Adventures of Babysitting

A few years ago a friend invited me to a week of climbing and camping in Fontainebleau. His wife gave birth to their first child six months earlier and they were going on their annual camping trip with a group of friends, I love Fontainebleau so I jumped at the chance.

On the day of the trip I arrive just in time to help load the car, at this point, I thought nothing of the fact that there didn't seem enough luggage for a couple and a baby, I just figured they are good packers. With his six month old daughter asleep in the child seat and him at the wheel, it hit me.... his wife was standing outside waving goodbye to us!

“What the hell?” I felt the need to ask; he went on to explain how the mother felt like a week off (and, I guess, deserved it) and how we have everything we need for the week, it shouldn't be that hard for the two of us to look after a six month old. Reluctantly, I agreed mostly because we had already set off but I did remind him that we would be camping and I know nothing about children!

Over the next ten odd hours as we drove, sailed and drove some more, I learned some important lessons: babies don't sleep in cars for long, a baby who's wide awake expects to be entertained, a teething six month old will reserve the right to change her mood and become irritable without prier notice. Also, I learned the following will keep a baby amused for hours in a car: blowing your cheeks up to make a 'fish face', blowing a 'raspberry', teaching her to clap her hands, reading from a textured baby book but I'll confess, that was more for my benefit.

The climbing could not have gone better, one of us would entertain baby while the other would climb (very short routes, no need for ropes so we moved around quite quickly) and then we would swap. The camping wasn't too bad either, in fact I would go as far as to say that taking a six month old baby across to the Continent is well within the grasp of two men, all fears I had at the start about not having the mother with us were gone.

When deciding where to eat in the evening, rather than going to the cheaper cafés (which is what we would usually have done), we would go to the more mid priced restaurants which I figure would have a more 'middle aged' clientèle. The cynical thinking behind this is they would have had children who would now be grown up and have flown the nest; so when presented with an irritable, teething, baby, they would not be as annoyed by her, rather they would reminisce to a time when their own kids were like that. It worked, we got nothing but smiles, in fact one lady even offered to watch the baby while we ate!

Overall it was a great trip and I'm glad I didn't back out; the only thing is, I'm sure there are a number of French people in the are we were staying in that now think we were a weird mixed race gay couple, there was no avoiding the fact that we did get some odd looks....