Author: pete

Nobody told me about the hallucinations.

Well, hallucination is probably a strong word.

As a direct (and indirect) result of being in my first few weeks of fatherhood, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with a baby in my arms. Only, it’s not. I’m actually holding a pillow, I just believe that it is a baby.

Never was this highlighted so starkly as a few nights ago. I was convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a baby was resting on my forearm. Karen informed me that Bernard was actually in the cot, sleeping. I sleepily argued, no he is definitely here in front of me.

This went back and forth for a few iterations. Realising that we were getting nowhere, I performed further tests on the baby. Upon poking it in the forehead and feeling my finger sink into what felt like a bundle of feathers, I had to concede that the item that I was holding was, in fact, a pillow.

These moments of confusion occur on an almost nightly basis. They’ve even happened to Karen once or twice. But I’m starting to get wise to them now, and I can now catch myself quite quickly. Essentially by poking the baby in the forehead if it is dark.

It’s not a highly technical method, but it serves my purposes well. It is primarily suitable because the probability of the item in question being a baby, and not a pillow, is probably about 0.01. In Karen’s case, the probability of it being a baby is much higher – I believe that she has a much less invasive method of testing. Probably sniffing his arse or somesuch.

**UPDATE:** The following night’s hallucination was also amusing.

*Me:* What would you like me to do with this baby?

*Karen:* The baby is in the cot. Put that pillow down.

*Me:* Okay. What would you like me to do with this grobag?

*Karen:* That’s a pillow. Lie down and go back to sleep.

*Me:* Right you are.

Bernard pulls a face sometimes which we call his ‘M’ face. This involves a certain amount of lip-smacking, slurping, tongue-gyrating etc that means “Feed Me” or, alternatively “Feed Me More”.

[Karen][], when time permits, wishes to write a lengthy article on the problems that we have had getting him to breastfeed, so I will leave that particular topic to her. (Update: it’s [here][])

[karen]: http://uborka.nu/rise/
[here]: http://uborka.nu/rise/2006/07/moo-or-a-week-in-the-life/

In general, we’ve been seeing progress across the board, which is doing wonders for our confidence. With the help of our local midwives and maternity care assistants, Bernard is now breastfeeding with the assistance of [Nipple Shields][], he’s now sleeping deeply in bursts of up to 4 hours, he’s consuming over 150ml of milk per day ((one of the advantages of cup-feeding is that, like bottle-feeding, you can see exactly how much he is getting, rather than having to make assumptions based upon the number of minutes that he spends at the breast)), he’s spending less and less time each day in an aggravated and noisy state (because we are able to respond to his discomforts more quickly) and all of these contribute to the fact that we can love him more and more each day.

[nipple shields]: http://www.medela.com/newfiles/nipshield.html

Bernard seems like a different fella now to the chap who slithered out of Karen’s fluttering love wallet ((thanks to Muffy’s World Of Vagina Euphemisms)) a week ago. He’s more playful, more relaxed, and more likely to stare me in the face for a minute without blinking.

And we have changed too. Initially we spent the whole day trying to figure out how to get him comfortable. We created a spreadsheet to log his daily activities, we bought all sorts of equipment for expressing milk and sterilising equipment. The next stage was that of actually getting him comfortable – Wednesday in particular consisted of a lot of very practical and systematic baby maintenance. Having mastered that, we are now able to spend a good amount of time just talking to him, singing to him, telling him all about the world. We’re all very calm. We’re all very happy.

1. I now consider myself to be **an expert in nappies**. This startles me, and is probably startling you right now. When I was a father to be, I didn’t see how one could possibly find the process of changing a nappy enjoyable. Boy, was I wrong. Not only is it something that I can do with aplomb, despite my lack of breasts, it is also very edifying to inspect the contents and scribble down a few notes about what was found therein. Colour, consistency and quantity are all important indicators to the kind of nutrition that the baby is receiving. I always assumed that any nappy-related post on this site would be comical and glib, not intense and sincere.

