Nursery schools in Belfast

Hey everyone,

My name is Rita, I'm Portuguese and I'm considering to move to Belfast with my husband and kids: one will be 2 years old in January and the other is still in the oven until October this year 

The reason I'm asking for help in this post is to understand how schools work in Northern Ireland (in our specific case, we're looking for Belfast) as I can see it's very different from Portugal. We've been trying to find some information online but I'm lost and I could use some help

For you to have an idea, in Portugal we can only stay at home with our kids until they're 5 months old and then we can put them in a nursery school. If you choose to stay longer than 5 months, you'll only receive 25% of your salary. We would like to both get a job and work so I'm trying to understand the possibilities in terms of schools for the kids in advance so I can find a work too

Some of my doubts, which I hope you can help me with are:
- How soon can they go to school so I can find a job and work? Can they go before they turn 2 years old or do I need to stay at home with them until they're 2 years old? Ideally, I would like to stay at home until the little one is 8 or 9 months old.

- Is it difficult to find public (free or not so expensive) schools for a 2 year old boy? How can I find those schools online?

- Since we never worked in Northern Ireland before, will we be able to have free or not so expensive education for our kids when we move?

Any other information that you find useful to share, it would be more than welcome

Thank you so much and have a lovely weekend!

Rita