I Didn't Realise Santa Was From Burnley...

Home Alone

Today Lynne has ventured out of the house by herself. She is going for shopping and drinkies with one of her pals, and maybe a wee snowball fight or something. This will be the longest she has been away from the baby and so far it seems to be going well. She hasn’t phoned yet, anyway.

‘Mummy is going out!’ I tell the baby. ‘We have the house to ourselves! We can do whatever we want!’

In the baby’s case, her favourite thing to do is probably lying on the floor with her pants off, shouting. She takes after her dad.

The Interview Before Christmas

Yesterday I had a job interview. I will hear if I got the job in the New Year. It’s only part-time, but this is really perfect for us if I am to keep up my duties as house-husband and look after the kid once Lynne goes back to work.

Irritatingly, there are many people for whom this plan does not compute. This is the 21st century, the sexes are meant to be equal, gender roles have been flipped, but still we keep meeting people who just don’t understand how Lynne could have a decent job and bring home good money, while if the situation was reversed, and I was working and Lynne stayed at home, nobody would think that was weird at all. The idea of a woman being able to earn enough money to support her family seems to be a complete blind spot for a surprising number of people. I can’t help feeling that people somehow think that I’m taking the piss.

Never mind. I don’t need to wrestle bears to know I’m a man. I don’t have time, I’ve got nappies to change.

A Grim Realisation

You might have noticed from the last few posts that the baby is crying more. It’s not that bad, she never cries for no reason, usually it’s just that she is hungry or wants a cuddle. But she cries just ever so slightly too much for a nicotine fiend like me to handle with no cigarettes. So I went to Boots to buy some more nicotine gum.

I had a tuna sandwich before I went and as I was leaving the house I realised a terrible thing. I swore blind that I would not be one of these parents that lives vicariously through their kids and ends up lost when they grow up and leave home. I will never just wear clothes that are boring and practical. I’m still young and vital, I have my own life, and, OK, I might not be the snappiest dresser but the jeans are flared, I’ve got a pair of Converse on. But then this happened. As I was draining the tin of tuna I squirted it all over myself, and then just dully rubbed it into my top with a dishcloth. And that’s how I left the house. What is happening to me?

The Kid Ain't Got No Class

No she doesn’t. Ways that she has no class include sneezing and farting at the same time (she gets that from her mother who is in all other respects completely demure), pulling faces when she is having a poo and then audibly sighing with satisfaction, being sick down her chin and then rubbing it in with her fist, and liking Paul Simon.

That last one is my fault. I have been singing the Boy in the Bubble and You Can Call Me Al to her since she was born, I guess just because they were the mellowest little catchy tunes I know the words to. Remember, I’m a dad now. I’m not supposed to know what’s cool.

Anyway, over the past couple of weeks the baby has been becoming more engaged with the world around her, and she is also making a lot more noise. Each morning she wakes up bright and chirpy, I give her her morning bottle while Lynne sleeps, we read the paper and I drink coffee, and she progressively gets more grumpy with me until eventually I can’t stand the noise she is making any more and I put Graceland on. I found out quite by accident, but she loves it. She could be going absolutely apeshit, but when the drums kick in on the Boy in the Bubble, that’s it. Rapt attention. The title track seems to be her favourite, when it’s on she stretches her neck until her head is wobbling on the end of it and her mouth hangs open. This means that she actually likes my singing and wants to hear the original versions! Ha ha!

I only play her the first half of the album of course. Every tune on there is a belter. But if you ever see an old vinyl copy of Graceland, have a look at it. Side A will be all scratched to fuckery while Side B will be pristine. That’s because it’s bollocks.

Christmas Is A Time For Family

In case you hadn’t noticed Christmas is coming up. Now I like Christmas, I’m not one of these people that moan that there is too much tinsel in shops and too many adverts for Marks and Spencer’s on the telly. Fie, pish and mimsy. These things aren’t important, I’m surprised people have the energy to get worked up about them. For me the important things about Christmas are that you don’t have to go to work and all your friends are off as well, you get to drink as much fancy booze as you want and eat loads of nice food, and people give you presents. And there are probably going to be silly hats to wear. What’s wrong with that?

This year is more complicated. Now that we have a baby the festive season has been turned into a political minefield. You see, my parents live about half an hour away but Lynne’s live in Aberdeen. If we visit my folks over the Christmas period then one set of grandparents think the others are getting special treatment. Lynne’s mum already thinks my mum is constantly round here, luxuriating in grandmotherhood while she waits bleakly by the phone for any titbits we cast her way.

