Two Reasons to Increase Your Child's Time at a Childcare Centre During Your Pregnancy

If your child spends just a few hours a week at a childcare centre and you've just found out that you're pregnant, you might want to increase the number of hours he or she goes to this facility for the next few months. Read on and find out why.

To make it easy for you to attend your antenatal appointments

Throughout your pregnancy, you'll need to go for regular antenatal appointments so that your obstetrician can check that your baby is healthy and that any pregnancy-related health issues you develop are under control. If you have a high-risk pregnancy, you may need to have these check-ups extremely frequently. In these circumstances, you may find it helpful to utilise the childcare centre's services a lot more than you did in the past by, for example, leaving your child at this facility for a full day, rather than a half-day, on the dates on which you have your antenatal appointments.

The reason for this is that taking your child with you to these appointments might make them more difficult. For example, if your child continuously interrupts you or has a tantrum whilst you're at the obstetrician's clinic, you might forget to mention an important medical matter or some new symptoms you've noticed. Additionally, if an ultrasound or other test you have done at an appointment reveals some bad news (such as a health issue your baby has developed), you might end up getting very upset, which could be distressing for your child to witness.

Conversely, if they stay at the childcare centre whilst you go to your antenatal appointments, you'll find it easier to discuss your medical issues, and if you receive some bad news, you'll have time to recover and gather yourself before you go and see your child. Furthermore, instead of having to spend time being bored and restless at these hospital appointments, your child can spend these hours playing, learning and socialising.

To make it easier to set up the nursery and to baby-proof your home

If you need to set up the nursery for your baby and reinstall all of the baby-proofing features that you removed when your eldest child reached an age where they were no longer necessary, then you should consider letting your child spend a bit more time at their childcare centre.

Doing this will, for example, allow you to paint the nursery's walls and let this paint dry before your child has a chance to smear it or get the paint on their hair or clothes. You can also put together any furniture you've ordered without worrying that your child will run off with and possibly swallow or misplace any of the furniture's nails or dowels. Additionally, if like many children, your eldest is showing signs of jealousy at the mention of a new baby in the house, taking care of the nursery set-up and the baby-proofing whilst they're at the childcare centre will mean that they won't get upset as a result of getting your full attention because you're busy setting up this new space for their sibling.