Over the past four decades of my life I've heard many young parents complain they weren't trained as to how to take care of their infant children. I used to laugh at many of these couples especially since my daughter has long since left and started her own family. I assume my wife and I did OK since she seems happy and is now in her own quest to bring up her own daughter.

A few weeks ago she asked if my wife and I could baby-sit our new granddaughter Lila after a family gathering scheduled for that afternoon. We didn't see any problems because we had been with Lila for many days over the past 3 months. She was basically used to us and we considered this an opportunity to get to know her more. After the party we were asked to take our daughter's SUV back to her apartment where we would watch Lila for the night. When we arrived at our daughter's home we were excited and admittedly a bit worried because we hadn't taken care of an infant for the past 34 years. I told my wife it was like riding a bike. She did not appreciate the analogy.

Before we left for the family gathering we made sure all was set up. We had plenty of formula, diapers, water, clothes, wet naps, blankets, and anything else one was supposed to have. I have to admit we were both quite confident.

We left the party about 4:00 PM with Lila safely locked away in her car seat that was placed in the back seat. The seat had Lila riding backwards. There was a mirror set up above the car seat so the driver could watch through the rear view mirror. Driving back to my daughter's home all I could see was her feet since I was a bit taller than her mother.

At one point I asked my wife why Lila was so quiet. She told me the baby was probably sleeping. The concept of 'probably' scared the hell out of me so I convinced my wife to crawl over her seat to make sure Lila was still there. She was.

When we got to Lila's home, we collected her things that filled a rather large bag and proceeded to take her out of the SUV. Back in my time a baby's car seat consisted of having the seat belts attach a small seat to the seat. I pushed every button that existed on this module that would have protected an airman after he or she ejected from a jet aircraft. Both my wife and I pushed, tugged, and twisted Lila's seat without any success. After at least a half-hour of attempting to free our granddaughter from the throne which imprisoned her. Our first babysitting experience had us fail at getting Lila out of the vehicle.

We had visions of sleeping in the SUV when all of a sudden my wife found the secret button that was underneath the seat. Lila was freed.

We carried Lila into the house and my wife proceeded to feed, change, play with, clean throw-up, and then finally get her ready for bed. Things were actually going according to plan when all of a sudden she started making gagging sounds. Holding the baby my wife asked if I had heard the sound. I lied and hoped she would never do that again. She did. Looking at each other we both panicked. Should we call '911' right away? Lila seemed to be all right but she kept on gagging on something we knew could not have existed. Her color seemed good and she was actually smiling through the gagging. My wife then put her on her knee and banged on her back. She burped a burp that most college freshmen would be proud of. Later, my daughter told me this was quite normal. It would have been nice to have known this earlier.

We finally put her to bed and set up her monitor. We didn't have monitors when my daughter was a baby. We just listened carefully. I found out the one thing you don't do to the monitors is plug them in when they are close together. A noise filled the room that brought tears to all three of us. After a few minutes Lila calmed down, her grandmother stopped glaring at me, and was ready for bed.

My wife and I didn't sleep a minute that night. Maybe it was because we were terrified to plug the monitors in again but I think the real reason was we discovered we weren't as ready to take care of our granddaughter as we thought.

The next morning my daughter arrived home asked if everything went well. Of course we told her it did. We said our good-byes and proceeded to drive home. The first thing my wife asked was if we could babysit again. Laughingly I said yes and hoped it would be real soon.

Jim Fabiano is a teacher and writer living in York, Maine