diff --git a/src/backend/distributed/executor/adaptive_executor.c b/src/backend/distributed/executor/adaptive_executor.c
index 30b2e981e..45328dab4 100644
--- a/src/backend/distributed/executor/adaptive_executor.c
+++ b/src/backend/distributed/executor/adaptive_executor.c
@@ -1946,9 +1946,6 @@ FindOrCreateWorkerPool(DistributedExecution *execution, char *nodeName, int node
 	workerPool->nodeName = pstrdup(nodeName);
 	workerPool->nodePort = nodePort;
 
-	INSTR_TIME_SET_ZERO(workerPool->poolStartTime);
-	workerPool->distributedExecution = execution;
-
 	/* "open" connections aggressively when there are cached connections */
 	int nodeConnectionCount = MaxCachedConnectionsPerWorker;
 	workerPool->maxNewConnectionsPerCycle = Max(1, nodeConnectionCount);
@@ -2422,6 +2419,18 @@ ManageWorkerPool(WorkerPool *workerPool)
 		 */
 		connection->claimedExclusively = true;
 
+		if (list_length(workerPool->sessionList) == 0)
+		{
+			/*
+			 * The worker pool has just started to establish connections. We need to
+			 * defer this initilization after StartNodeUserDatabaseConnection()
+			 * because for non-optional connections, we have some logic to wait
+			 * until a connection is allowed to be established for a duration of
+			 * citus.connection_retry_timeout.
+			 */
+			INSTR_TIME_SET_ZERO(workerPool->poolStartTime);
+		}
+
 		/* create a session for the connection */
 		WorkerSession *session = FindOrCreateWorkerSession(workerPool, connection);