A couple of weeks ago Adam and I went to Amsterdam, we had the time of our lives and really enjoyed some adult time together. We all deserve that right? That grown up time. I know that once children arrive our lives change drastically and everything about them changes to accommodate family life, but that doesn’t mean that we have to lose our social lives, our connection to our partners outside of being “mummy” and “daddy”. We don’t have to lose ourselves, even if we are fundamentally changed by parenthood, we’re still us.
With that in mind, I reiterate: everyone is allowed adult time, a social life and to be child free every so often.
We’re allowed it but sometimes it’s not so easy to get it is it? Adam and I are incredibly privileged – we live nearby to his parents and my mum actually lives with us (we’re in the process of building an annex for her so that we can continue to all live together and support each other as a multi-generation family). I am not foolish enough to underestimate how lucky we are and after watching friends have countless struggles for childcare, I’ve come to see it as a real struggle for many. There are the occasions when Adam’s parents will be abroad on one of their holidays and my mum will be busy with something, which means that if Adam and I want to go out and do something, a last minute offer for drinks with friends we haven’t seen in an age or a work event that requires us both to attend, our hands are tied and inevitably one of us stays at home or neither of us go. We’re so lucky that this is only occasional, but after chatting to so many of you on Instagram I know that this is a constant occurrence for many parents. So what do you do?
You hire a babysitter.
How do you hire a babysitter? Do you do what my parents did and ask your friend’s friend’s teenage son who wants to earn £20 on a Saturday night for watching the TV whilst your child goes to bed?? Do you visit an agency where you know the babysitter has been vetted but you don’t have any first hand recommendations for them, ultimately a total stranger.
What if you could combine the two? Well, now you can. Enter: Bubble app.
Yes, I said app and yes, you need to keep reading. Bubble is a unique and innovative app that is revolutionising the way we look at babysitting and childcare. If you think about how we “shop” for a babysitter, an overwhelming majority of us make our decisions based on someone we know giving us a recommendation. It makes us feel safer to know that we are leaving our beloved offspring with a known face, with someone who our friends or family have had a first hand experience with and can tell us that they left an unclean cup on the side after a 2 hour sit but other than that they were spot on. And it’s this dynamic – that personal recommendation from the people we trust – that bubble brings into its app.
It’s not an agency – babysitters aren’t ‘vetted’ in the traditional sense – however everyone who registers as a Bubble sitter is given an online background check and ID check by their partner companies who specialise in this type of security. This is a great baseline, but the magic of bubble is the way in which the app allows you to connect with friends and see who has hired the baby sitter that you are thinking of hiring. So for example, you log on and you add your school details, nursery details and sync your facebook page to your private profile (again, I’ll reiterate private for the people in the back because, well, popping your kid’s school info in an app sounds insane – so yes, totally private, it is purely a way to connect you to others) and then search for a sitter. When your search completes you will find that Bubble app automatically shows you the links to your friends and family, have they been hired by a friend of your sister? That would count as a secondary connection.
The app is easy to use, like combining the power of social media with the benefit of those two security checks on top too. And most importantly – you always choose the babysitter you want. You’re in control.
When you think about it, it’s not just those together times when you really need a sitter is it? How many times during holidays have we declared that we just need to get on with some extra stuff? Life admin and laundry? It’s impossible to do with small children desperate for attention and in need of constant supervision. Life becomes a challenge when all it would take is a few child free hours to *just* get something done. The truth is that we put too much pressure on ourselves. There is really no reason why we can’t hire a sitter to come and look after our children whilst we sort out the things that we need to do – they would be done faster and with so much stress all round. That is where the ‘Book Now’ feature comes in really handy on the app. If you need someone ASAP, if it’s an emergency or you have just reached the end of your tether and you need a break, in a few taps and you can see the various sitter options around you – using their reviews and the mutual friends you have in common to find someone great.
We deserve the adult time, we deserve the me time and our children deserve the best of us and of the sitters we hire. With Bubble app that can be achieved with just a few taps.
H 🙂 x
