Analysis

The poem looks at a babysitter’s feelings baby-sitting somebody else’s baby and wishing it was theirs.

The poem begins with a sense of feeling out of place in ‘a strange room’ not at home, listening ‘for the wrong baby’. This is because she does not love ‘this baby’.

The baby is asleep, which is described as: ‘sleeping a snuffly Roseate, bubbling sleep’ the use of alliteration ‘sleeping a snuffly’ express the breathing sounds of the baby, as does the onomatopoeic ‘bubbling’ sound.

The baby is described as ‘fair’ but rather than over glorifying this child, as one may do one’s own, she calls it a ‘perfectly acceptable child’ the idea of acceptable means that she is nothing special, just ordinary to her.

More importantly she declares: ‘I am afraid of her.’ which does not make the idea of baby-sitting this child seem like a good idea.

She fears that if the child wakes ‘she will hate me’ as she will make lots of noise and ‘shout her hot midnight rage’ the ‘h’ alliteration emphasising the harshness of the sounds she may make if she wakes up.

The description of her nose running being described as disgusting and the ‘perfume of her breath’ will do little to make her feel any happier with her.

The relationship is certainly not a close one between baby-sitter and child.

The second stanza looks at how the child will feel about being baby-sat. She will feel ‘absolute abandonment’ which is a strong term, emphasising how deserted she is.

This is compared using a metaphor to being worse than ‘the lover cold in lonely sheets’. She will be like a lover who wakes to find her loved one gone and replaced by an impostor.

This is linked further to the idea of the child ‘stretching for milk-familiar comforting’ only to find the baby-sitter.

The fact that this is not what she wants is emphasised at the end by the repetition of ‘it will not come’ at the end which really emphasises the sense of emptiness and loneliness felt by both the baby and the baby sitter.