Top 3 Items You Need for Daycare

I am a full-time working mom and I have every intention to stay that way. So when my maternity leave came to an end, and I knew I still wanted to breastfeed exclusively, I was hesitant to send our son to daycare full-time right away. We are REALLY fortunate to have great parents on both sides to help. So for the first 4 months I was back to work, we had grandparent daycare and it allowed me to still breastfeed at home as much as possible! Which was great! However, they couldn’t keep this up forever and we knew we needed another plan. I found a nanny and a part-time daycare that we were able to use until he was about 11 months old, which worked out great! But that too had to come to an end and eventually we ended up enrolling in a full-time daycare for our son when he was about 1.

There are a few things I wish I would’ve known or been prepared for when we started full-time daycare, so I’m sharing them with you in hopes they help you early on!

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1. Label everything!

This is usually something that the teachers will stress when you start daycare, but they don’t really tell you just HOW to label everything. Babies have a LOT of stuff and taking a sharpie marker to all their things isn’t exactly practical nor easy to read. Plus how do you really label socks and shoes?! We kept a luggage tag with our name on it on the diaper bag. So I didn’t worry about labeling everything inside of it, just items used during the day (ex. extra clothes!).

These custom label tags have been perfect for bottles and sippy cups! They are washable too, so I just leave them on the bottles at all times. These custom label stickers are what I’ve used for everything else. They work on bottles too (I usually use them on the lids!) and I’ve mostly used them for shoes, lunch boxes, and clothes too. They really are waterproof and hold up well even in the dishwasher or washing machine. I’ve been really pleased with them and glad we found them!

2. Get a good lunchbox (or few!)

If you’re anything like me, you get tired of cleaning bottles. And now adding in lunch boxes too was just another thing to add to my list! I like to be able to throw these in the dishwasher. And I like to have extras on hand so that it doesn’t have to be ready the next day! I’ve found these lunchboxes to be the best. They are really easy to clean and can go in the dishwasher. The compartment sizes are perfect. Too often I find that the kids lunchboxes have compartments that are too small for anything, these are just right! We ended up with 3 of them to rotate throughout the week. So now I don’t have to hand wash them every day after school! 🙂

3. Invest in extra sheets and swaddles

It took me way too long to pull the trigger on this one and I don’t know why! Several weeks passed of me letting the whole weekend fly by and I would be scrambling on Sunday night to wash his daycare sheet and swaddle so it would be clean for him to take the next day. Just buy an extra sheet or two (they usually come in a pack anyway!) and get an extra swaddle to have on-hand too! Trust me, it really saves the panic and hassle of making sure they get cleaned over the weekend. It’s better to just have the clean set already ready to go!

Daycare doesn’t have to be scary

I was so resistant to daycare for a long time, probably because I didn’t grow up going to daycare. Now that we’ve gotten in a routine, we’ve found that it works out best for everyone!

Adding simple things like having extra lunch boxes and sheets/swaddles on-hand, really does help make my life easier during the week! I hope you take the time to find ways to make things easier for you too!