing the wall with the nursery nurses back to her was just plain wrong in my opinion.

Not only that, I asked if R had been fed anything else after she has been sick and was told no.

Poor little mite was starving.

The third session, well was non existent. I arrived only to be told I had the wrong day and it was meant to be the previous day.

Now I know for a fact it wasn’t, as the previous day was my birthday and I quite clearly remember telling the nursery nurse I couldn’t do that day as it was my birthday, so I was told I could do the following day.

Whilst I was waiting, not one person offered to take one of the girls off me, help me carry them up the stairs or open the door for me. I’m quite good at multi tasking but trying to take my shoes off and open a door whilst holding two babies is pretty hard.

I also witnessed behaviour by one of the staff that firmly helped cement my opinion of the nursery.

A little boy, no older than 10/11 months was sat in a little wooden high chair. His dummy kept falling from his mouth. The nursery nurse picked it up 4/5 times and gave it back to the boy.

When he dropped it again, and I must emphasise he was not dropping it on purpose. The nursery nurse picked up the dummy, put it on the counter behind her then turned to the little boy and shouted:

“Well, you obviously don’t want it because you keep dropping it”

She made me jump, she shouted that loud. The poor little boys face went red and he became hysterical crying because she had all but shouted in his face and given him a fright.

When I rang to speak to the manager to make a complaint the answer she gave me was:

“I don’t know what to say”

That was it! That was all she kept saying!

Luckily, my dad has offered to look after the girls instead of them going to nursery.

I think nursery is a good social environment for babies and helps prepare them for when they start school. When our girls turn 2, I will look at a nursery around the corner from our new home, as they don’t take children under 2.

What a palaver!

I can’t believe I’m going back to work on Monday. Where has the last 10 months gone?!