Beach Babe

Like the rest of Spain, we’re on holiday at the beach.  It’s our first beach holiday with a child. He’s 13 months, still can’t walk, weighs about 11kg and still likes to crawl all over his parents at every opportunity.  The beach does not enhance this experience.

Here’s some stuff you might not know if you haven’t tried to go with a baby or small toddler yet.

• Your days of lying back on a sand controlled towel are over (an arsenal of toys will not make any difference).  Babies and toddlers will not sit quietly in the shade, on a towel, playing with toys. What they will in fact do is crawl directly off designated sand free zone and bring back a substantial amount of the stuff with them.

• You’re not cool anymore. Face it, there is NO WAY on this earth to go to the beach packed like a camel – carrying change bag, toys, bucket and spade, water, baby food, umbrella, towels, and more (am sure Kate has the definitive spreadsheet somewhere of all the things one should take to the beach) AND carry an 11kg baby all the while walking on hot sand AND look cool.  You are the stereotypical parent of every hip single’s nightmare.  Don’t attempt to fool anyone.  If you’re not loaded up like a cartless gypsy, every other parent will be smugly aware that you are either at the beach for five minutes or about to face down a disaster.

• Babies hate anything to do with sun protection and will make the whole task of protecting them hell. Applying sunscreen – hell. At least do it at home so you don’t have the hideous feeling of putting cream on sandy skin to deal with at the beach.  Hat and sunglasses will be thrown off.   As an aside – while sunglasses on their own face are a source of extreme annoyance that they will not put up with, sunglasses on your face are an awesome source of entertainment. Grabbing them off and then attempting to put them back on but lining up the arm with your eye rather than your ear can be repeated endlessly without ever getting boring

• Danger of Exposure. No this does not relate to the danger of your child being exposed to the myriad of naked bodies and private bits of the general public – though very real and potentially traumatic on Europe’s beaches – this note relates to the danger of you, the parents’, exposure.
  Babies grab at stuff.  Make sure everything’s fastened down and tied up, or add bikinis with delightful details like beads to the list of fashion items you can no longer buy.  When beaded strings are holding up your top or keeping together your bottoms, your baby’s fascination with finding and playing with these can result in some unexpected moments of nudity.  One minute your baby is quietly playing beside you, the next you’re standing and wondering why there is a pair of bikinis just like yours left on your towel.  Side tie bottoms should be avoided.  Trust me.

• Poo control. There is no good way to mix nappies and water.  Whether you choose to use the regular nappy or the special swimmer nappy, the result of a poo is pretty much the same.  It’s captured. And then turned in to a kind of poo soup.  How watered down it gets depends on how long you let it swish around in there.  Any way you cut it, getting that nappy off and capturing the stuff is not an attractive prospect.
  If there is a nearby public change room you may be able to achieve the physically demanding task of racing across the hot sand while holding baby out at arms distance. Once you get there it will certainly be messy but at least you’ll have a workspace.
  Mostly the only given option is to attempt to change your baby on one of your favourite beach towels.  And you still have to get from the water to the towel. Poo soup will be dispersed on your person and your towel; there is no avoiding it.
  One might, if one were perhaps not overly concerned with their fellow beach goers, be tempted to release the contents of the nappy in to the water whilst pretending to be innocently submerging the baby for a swim.  But that would be gross.  You would then probably have to stop criticising the people that throw their cigarette butts in the water, which is a bitter pill to swallow.  I mean would be, if you were to do such a thing.  Which would be understandable but in no way something I would advocate, of course.
  There is then, naturally, the no-nappy option. You can use bathers that make no pretence of capturing anything, or you can let baby get around in his birthday suit.  I prefer the first of these just to avoid sunburn in uncomfortable places and to encourage my child to play with something other than his willie all day.  Admittedly this means you’ll have to be ready to get to the water, I mean toilet, at a moments notice, and you may want to keep child off, well, pretty much everything for the day.  You will almost certainly end up needing to scrub down the arm you hold the baby with.

• Beaches take some getting used to for babies: This can make you wonder what you’re going through it all for.  But they come around and then water can entertain them for SEVERAL MINUTES AT A TIME, which is like a long holiday for parents of young infants.

If you can get past all the hard stuff, you might find yourself thoroughly enjoying watching your baby’s screams of delight at the tiny waves and splashing water and actually find some moments where you enjoy the feel of salt on your skin, the invigorating feel of cold water on a hot day and drying off under a shady umbrella.

photo credit: abbybatchelde

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