Baby sat

Our first professional babysitter went off without much of a hitch.

The biggest problem was using an online-only agency. We could book, but not give any special instructions. And I really did feel that when sitting a kid for the first time, a heads-up about what they're like would be useful. But there was no way to put that info in the booking, and they only contacted me via SMS, with no return number. So there was no way to say the important essentials:

• She's walking and quite mobile, but can't manage stairs on her own yet.
• We use cloth nappies
• Take her to the loo whenever she wakes up – it usually means she has to go
• She will usually fight and complain when going to sleep
• We've no TV. Bring something to read or a laptop or phone.

That alone would have avoided the surprises the sitter had when she got here. Each datum we told her was followed by a bit of raised eyebrow making it clear this would not be a usual sit. Only the lack of TV warranted an Oh no! from the sitter, in that usual English ambiguously mock tone where you can't tell if they're serious or not.

I did spend the effort in the afternoon setting up a guest wifi account so she could get online, but not access our intranet or require us to change our passkey afterwards. But she didn't bring anything internetly with her. On the uninformed front, I too didn't know what we were getting beyond someone with a female first name. I was more expecting a 20 year old net-savvy txt-maniac. Not the I've brought a newspaper grandmother we got. On the bright side, at least she'd seen cloth nappies before. 15 years ago.

Regardless, it went off as we'd hoped. We left the flat and heard not a peep from her. We got home at 1am and the girl was asleep. And when the girl next woke, she wasn't visibly distressed or anxious from having us gone.

This bodes well for future sittering. Though at £50+ for a night I'd really like to keep it to a minimum.