Adventures in Babysitting

Today Liz and I babysit our friends’ nine-month year old baby boy. We were there for about four hours this afternoon. It was my first time babysitting ever, and I was struck by three things. The first is a reminder of how soft a baby’s head is!

The second is how much work raising a baby must be. I have many friends who have children and I have an abstract sense of how much effort being a parent takes, but taking care of a baby by ourselves, even for only four hours, allowed me for the first time to get a first-hand sense of what it takes. Both Liz and I were pretty spent after we finished our shift (although we love the baby and enjoyed spending time with him very much). We changed the baby’s diaper twice, fed him three times, put him down for a nap, and took him for a stroll around the block, plus the constant watching of him when he was playing with his toys. It was a lot different than when I volunteered during high school one day a week at a daycare center, where all I had to do was pick up babies when they started crying.

The most stressful moment was after we fed him the first time. After he was done eating, we put him on the ground and he resumed playing with his toys. But after a few minutes, he started making little crying sounds. I picked him up and rocked him a little, which quieted him down, but when I put him down again, he started crying again, not bawling, but small crying sounds. It was very difficult seeing his eyes fill with water, with a tear streaking his cute face, as he looked at me expectantly. He must have assumed that I knew what was wrong with him, and that I would fix it.

But after a while, he realized I didn’t know what was wrong, and he started crying a lot. It was a little bit scary because we weren’t sure whether something was really wrong. Finally we checked his diaper, and we realized we needed to change him.

The third thing I was struck by was how well Liz attended to the baby. She seemed like a natural, for example, when she patiently fed him with spoons of carrot sauce, with much of it ending up on his face and bib. Looking back at this afternoon, I can see us raising our own baby, and visualize how great of a parent Liz will be. It makes me look forward even more to starting a family with her.

All in all, it was a busy but rewarding afternoon and we had a wonderful time babysitting our friends’ baby!