What do you do if no babysitter?

[ReturnofSaturn]

We have a 19 month old son.

Me and DH are desperate for a night out just me and him.

However we have no one to babysit. The only family I have here is my parents who can't do childcare as my dad is my mums carer - she has dementia.
I have a sister but i just can't ask her right now as she works full time as well as doing a lot for my parents. Plus her work is usually evening hours too ( casino)

So my question is, what do other people do in this situation? Just never go out? Pay a stranger to babysit? (I really struggle with the idea of a stranger in our house with our baby while we are out)

I'm not really looking for a solution here, just wondering what other people do?

Our 2.5 dd is at nursery and they are open on bank holidays, when my dh is off and sometimes I'm off. We do day dates then so we've been out maybe 3 times by ourselves for lunch in 2.5 years.

Unless your dc have an early enough bed time and/or you're not both working, I can't see how any parents keep their relationship as any kind of priority without going out together.

Good luck op!

We didn't go out for years.

If I'd really wanted to the local holiday club we used had staff that would babysit. We could have found a local teen too but we didn't. Both fine to do but we're pretty boring.

When DM went out (she was a single parent), the 17 year old from a few doors down would babysit us.

We're trying someone from Sitters next week.

Ask a friend you trust and return the favour at a later date

We didn't go out.

We used to have lunch dates though when the kids were in school/nursery as opposed to going for a meal in the evening.

Pay a babysitter. Ask a friend who hasn’t kids and repay the favour. Some of my friend have teenagers who are happy to earn some extra cash.
I can’t imagine not ever going out with my husband just because we have children. I genuinely believe that it’s important for children to see that their parents have lives and need to spend time together and that the world doesn’t solely revolve around them.

We just didn't go out when they were younger. It was a pain but we had no real choice. Didn't know any teenagers who would have welcomed a bit of babysitting, and our parents were of the age that we need to be looking after them not the other way round.

It does eventually get easier, if that's any consolation.

Friends, neighbours, kids of friends and neighbours.
There will be teenagers in a nearby school studying childcare GCSE or A level who'd be a good bet too.

I think you'll find none of us go out and capture 'strangers' off the street with a big net, drag them into our houses and then leave our dc with them. What an odd choice of language.

We've always had to pay people to sit for us, and I earned that money that way as a teen, and my dds have both earned money that way as teens to. But they are people you know / get to know / dc of your friends or colleague or neighbours etc.

We've used (amongst others).....
next door neighbour's teen
our childminder's dd
Young helper from the swimming club lessons
friends from Church
our friends' regular sitter
colleague
colleague's dd

and they got to know our dc first and then we started leaving them when we were local just for a couple of hours and grew it from there.

We didn't go out just the two of us often (but my DM did babysit for us). However we did meet up with friends at each other's houses for dinner or drinks and brought DC along. When little they slept in prams and as they got older they played until they dropped. We walked home at the end of the night.

I’m lucky as my cousin has my son over night once every month. I also sometimes get a babysitter, he has started school now and I don’t work Fridays, so my boyfriend has changed his WFH day to a Friday.

We just didnt go out lol

We used to go out for nice lunches at nap time and ds would sleep in pram

We just never went out together without the children!

We chose to have our children. Admittedly we didn’t know that my widowed DF would remarry and only be allowed minimal contact with his family or that FIL would dearly love to be involved but his wife (MIL also deceased) also does not like him having relationship with his family.

We had an Amazing night away together for the first time since having children when eldest was 16 and youngest was at a school residential!

I used friends who had DC a similar age. Then I would sit for them when they wanted to go out. There were a group of about 4 or 5 of us who would all sit for each other. It worked well and I never minded babysitting for other people in return. We probably went out once a month and I would babysit for someone else once a month.

Swop, local teenager, neighbour who could do with the money etc.

What they all said^^. It's always going to feel odd leaving the child for the first time, but by the second or third visit you'll be chucking the keys at them while you reverse down the drive!

We've used my dc's nursery workers. She left nursery 4 years ago and we still use the sitters a least once a month. No family nearby either. Personally I could go through life being so restricted that you could never go out for a meal/ a movie/ show etc. If you use someone who is unknown to you then I would pay them to come round and play with your dc once or twice before leaving them so that you feel more comfortable.

We don’t have any family living in the UK so used staff from DT’s nursery as babysitters. It worked brilliantly - we and DT’s knew them (DT’s went to nursery full time from six months old), they were well trained if there had been an emergency and they wanted additional money.

It meant we could have a weekly night out knowing that DT’s were safe and well cared for. We always put them to bed before we went out and although neither were good sleepers, the sitters didn’t have much to do.

We didn't go out together when our children were young. I did join a babysitting circle for a while (group of parents who agree to baby sit for each other, you get points for every time you sit and can use them up by getting people to sit for you) but we didn't want to go out enough to make it worthwhile and found ourselves babysitting all the time and never using up the points!
Do you know anyone with a teenage daughter you can trust. Our neighbours daughter sat for us once when she was around 16.

We just don't go out. Yes of course we miss it but also too knackered to enjoy a night out! We're looking forward to living it up during their teenage years when they're old enough to leave by themselves!

We aren’t comfortable with strangers babysitting.

The solution is to just not go out.

We also used to go to friends houses fir dinner but the children came with us. The friends had children the same age. This always worked because the kids would play and entertain themselves while the adults chatted

I have to say that my gob is genuinely smacked by all these people professing not to have been out alone in years with their spouses. Is this the norm? How do you actually maintain a semblance of a relationship?

We began by going out separately with a friend. When dd started school we sometimes had a lunch out at husband worked shifts and I was pt day som had a lunchtime a week free. He was free once in three weeks so this helped. As she got older we just all went out together cinema meals including New Year's Eve, swimming ext. Not ideal but not too bad as only one child. We did get parent's to babysit for really special occasions like weddings though. The way we did would be much harder I think with more than one child.