Category: Parenting

As we approach the end of the first trimester (in English, we’re nearly a third of the way through), we look forward with relish to all the good things that have been promised us. Apparently the middle third is the easy bit, where the morning sickness goes away and all the cute stuff happens. How can I refuse?

Christmas seems like a sensible time to do all the meeting with the family and telling them all about it. I understand from my research that it is considered rude to wait until after the birth before passing this information on. Never one to buck convention, so it shall be.

Life in general continues to race on at a terribly exciting pace around me, while I fret needlessly about trivial things, and revisit the same thoughts over and over and over again, not really so much in search of answers but just for the exercise. Small things happen that make me ache for fatherhood, and I remind myself that if I just sit tight, it will all come soon.

And I wonder about whether my girlfriend has stumbled across this site, and what its purpose will be in 6 months when the baby is born, and whether I should keep writing it then, and whether I should keep writing it now.

And then I daydream a little, fart, scratch myself, and wish for snow.

She’s still being sick in the morning, and we are now past eight weeks, so the worst of the pressure has passed. Her latest purchase is a pair of acupressure wristabands which she says are quite uncomfortable, but they might be working. Let’s see what happens on Monday when they go up against the 7:30 start and a full day at work – that will be a battle and no mistake.

Myself, I’m settled down, I’d say. There isn’t really much for me to be doing at this stage – I guess that my biggest responsibilities come after the baby is born, and I take on half (or thereabouts) of looking after the little fella. At this early stage, there isn’t really a significant change to our normal daily life, but I expect that towards the later stages of the pregnancy I will be feeling a little left out. Ah well, c’est la vie.

She’s been very low on energy lately – she is going to bed even earlier than before, and the rest of the time she is generally lying down on either the sofa or the bed. She’s a little upset that I will find her unsexy and go hunting for a replacement. I’ve so far failed to come up with a real killer reply to that one, apart from “that won’t happen.” That’s all that I can think of.

I won’t deny that things are changing. But I’m really not in a position to forecast what will happen next – whether things will change back in time, or whether they will just change into something else entirely. It’s clearly a period of transition, so I’m just going to sit tight, hold her close, and we’ll take this ride together. Because I love her, and that’s what we do.

My grandfather died the night before last. My son will now never have a great-grandfather. I suppose this isn’t really a particularly rare occurrence.

I guess we all measure things from our own experience. When I was born, one of my great-grandmothers was still alive. I have this expectation that the same will be true of my child, when it comes into existence. Given that my father’s mother died very shortly after her husband, presumably as a result of “pining away”, I wonder what the future holds for my mother’s mother.

But then, if we’re measuring from our own experience, we can extrapolate this information to deduce that my grandmother will be tough as old boots (there is evidence to suggest this already) and will live to an incredibly ripe 90 years or so. This, too, is backed up by the evidence – she’s in impeccable health, and though she used to smoke when she was younger, something about her is incredibly revitalising.

I look up to her in many ways, the most significant being the fact that she’s still working, even though she should have retired years and years ago. I find the prospect of retirement to be infathomable.

Indeed, looking at the current state of the whole pension crisis, I expect that by the time my hair goes grey, retirement age will be 107, and so I wouldn’t be able to exercise that option even if I wanted to.

And what of my recently deceased great grandfather? Well, he was a very kind man, though he sometimes didn’t know his own strength, and would pummel us runts about a little stronger than today’s parents would find appropriate. Still, perhaps it did us some good. And he smiled a lot. He smiled a fucking lot. That smile is etched on my memory.

I really should smile more. When I croak, I’d like people to be able to say the same thing about me.

A week or so after the miscarriage, we told all our respective family members about it. I guess they would have been upset if they’d found out later. Sometimes we exclude them from our lives enough as it is.

Anyway, so they all know that we’re going to be trying again in a few months’ time, I suppose. Might serve as a useful excuse to get mum off the phone when she’s yapping on, actually.

“Must dash, mum – Karen is ovulating RIGHT NOW!”

We had a miscarriage today. It happens, I suppose, and we were just unlucky.

We’re very upset, but it’s not going to be the end of us. We can see that it’s just one of those things that happens, and we have to ride it out. We’ll be pregnant by the end of autumn, and don’t you just know it.

So Karen is getting very happy in her new role as mother-to-be. She’s reading enormous pregnancy books, complaining that she hasn’t got a bump yet, and trying to get out of household chores wherever possible by saying “My book says that you’re supposed to take care of me while I’m pregnant.” My retort is usually to invent a quote, supposedly taken from my book, which says that I shouldn’t take any shit from her.

Contrarily, I’m aware that once the baby is born, and indeed in the months leading up to it, I’m going to be so incredibly busy taking care of a round, screaming monster, that I won’t have any time to myself. So I’m immersing myself into my usual hedonistic and selfish pursuits with gusto – a kind of farewell to Quality Me Time, if you will.

As a result, occasionally she’ll interrupt me when I’m concentrating, and say something random and baby-related. I won’t instantly make the connection, and subsequently I think I possibly come across as being a bit forgetful.

“A what? A baby? Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.”

I’m looking around the house at all the junk that’ll need clearing. Fragile items eventually need moving to higher locations. Entire rooms, or portions of them, need clearing to make way for baby crap. I don’t know how we’ll manage.

Not too much else has changed, really. Most noticeable is that Karen is paying a lot of attention to what she is eating. Some foods are apparently completely forbidden, innocuous things like feta cheese. Obviously I’m trying to be as supportive as I can, but I can only go so far.

I may have to maintain a stash of unhealthy and dangerous foodstuffs, perhaps locked in a box in the attic where she won’t find it. Then I can maintain the illusion of supportiveness whilst simultaneously gorging myself silly on all the things that I never really used to be fussed about, but which suddenly seem so alluring.

I’m determined to stay off the cigarettes though.

Since we decided that we were going to be parents, my perception of other families has changed a lot. When we’re out for dinner, or walking down the street, or even when I’m just staring out my window at people walking by, I am analysing the families walking by. I suppose that specifically I am looking at fathers with their young children, trying to figure out what they are thinking and what their lives consist of these days.

On another note, I’m not a complete fashion slave, but I try to look my best. Once I’m a parent, I guess that the importance of looking smart takes a backseat. Instead of wearing clothes that look tidy, I’ll be wearing clothes that hide the vomit stains, I guess.

Ah well. It’s just another thing that changes, I suppose. Not better, nor worse, just different.