CARE FOR BABIES continued - Tour Page 2
SQUIRRELS BABY GROUP - Feeding and Sleeping
"If you wanted your baby to
attend the nursery, we would ask you to come in on a pre-start visit a week or 
so before
your baby was due start. You would meet with with the senior staff and discuss where
your child is up to with their feeding, how frequently your baby has feeds, if
you have introduced solids and how they are doing with that. Your baby's routine
that you have established at home will be continued at nursery, so we will feed
your baby at the time he or she would be due to be fed, rather than a time which
would be convenient for us. We will make all the feeds up for your baby at
nursery and we would just ask that you bring in a jar of your chosen formula milk.
We have strict environmental health guidelines that we comply with; we log
down when a new jar is opened so we can mix it and use it within the right
period of time and we make sure it's correctly labelled up and kept in the food room.
This room is
just used for dealing with the baby meals within the baby group. We have all the
different shaped teats and bottles, and the same shaped teat you use at home
will be used at nursery. The bottles will be sterilised in our steam sterilisers. The feeds are made up fresh each day, cooled down as quickly as
possible, labelled up with the child's name and placed into the refrigerator,
which is there solely for the storage of the baby foods - no other foodstuffs
are kept in this fridge. We only ever use bottle
warmers to warm our feeds, never a microwave oven".
"As regards to solids
- when your baby is due to be introduced
to 
solids, if you
choose, you can use our baby foods – we use Boots & Farley’s powdered baby food.
If you prefer, you can bring in your own baby food - perhaps you may be cooking
your own vegetables for your baby. If you choose to bring in your own
meals then they will be labelled up, placed in the fridge and prepared at the
appropriate time for your baby. Most of the babies tend to progress to a blended
down nursery lunch by the age of about 7 to 9 months. When the babies are on
nursery meals there is the choice of the standard meal or a vegetarian option
each day. Special dietary requirements, perhaps due to allergies etc. are also
catered for. All the food provided is wholesome and prepared and cooked fresh
each day by our kitchen staff".
"Both the nursery
playrooms have their own cots and cribs, so that babies can be placed down for
a sleep as and when they require. Each time a baby wakes up from a sleep, the
cot is stripped and fresh bedding is put down; so there are always fresh clean
sheets for each of the babies. Again we wou
ld
discuss with you on the pre-start visit if there was a set time that you would
like your baby to sleep, whether you would prefer us to put baby down in the cot
whilst they were awake, rock them off to sleep and then put them down – again as
with the feeding, the routines and ways of getting them to sleep that had been
established at home would be continued within the nursery. We keep a
little daily diary for each of the babies, we don’t write what we have been doing with
the babies all day, as we would spend our day writing in the book rather than
playing with the babies. But we do log down any feeds and solid meals that they
may have taken as well as; the times, ounces of milk and how they have done with
their food. We also write down all the sleeps that they have that day and the
length of time that they have slept for. We log down all wet and soiled
nappies, which is particularly important with the young babies
who we may be introducing to new textures, new foods – we want to keep a check that
nothing is upsetting their tummies. The diary goes home with you each day, which
is useful if you suddenly think of something that you need to let us know about,
you can jot it down in the book because we always check the diary each morning
for any messages from you".
