Going to nursery
We booked Ted’s nursery spot while he was still in the womb, and he still ended up starting four months late.
Of course, we didn’t know there’d be a global pandemic when he was still a bump in Maddy’s belly, but we thought we might as well cross one piece of life admin off the list before we were wrapped up in caring for a newborn. Plus Maddy’s employer (a university) ran a number of nurseries (which offered a staff discount), and got booked up fast. It was slightly surreal filling out the entry forms:
Baby’s name : TBC
Baby’s DOB : TBC
Baby’s allergies : TBC
April 2020 rolled around and Maddy was due to start back at work and Ted was supposed to start nursery. You know the rest (and I won’t rehash it), and it was only in August 2020 that he was able to take his long-awaited spot (mainly because the nursery in question ramped up access based on kids who had already been there pre-lockdown, which was fair enough).
He’d done a number of 45 minute taster sessions back in February and had handled them well, but we were asked to stay on site (or nearby) just in case. It felt like a big jump to go from this to an almost 9 hour day there, but I imagined we’d all get used to it. He had to re-do these taster sessions back in July once we had a firm start date again, which gave us hope that he hadn’t entirely forgotten this new place full of toys and other people.
Dropping him off for that very first session was, in retrospect, an emotional experience. In normal circumstances, parents who’ve just put their kid in nursery tend to report the first separation from their offspring as a huge, emotional wrench – shedding tears on the commute to work as you worry about your little baby, torn from your side by strangers, as you wonder if they’ll remember about the specific temperature he takes his pre-naptime milk at.
In my case, though, I felt something like euphoria when I dropped Ted off for his first day. When the staff opened the gate (I could no longer go inside), he ran straight in without a backward glance, which made things much easier for me. As I got back in the car I debated throwing on some celebratory music for the drive home, and the Selly Oak triangle had never felt such a pleasure to circumnavigate.
Don’t get me wrong: I love the bones of that kid and I miss him hugely when he’s not with us. But the five months of lockdown we’d endured had worn us down, particularly in the final six or so weeks leading up to this day. We’d found ourselves out of resources to parent with: energy, ideas, enthusiasm or patience. This wasn’t Ted’s fault – he’s just a toddler, doing normal toddler things. But juggling a job and full-time childcare is tough at the best of times, and harder when you can’t see other people properly, or go to baby groups and social events. I don’t think I properly realised how tired and stressed it had made us until the weight was lifted away that day in the nursery car park, and I drove home beaming.
Closing the front door to our home without our baby in it was surreal: I had to keep stopping myself from reflexively checking where Ted was (and what he was attempting to swallow), had to unlearn my automatic closing of stair gates behind me every time I moved through the house. As lunchtime approached my brain prompted me to start working out what to make for Ted, then I realised with something approaching bliss that I could go and make myself a meal without first having to wrestle Ted into a bib and highchair and persuade him not to pebbledash the carpet with bits of pasta. Every little detail of that day felt like an honest-to-god luxury. I was still doing a full day of work in my home office, mind – but even this felt like a holiday. Just being able to sit down uninterrupted and churn out some focused work was like a reward, too.
All of this might sound like I don’t enjoy being a parent, or like it’s a thankless, awful task. Neither is true. But lockdown really brought home for me how true the “it takes a village to raise a child” proverb really is. You need that support network, whether it’s a parent or close friend who’ll take the kid off your hands for a few hours while you get some R&R, or just being able to hang out with other people with kids who get it, and are up for going somewhere kid-friendly to hang out. It’s not normal to raise a child in isolation, with no other social interaction beyond what a pair of tired parents can manage to summon up when they’re running on caffeine and Netflix.
After Ted’s last day of nursery that week I took a box of chocolates for his primary carer. I felt so pathetically grateful for the care they were—brilliantly—providing for our son that I needed them to know how much it meant to us. I’d almost forgotten how much we were paying for this: it’s equal to our mortgage(!). But it’s worth every penny. Not just for the (selfish) reasons outlined above. But because it’s giving Ted diversity of experience, of people, of surroundings. He needs more social interaction than just his parents, and the nursery are at least able to attempt this, in a Covid-secure way. He’s already come on leaps and bounds since he started three weeks ago – he’s (even more) confident, more talkative, and more curious and inquisitive.
Childcare, particularly early years, is so crucially important – and for parents who are struggling right now, even more so. The government should be doing much, much more to enable it for everyone, by funding it directly and supporting nursery employers to stay open (and safe) during this time. One of the seven demands of the National Women’s Liberation Conference in 1977 was for “free 24-hour nurseries”. We’re barely any closer to that goal, decades later. But this month has taught me how much I’ve been dependent on this network of people—again, mainly women—who’ve been performing these roles to enable all sorts of other people to undertake theirs. I have a lot more to learn and understand but right now my feelings are just overwhelming gratitude, and happiness for my son. Plus there’s much less tidying up to do now.