For those of you who aren’t interested in such anecdotes, I’ve done you the favour of leaving it after the jump.
Category: Parenting
I am a dad. If I were a woman, I’d be a mum. But I’m not.
Categories
His ‘M’ Face
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/
Categories
Home From Hospital
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.
Categories
Second Letter To The Unborn Son
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.
Categories
On The Brink
It is now 8 days until the baby’s projected due date. In reality, this means that the baby could arrive any time in the next two weeks or so.
Maybe I’ll hear a funny buzzing noise while sat at my desk. I’ll quickly figure out that it’s my phone vibrating (I’m clever like that, you see) and so I’ll check the screen to see who it is. *Karen mob*, apparently. I will answer the phone with something like “Hi, are you alright?” and [she][] will say *”My waters have just broken!”* or *”I’m having real, proper contractions!”*
[she]: http://uborka.nu/rise/
At this point I’ll find out where she is, and arrange a rendezvous, and then I’ll stuff my possessions into my bag and hurtle out of the office while hollering a suitable explanatory message back at my co-workers.
Or maybe we’ll be sat on the sofa watching a film, and from beside me I’ll hear an *”Uh-oh.”* or *”Nnnnngg.”* or *”Yaaargh!”* and this will serve as my cue. We’ve probably got enough time to wait until the next advert break. It’s not like she’s going anywhere under her own steam in a hurry.
Sadly, it’s also highly likely that I’ll be prodded awake in the middle of the night. If necessary, I will politely, by use of appropriate hand gestures, tell Karen to STFU while I lurch downstairs to find a vein and shoot up with espresso. I’m sure she understands that it is in her own interests to allow me to do this, in order that I may become a more effective labour partner.
Pregnancy has been a long and annoying wait. It’s only in the last few days that the end has realistically been in sight, and it has kicked in: yes, we really are going to deliver a fucking baby, how about that. Followed, of course, by a future that it would be daft to attempt to predict. That excites me.
Karen and I have chosen possibly the most inconvenient time imaginable to consider buying a house. But some things you can’t control, and you have to go with the flow.
A couple of major factors have precipitated this new project. The first is the size of our current house, which is a rented property and consumes more than a third of our joint net income. Though it is adequate at present, I think that when the baby gets old enough to need his own bedroom, it just isn’t going to work for us anymore. It’s also on a relatively busy road by a railway station, with lots of boy racers, shouters, drunkards, urinaters and vandals all through the night. I think I’ve lived here for long enough.
The second factor is a financial one. Whereas I was previously under the impression that making that first step onto the so-called “housing ladder” was out of my reach, I have recently reassessed and been pleasantly surprised by my findings. In the light of the deposit that Karen and I think we have at our disposal, research indicates that we stand a good chance of getting a mortgage that allows us to buy our dream house, with repayments that amount to less than our currently monthly expenditure on rent. We will be speaking to a financial adviser on Tuesday.
Last night we looked at a property in town which had good qualities, but not enough of them. Our initial gut response was a big “no” – we told the estate agent our specific reasons, for future reference. We then stopped off at a pub on our way home, where the introduction to my system of two pints of London Pride (and a lime & soda for her) caused us to attempt to talk ourselves into liking the property in question. Naturally, our self-awareness left us in no doubt that this was a natural response, and nothing to act upon. Sleep on it? Damn right. This morning, we were back to “no”.
So the task remains to find the dream home. A lofty target, but nothing less will do.
Categories
I’ve Been Remiss
As I sat in the pub last night with a pint of London Pride and some other parents-to-be (whom Karen and I met through the local NCT ante-natal program), I realised that I’ve been terribly, terribly wasteful.
Since October, the composition of my life has been changing gradually but dramatically. I’ve been making preparations for the arrival of the baby, figuring out how it will fit into my life, looking forward to all the exciting experiences that we will share, learning how to support Karen through pregnancy and labour, making new friends at ante-natal classes, deflecting the attempts made by my boss to induce despair, deflecting surplus advice… all this and more, but would you know it by looking at this site?
Would you, boat.
I haven’t been writing in my offline diary much lately either. I guess I’ve been so busy *thinking* and *doing*, there hasn’t been much time left for *recording*.
And as I sat in the pub last night and was struck by the realisation that it’s too late now to really do anything about it, I wondered if it mattered. Will I look back on this period and think “My, my, good times, why did I not log them more carefully?” or is this just the prelude to something greater? Is this pre-fatherhood period a journey in itself, or just a means to get to a screaming little destination?
But then maybe these are just the last few moments of “freedom” before the great responsibility arrives ((a responsibility which, I have no hesitation in adding, I relish with open arms)) and by focussing on *thinking* and *doing*, rather than *recording*, I am doing **exactly the right thing**.
So, in conclusion, I guess I could have fed you anecdotes and insights and all sorts of nuggets that would allow me to look back on this period with clarity and accuracy, but you know what? I’ve been busy.
Looking into the future, babies rapidly grow into children and then into sullen teenagers and then into parents themselves. Though the ultimate destination is significant (basically the continued existence of the human race), the journey is undoubtedly of great importance. I will be watching the creature develop and pass milestones, from the small (his first smile!) to the medium (his first words!) to the huge (his first hangover!). People often say “I wish that I’d taken more photos” when they realise that once the baby hit 2 years old, they fell out of the habit and allowed its development to go undocumented for years after that.
Now, I’m not one of those people who feels that everything needs to be documented (oh, you noticed?) because more than once I’ve ruined a good day out by spending the whole time staring at the LCD of a digital camera. But there are some things that you only get one shot at. Maybe in 20 years it will all still be crystal clear in my head, but I doubt it. It’s more likely that I’ll regret the gaps in the documented history, and I’ll wish that I’d taken five minutes every few months to get out the camera, wave Yellowphant in front of the child, and capture one of those moments of a youthfulness that will be all-too-quickly demolished by the cruelties of the world.
Certain parallels could be drawn this weekend. Yesterday we went to a nearby hospital for a guided tour of their maternity unit, and bumped into a couple whom we had been sat next to, and getting on well with, at our last ante-natal class. After the hospital tour, we invited them for a swift coffee, which swiftly became a swift sequence of beers for the dads, which swiftly became a swift curry, which swiftly became a swift agreement to do this again.
Similarly, this morning we took two crusts of bread round to the local duckpond and bumped into the family of mallards whom we had made the acquaintance of a week ago (pictured at the time). We distributed our slices to the ravenous mother, the three resident drakes, the eight chirping offspring, and the huge fish that also lived in the pond. At first the mother was wary, but she soon realised that we meant them no harm, and she allowed her ducklings to come right up to our feet.
It’s an enjoyable enough experience already, even without the presence of a small chirping offspring of our own to share it with.
Other notes
Then, this afternoon I did a spot of gardening, resulting in a rather angry looking rash on the back of my right hand, almost certainly due to a poorly thought-out contact with some [poison ivy][] or [deadly nightshade][] or some such.
[poison ivy]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_ivy
[deadly nightshade]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadly_nightshade
We’ve also bought a shredder so that we can securely destroy old bank statements and the like. Last time I needed to destroy a batch of bank statements, it involved sneaking home from work at lunchtime and whipping up a quick barbecue. This resulted in light ash embarrassingly fluttering across our neighbours’ gardens – another ill-advised strategy. Karen doesn’t know that I did this. Yet.