I’m hoping this post reaches some families currently using a daycare and even some daycare employees to help generate a discussion. I’m wondering what to do about this situation. My almost 6 month old is breasfed but takes bottles of expressed milk at daycare. One afternoon when picking him up I looked in the window and saw him laying on the floor, crying, with a bottle of milk falling out of his mouth and spilling (he was 4 months old at the time). The daycare center employees in the room appeared to be busy with other things and hadn’t realized the situation my baby was in. I calmly walked in, picked him and the bottle up, and held him while he finished the bottle. Poor guy had breast milk all over him. I chatted with the teachers but they did not acknowledge the situation even though the saw me pick him up, clean him off, and finish feeding him. I asked them if my baby had been practicing holding his own bottle (giving benefit of the doubt), and they said he had. I then asked them to please hold off on this since he’s still so little and I didn’t feel like he was ready to hold a bottle independently yet. They agreed and said they would check in with me before trying to let him hold his own bottle again.

Fast forward a month...I came to get him earlier than normal and the same thing was happening. He was on the floor, “holding” his bottle, but it wasn’t in his mouth and was spilling all over. No teachers were close enough to help him or see what was happening. This time I talked to the center director about it and she expressed that it should not be happening under any circumstance. Per the teacher training infants cannot be left alone holding their own bottles due to the choking risk. She said that she would re-train the staff. Now, I totally get that the teachers have up to 4 babies to watch, feed, change diapers, paperwork, etc. It must be tough to balance everything, and hard to leave one baby fussing while tending to another. However, because of the safety risks I would rather my baby fuss a bit while waiting for a bottle if another baby needs a diaper change or help getting down for a nap. Not to mention all the spilled breast milk 😭 I also talked to the lead teacher the next morning about what happened and she apologized and agreed that it was a training issue and shouldn’t happen again.

Well, today at morning drop off and I saw another baby (not mine) left to hold her own bottle and she had dropped it. It was spilling all over her and she was turning her head trying to get it off of her face. I picked it up, set it down on the floor, and said to the teacher in the room that I was moving the bottle because the baby had dropped it. The teacher was across the room doing paperwork, did not make eye contact with me, and just said “ok, thanks.” 🤦🏻‍♀️ This baby appeared even younger than my little guy, so if this is a training issue I feel like she also should not have been left alone on the floor across the room holding her bottle while the teacher did paperwork.

I want to be sensitive to the center employees since they may not have all been made aware (maybe the training did not reach everybody), but I also want to advocate for my baby since I strongly prefer he not be left unsupervised with a bottle.

My asks are:

-should I bring this up again and ask the director and lead teacher to address the issue (even though this time it wasn’t my baby)?

AND/OR

-is this pretty common at daycare centers and should I just express my preference for my child directly vs. letting the center leadership handle it through re-training? Note that I was told previously this wasn’t necessary and I shouldn’t need to express this preference directly in my child’s paperwork as it should not be happening.

I would love any advice or insight on this experience from other families with daycare center experience and also from any daycare center employees. Thank you ❤️

EDITED to update my location-

Noticed a lot of comments about state regulations. I’m located in MN and could not find anything prohibiting this practice. Any other MN families out there that could help me figure out where to look and who to contact?

EDITED again to add-

I agree that we should be looking for new centers and we are, but this is easier said than done. I was on the waitlist for this center since I found out I was pregnant. Unfortunately we cannot forego one salary to keep baby home, so we need to work with the center we have in addition to searching for another option. At this point I like the idea of reporting anonymously to the state licensing group since that will bring awareness to the center leadership, teaching staff, and other parents which may result in driving some actual change in behavior.

EDITED to update on meeting 4/3 with center director-

My husband and I met with the center Director this morning. I explained my concerns since I was told with the previous two situations where I observed this happening to my son that it was a training issue and staff needed to be retrained. My expectation was that this meant staff were retrained as this applies to ALL the babies. With this third incident it was not my child, but I am obviously concerned because A) this is a months old infant and B) when I hear “retrain” my assumption is for all staff and it applies to all the babies. When I saw the same staff person from the first incident repeating this behavior with another baby I realized my expectations were not being met and we needed to have a meeting. Note that I am on a waitlist for two other centers, but no openings until June for one and October for the other. When we met with the director she expressed that her direction to the staff had been specific to my baby, but she agreed in regards to the other baby this happened to since breast milk fed babies needed to be watched directly because it’s a bodily fluid that could spill. I explained to her that I disagree that it’s just a breast milk issue and even mentioned this post and the regulation that a comment shared with me (thank you so much!) demonstrating that MN requires staff to be seated with the children during feeding at a licensed center. She asked me to share it with her so she could bring it to her staff, but I still see red flags...this is a large corporate center so how come they have not provided training to their staff and director in consideration of the state regulations? The regulation exists for a reason and if the center is unaware then how can they be effectively following it? I asked the director to follow up with my husband and I directly since I want to know specifically what the training entailed, who was trained, and how will staff be held accountable if repeat behaviors are observed. As far as I’m concerned the only way to make this right is to acknowledge it is a safety concern and document retraining that staff must be seated with babies when they are eating with the expectation that repeat offenders will face performance review up to and including termination. If the director doesn’t take this seriously, then I don’t think the staff will either. I’m also going to suggest that the director share this with the corporate team because of her site is not aware I think this is a gap in training across the organization.