At the hospital classes we took to prepare ourselves for looking after a baby (hey, we’re clueless, we NEEDED those classes) they were talking a bit about comfortable temperatures for the baby.

Apparently a comfortable sleeping temp is no more than 18C (64F). We almost snorted laughing. Where do you get 18C degrees in Sydney in January?! I obviously immediately started freaking out about us killing the baby with the usual January night temps of 30C (86F). Obviously. I mean, what else are pregnancy hormones for if not for freaking out? I’m just saying.

The Banker softly reminded his hormonal wife that he himself, and his sisters, survived quite successfully, despite growing up in one of the hottest towns in the country. (What do I know? I grew up in snow so deep we could build tunnels we could walk inside them. You just dressed us kids up according to the “Michelin man principle” – just chuck on another layer of clothing on top of the existing layers and kick the kids out the door. We couldn’t move much but you sure as hell stayed warm!)

So we started researching air conditioning. Sure, it’s for the baby, but our unit does get very warm in summer and it would be quite nice even for us adults to be able to breathe without scorching our throats in our own home in summer.

Our living area is quite large so we had to get one of the bigger aircon units, with a matching price tag of course, almost $2000. But all in the name of baby, we sucked it up and started organising for the aircon guy to come out and assess how to install it.

And we called him. And texted him. And left messages. And for some reason he didn’t want our particular job because we never heard from him. This is all done at the same time as we’re packing up our kitchen and chasing our kitchen people, purchasing appliances and creating a right mess at home, so we’re starting to get slightly cranky with the lack of success we’re having with our tradies and progress in general.

Eventually I managed to talk some other aircon tradie into coming to take a look and he quoted us almost $2000 to install the air con (we had some extra quirky circumstances that complicated the install). Cue the tears.

We decided that the aircon had to return to the shop. Not even in the name of the baby could we justify that price tag. Cue phone calls to Mother In Law to ask how she managed to keep her babies alive. They used a portable aircon unit that uses water to cool down the surrounding air.

So back to the drawing board to research a machine we knew nothing about. We of course quickly realised this machine would only be for the baby, and would have to be installed in the nursery. Us parents would still cook in summer, or spend excessive amounts of time in the nursery, but as long as she would stay alive and be comfortable we figured everything else really didn’t matter. (See how responsible parents we already are!)

Turns out these puppies are large, noisy and more than a little ugly. And have to be emptied of water regularly. Not exactly what I had in mind for our budding cute nursery in the making.

But we bought it. We installed it (it’s a DIY install). We tested it. And it works a treat. Our little princess won’t cook.

Try to ignore the ladder reflection in the aircon unit. Work in progress in there. But this is the esthetics it added to our nursery. Does it count that the ginormous hose is actually grey (hence follows the nursery colours)?

Not happy. Not happy at all.