2. [Karen][] allows me a few hours a day to myself. She posits, and I think I agree with her, that if I can get 2-4 hours good sleep per day, then my subsequent alertness will more than make up for her being on baby watch alone for a while. I have noticed, to my eternal peplexation, that when I close my eyes (either to curl up in bed or to lather shampoo into my hair in the shower), that **I picture myself as a baby**. I imagine that I am Bernard-sized, or at least Bernard-proportioned, turning over in bed, or stood at the North end of the bath massaging shampoo into his hair. I muse on the parallels between the water that made it to the house without leaking somewhere along the way; and the supersperm that was first to the egg without giving up somewhere along the way.

[karen]: http://uborka.nu/rise/

As [Karen has mentioned][], he isn’t the most adept feeder in this household. While she busies herself expressing, it tends to fall to me to hold the cup to his lips. Though this is great for father-child bonding, I worry that it is at the expense of the mother-child bonding which is more important right now. I put this to one side – we’ve got to get food into him, and we’ll do whatever is necessary in order to accomplish this.

[karen has mentioned]: http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2006/06/status-report/

I lie in bed. Outside, there’s a fairly constant traffic noise, an intermittent chirrupping of birds, an occasional train passing by, and an isolated cheer of the kind that is regularly associated with football supporters.

Beside me, Karen snores like a diesel train. This snore is infused with new meaning – she snores because Bernard is asleep, to keep her own sleep account in the black. It keeps me awake, but I don’t care. I know that my worst-case scenario is to shut myself in the spare bedroom for a few hours when I can, but she’s the only one who can breastfeed him, so she doesn’t have that luxury.

The phone rings, so I take care of it. Bernard has been sleeping since we got back from hospital four hours ago. We have been visited by my mother and her mother. They provided copious amounts of food, to keep us going all week, and left within 90 minutes. They are stars.

The house is full of flowers – now I know why we have so many vases.

Thank you all very much for your messages of congratulations. Right now, I feel like the luckiest man alive.

Continues from [here][].

[here]: http://www.uborka.nu/rise/2006/06/news/

**13:00** My phone starts buzzing on the desk. *Hello?* “Come home now.” *Right away.*

**13:15** I’m at home. One of Karen’s friends, who had been invited over for lunch, is offering moral support. I start timing contractions. They are already only 5 minutes apart. I suggest that we phone the hospital. They invite us in.

**14:20** We arrive at hospital. We had anticipated bad traffic, but in the event it was plain sailing. We get settled down in a room.

**15:00** Contractions start to get more painful. We apply the TENS machine.

**15:30** or thereabouts. Contractions still getting more painful. Entonox has been applied.

**16:00** or thereabouts. Entonox is making Karen feel incredibly dizzy and spaced out. She uses it a bit less.

**16:30** or thereabouts. We request an examination. 7cm dilated. This is much more than we were expecting at this stage, and the good news gives us a real boost.

**17:00** or thereabouts. The contractions undergo a change, and Karen yells for a midwife. Pushing is going to be occurring soon.

**17:30** or thereabouts. The top of the baby’s head is visible, but we’re only seeing a little more with each push. Karen begins to get disheartened. Heck, I begin to get disheartened, but I try not to show it.

**18:00** or thereabouts. We’re getting damn close. Karen’s absolutely knackered. I throw everything that I have into my pep talk. Bless her, I can tell that she wants to call me names, but she’s very polite.

**18:20** The baby’s head reaches the point of no return. The next contraction will push the head out.

**18:23** The baby’s head is out. The next contraction will push the body out.

**18:26** The body comes out. I break down into tears.

Hey there, little guy.

We’re not that different, you and I. At this moment in time, we both share the feeling of being the centre of the universe. Oh, sure, I don’t deny that the world existed before I was born, but I’ve never been able to imagine it. Even when watching grainy black & white television footage from the fifties, I imagine that I must have been somewhere on the planet while it was all taking place. My lack of existence is inconceivable.

But soon you will be born, and I know that it won’t seem so strange. Because I will have seen, with my own eyes, the world changing from a Bernardless one to a be-Bernarded one, and through this reflection I will at last appreciate that I too was created.

I mentioned this to your mother, and she couldn’t grasp where I was coming from with this. I guess I always assumed that other people share my inability to imagine a world without themselves in it, but clearly I am wrong.

TTFN

Dad.