First Visit to the Church Nursery

Our pediatrician advised us to keep Hayes home from church until he was twelve weeks old.  We decided that eleven and a half weeks was close enough and made our foray into the church nursery.  Trent and I had checked it out the week before to figure out the check-in process and make sure it seemed like an okay place to leave Hayes. 

Here are Hayes and Daddy dressed and ready for church.

Check in went smoothly and we headed off to big church.  I wasn't nervous at all because all of the nursery workers seemed so competent.  That quickly changed when we went to pick up Hayes.  He wasn't in the room where we left him, and the teachers didn't know who he was or where he was.  They finally figured out that someone had taken him out to walk around because he was being fussy, but they didn't seem really sure who that someone was.  Let's just say that Trent and I were pretty scared.  We did find him, but he didn't have his nametag on, so there was no way for them to really know who he was or who his parents were.  We were so relieved to find him that we just took him and left.  After we had a chance to discuss the situation later that afternoon, we decided that I should call the nursery coordinator and let her know about the situation.

I called a few days later and spoke with her.  Apparently, the policy is that after a child has been crying for five minutes, a worker will take the baby out to walk around.  There are rules about where they can go, but my viewpoint is that a rule doesn't actually stop someone from doing something - like taking the baby outside or into a room by themselves!   The nursery workers did not explain this when we dropped Hayes off; they just told us that they would call us if he cried for more than ten minutes.  I did not want to seem like a crazy mom, but I explained to the lady what Trent does for a living and how that makes us more paranoid than normal parents.  But, I have told all of our friends about this so that they would be aware when they start taking their babies to the nursery, and all of them have had the same reaction we did.  At any rate, the nursery workers now have explicit instructions that Hayes is not to be removed from the room where we leave him.  Luckily, we, and Hayes, survived the experience and we hope that he learns to love his class at church!