Today, I had a very traumatic experience! You see, I'm not very good with babies!! I just don't have any experience and so when they cry I panic and, well, I have been known to suddenly remember I'm supposed to be elsewhere and make my exit...!!

This post is partly a celebration of what I achieved today! A first!! I feel amazing!! It is also a call for ideas because I realise that I am going to need more than a few Take That songs in my childcare tool kit when my baby is here!!! Let me explain...

My BFF has a 7 month old baby. He is super chilled and rarely cries. BFF's friend A (who is fast becoming a friend of mine) has an 8 month old baby who is very needy and clingy, bless him - he cries if his mum leaves the room to make tea! A's mum is very, very sick and is in the hospital - and today she asked BFF if she could watch her baby for a few hours today while she met with her mum's doctors. BFF asked me to help because she wasn't sure how she would cope with two babies at once....

Well, predictably, not long after A left, her baby started to cry. And cry. And cry. Huge racking sobs, ear piercing screams. We tried distracting him with toys, I tried bouncing him, I tried cuddling him (but he doesn't really know me so that made him worse!), BFF tried cuddling him.... which then made her baby cry!!! So we had two screaming, sobbing babies!! BFF began to stress because her baby rarely cries and she was pretty sure, once the jealousy had subsided, he was still crying because he had realised he was hungry - so she needed to change and feed him immediately!! All the while, A's baby was becoming more and more frantic and to my horror I found myself left with him!!!!!!!

Long story short, I got him in his car seat with one of his toys, popped his dummy in and started rocking him. It calmed him a little. He was clearly tired and needed a nap but every time he looked at me he would start crying again!! He wanted him mum, not me!! So I pointed him in the opposite direction and continued rocking him. By this point, he was mostly just crying to himself quietly. It was heartbreaking. On a whim I decided to sing him a lullaby. The problem was - I don't know any lullabys! So I sang the first thing the popped into my head - a Take That song (Take That are/were a popular British boy band). To my amazement, the crying stopped. I stopped singing and it started again - big screams! So I began to sing again... and it stopped. I sang the song through three times and by the end of the third run-through, he was sleeping!!

When A returned to collect him, he was sleeping peacefully!! Hurrah!!! I feel like I have climbed Mount Everest today!! my homework is to learn some lullabys though - I can't rely on boy band ballads, can I?!

What would you have tried in this situation? What do you do when your baby is crying? What other things can I try in future to soothe a crying baby? I will have one of my own in about 6 weeks - agh!