I was flattered that we were asked to minds baby Bob. It would be his 6th month on this earth and his mothers 30th birthday. It would also be Mum and Dad’s first joint night out sans Bob so there was an edge to the evening, “Going where this family had not gone before……..”
I was also fairly relaxed about the occasion as my wife had reared four of her own, we’d already minded overnight two other grandchildren and basically, it was at the end of a tough week at work and I hadn’t given the day too much thought. You know the way it happens? You wake up to find it's the weekend and you flick open the daily diary to find you haven’t updated the last three days and then your eye is drawn to today’s entry with an event entered in a strong black ink and highlighted in yellow?
Still, it doesn’t start till 4.30pm so you’ve got 8 hours to make it and it’s cool. That’s until wife turns a 15-minute visit to the shopping centre to pick up a voucher gift card into a two-hour excursion as Debenhams were having a sale with two for the price of one and 70% off! A miniature fashion show ensues on her return and much as I enjoy a private showing the clock on the wall keeps ticking.
OK, we are running tight for time now but I reckon we are max 20 minutes away from party base camp so we are still cool.
“What text?” “You got a text? Saying what exactly?”
“Balloons …..Any particular type of balloons?”
“We have to pick up helium inflated pre-ordered balloons”
“Where?”
“That’s in the opposite direction!”
The heat is on and we make the balloon pick up and gently force the enlarged and very pink yet delicate globes into the car without disaster. It’s on to the party and on arrival can see that baby Bob has been entrusted to a friend of Mums while the lady herself is away for the afternoon for a “pampering” session which includes, nail, face and makeup. Hubby is erecting Pagodas, tables, chairs and a bouncy castle. Chimena’s are set up for the cool later evening and solar lights decorate the garden, again designed to kick into action as dusk arrives. We make ourselves useful and plant up some border plants purchased but not planted by a man being stretched beyond his normal capabilities. Other pals have arrived and the house and garden are transformed in an hour into a weatherproofed, BBQ and party venue. The party beat is coming from inside when the girl herself arrives looking every inch a beautiful movie star.
You may have questioned, quite reasonably, the bouncy castle at a 30 something party. We have now reached that stage in life for the party host and guests that parties for tonight and for the next 20 years will include kids. Tonight the kids are mostly under 5 years but that will change. This same crowd 5 years ago would have been enjoying a wild and loud time with the party only starting at 10.30pm and boogying on into the small hours. With few exceptions, they have moved en masse into the world of parenthood and the life change has happened seamlessly.
By 10pm the children and related parents have departed, the cake has been presented, the BBQ has fed the 5,000 and it’s getting nippy in the garden. The fire brigade ( a decommissioned red one with a pole and male pole dancer) has pulled up outside to transport the birthday girl and 9 girlfriends to town for a boogie whilst the male partners are settling for a taxi. We wave all off and silence descends on the empty house. Upstairs Bob is sound asleep. My wife is shattered and takes to bed with a glass of wine and before long it’s just me. I watch TV flicking the channels until I find the sport and sit there with the remote in my right hand and the baby monitor in my left. The monitor shows a steady 18 degrees and I hear his little voice as he occasionally mumbles to himself.
I pass at least 2 hours in peace and venture upstairs once to eyeball him, just to be sure. Then about midnight, I hear some little cries and I go to his side. The blanket is wrapped around his torso but not the arms and legs. I hold his fingers and they are cold. I wrap my hands around them until they warm up. He settles again and I return to the football. It was over an hour before the monitor speaker alerts me further to his cries. I glance at the watch – 1.30am.
It’s about a bottle time. I’d taken only the scantest of interest in the baby handling instructions as they were being addressed to wife. However, I realise only at this late hour that I ‘m on my own now and I probably should have taken more interest. Still, I can do this. Heat a bottle in the micro, test the temperature on the nape of the wrist and stick the bottle in the gob. Simple. I carried out the plan to the letter and all was going swimmingly well until the stick in gob bit. I reached in to remove the mildly whinging kid when I found he wasn’t coming out too easily. In fact, the more I pulled him the heavier he felt and then I noticed the mattress was coming with him! He began to get agitated and I knew if he opened his eyes he’d be surprised to see who was holding him, to put it mildly. I whipped the blanket off him and was amazed to find he was actually “velcroed” to the mattress. The strips ran around his waist and up from between his legs to his tummy button where it met the cross band. They kept him on the flat of his back and prevented him from rolling over. I’d never seen anything like it and was gobsmacked! I had to remove him to feed him so I undid the velcro and out he popped.
I held him in my left arm and placed the bottle teeth to his lips and we started. That was until the baby monitor started to emit a piercing tone. I tried to ignore it, as did he but it just grew and grew. Apparently, the child’s 18 degrees of body heat had plunged to zero and this monitor was not letting this event go unnoticed. Within a minute it was issuing urgent loud repetitive tones and I had to put the baby back in the cot while I focused on the monitor. Without my glasses, I couldn’t read the screen and resorted to pressing every button in turn, which achieved nothing. I was told later by Dad that it was only at the base station that the monitor could be switched off so I resorted to a technophobes solution and ran downstairs sticking the bloody thing under two cushions in the sitting room and closing the door.
Back up I went to a wide-awake Bob who surveyed a mildly familiar face and made the decision not the shout the house down. We spent a very happy few hours together in the kitchen amusing each other and eventually he drifted off and back to the cot he went. However, I didn’t Velcro him in and with the monitor disabled I mounted guard on him until the boogied out parents reappeared in a shared taxi at 5.00am.
Life and babysitting have got a lot more exhausting!
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