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Wednesday, 29 August 2007

Old Hands at Minding New Granddaughter

By Celia Jones

Our seven-month old granddaughter recently exposed us for the rank amateur child-carers that we were. Our elder daughter had to work and Emma wasn’t seriously ill, but not well enough to go to childcare, so she asked us to care for her. “Sure, caring for a baby - just like riding a bike”.

My husband, Allan, and I were both excited but slightly anxious at the prospect of taking care of our cherubic seraph for a couple of days. As retired grandparents, we could cultivate a special relationship with our grandchild as we had the luxury of time to talk, play and teach her.

Despite Emma’s tummy upset, she seemed placid and happy when my daughter dropped her off. We felt confident we could integrate her into our usual routines.

First, we tried to set up the stroller my daughter left us so we could walk Emma up the street to buy a newspaper. Fifteen frustrating minutes later, we figured out how it unfolded but were still unsure which lever would release the back support.

Emma had to sit up unsteadily for this walk, often leaning to one side. Nevertheless, she managed to seem rather dignified, almost royal as she held out one arm in a kind of royal wave and leaned lopsidedly on the other. Many passersby smiled at us as we struggled to keep the wobbly wheels straight on the uneven sidewalk.

Back from our walk, it was lunchtime and despite her tummy upset, Emma seemed to have an excellent appetite and eagerly opened her heart-shaped mouth to receive any food offered. After lunch, she sat in her little bouncing chair playing with some toys and “talking to herself”. I couldn’t resist picking her up; we had her all to ourselves and could spoil her.

Feeling something wet on my tee shirt, I noticed an ocher-colored stain on my shirt and realized it was seepage coming from the nether regions of our very own angel. I’d mistakenly put the disposable diaper on back to front. Holding Emma at arm’s length, I yelled out to my husband to get the bath going and sluiced her off.

I dried and clothed her before any other accidents could occur. I laughed as she tickled my neck and was totally unprepared for another geyser of half-digested food which then projected from her mouth. I had forgotten how babies tend to leak from several orifices at the same time as a normal matter of course. After this, I started to get a bit gun shy and flinched whenever she so much as coughed.

The real test was yet to come - getting baby to sleep. Changing her nappie, giving her a bottle and massaging her stomach didn’t work, so we allowed her to come into our bed. I spent the next hour listening to her singing to herself, loudly sucking her thumb, dodging her flailing arms and then, crying (me, not Emma).

My husband, who had been my teammate all day in caring for Emma, suddenly developed selective deafness and was soon snoring and “sleeping like a baby” through it all.

There was no alternative but to take her into the lounge room, switch on a late-night movie and hope it would bore her to sleep. There we both sat, at two in the morning, watching a 1940’s mystery - grandmother and granddaughter arm in arm, like two kids on a sleepover.

Thinking about the day we had, I did feel like I was finally getting the hang of things. I mean, I finally figured out which way was up with those new disposable nappies and was becoming so efficient at changing clothes I could work as a dresser in a fashion show. Now, if I could only get her to sleep.

Looking into Emma’s wide-awake, cerulean eyes, I suddenly remembered what I used to do many years ago with my own daughter. It was so simple, I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before: “the five-step, never-fail method to get baby to sleep”.

It was all coming back to me: step one, watch and wait for the half-closed eyes; step two, deposit her gently in her bed; step three, tiptoe out and close her bedroom door; step four, run like a bandit to your own bedroom; and step five, close your own bedroom door so you don’t hear the crying. Thankfully, it worked! The only sounds I heard until morning were my husband’s snores.

The next day, Emma had recovered and became very curious about her environment. While I got on the computer to work on a writing piece, I thought she’d be safe crawling around. Just five minutes was time enough for Emma to crawl into the laundry, sample the cat food and play in its water. I luckily caught her just in time to prevent her heading out the cat door.

When my daughter came to pick Emma up the next day, she asked how we had managed. “No problems,” my husband quickly answered.

Life once again got much easier and less demanding without the responsibility of caring for our precious granddaughter. We could get back to the routines we’d developed in our retirement - doing the news crosswords, surfing the Internet, writing articles.

But these activities felt a bit bland, lacking a kind of “piquancy” - the flavor and zest that Emma brought to our lives.

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