Well, we are not playing that game. If we can't please everyone, we are not going to please anyone at all. We are staying in here and having our own wee Christmas, and everyone else can fuck off. Christmas is a time to be selfish.

But we can’t even win with this. Yesterday I phoned my mum. She already knew we weren’t going to her place for Christmas so the first thing she said was, ‘So, are you going to Aberdeen for Christmas?’ Pretty innocuous you may think, but there was a definite tone. ‘Hell no!’ was my instant reply, but its not enough. My mum, being of a naturally suspicious demeanour, thinks I’m part of a conspiracy to make Lynne’s mum into Grandmother Number One. The fact that I’m still pissed off with Lynne’s mum for the way she behaved when the baby was born is obviously a cover to hide the depth of the conspiracy. My mum snidely mentions that she was surprised to get a Christmas card from Lynne’s folks after their last phone conversation. She just can’t resist stirring it.

We have to nip this bullshit in the bud. I’m not running round after everyone else for the rest of my life. For Christ’s sake, she’s my daughter! It’s not about you guys at all!

Anyway, yesterday we put up the Christmas decorations. Yay! The baby is unimpressed with it all. I suppose the whole thing sort of passes you by when you are six weeks old. At least we won’t have to get her any presents, she won’t know the difference. Lynne has been writing Christmas cards round the clock. About 4pm I made some coffee to go with my last piece of nicotine gum. Lynne had some coffee too. This turned out to be a schoolboy error. Once the baby had supped from the caffeiney breast she was up all night, her arms and legs working as if she was miming a marathon runner. She hollered for hours and with no nicotine in my system I had a hard time keeping a lid on my stress levels. When I changed her she farted while the nappy was off and sprayed guacamole coloured poo over my legs. Then she looked really pleased with herself and said ‘Ung!’ She has no class at all.

Prams and That

This week we have been taking the baby outside for wee danders about the shops. We have taken her out before, Lynne has even taken her as far as Braehead, but since we have a variety of conveyances for the child and we have pretty much used them all in the past couple of days, I thought I would talk some shit about them, compare them and that. Score them out of ten and the like.

My daughter is pretty underwhelmed by the whole experience of going outside. Its December, its cold, so we bundle her up and she sleeps the whole time. We swore blind that we wouldn’t be the kind of parents that dressed their kid up as an animal but someone gave us a furry snowsuit, with little ears on the hood and the mitts made to look like paws, which the baby looks ridiculous in. We can’t resist. Also, the suit is so cosy that just putting her in it knocks her out. It’s almost instantaneous. It’s a shame we have to take it off her.

Anyway, conveyance number one. The Premaxx Baby Bag. This is a Swedish sling thing with pockets and what have you all over it and it looks the business. Ours is orange and deep red. It goes over one shoulder and you slot the baby in and she hangs across your chest as if she’s in a hammock. It has draw toggles that you have to play with and you need to twist the strap on your shoulder origami style so it takes a couple of goes to work out what to do with it, but the baby looks really snug in there once you have figured it out. Its handy for short trips, you can go into shops that it would be a fight to get a pram into, but since all the weight is on one shoulder, it starts to get a bit sore after a while. I wouldn’t like to walk for miles with it on.

Score: 7/10 great for short trips, a bit complicated and sore on the old shoulder.

Conveyance number two. The Baby Bjorn. This is the same idea as the sling thing, but is more of a rucksack affair with the baby sitting upright on your chest. The straps go over both your shoulders so you can for a bit further with it on before it starts to get too heavy, but I prefer the sling for a couple of reasons. First, the sling looks better. The Baby Bjorn looks like a boring piece of hiking equipment, which gives me the matching-waterproofs horrors. It has a neck support for babies that are too small to hold their own heads up, but this only works if the baby remains motionless, if she tries to have a look around or even falls asleep it makes her head loll around alarmingly. Lastly, the one we have got is second-hand, and I don’t like the idea of putting my daughter into something that someone else has already shat in.

Score: 4/10 functional, boring, and baby can’t even really sleep in it.

Which brings us to conveyance number three, the trusty pram. We have a Mamas and Papas Pliko pramette. I will probably dicuss prams in disparaging detail in a further post, but for now we chose this one because it’s small lightweight and simple, with a cracking turning circle and no pedometer or any of that silly shit. This beast can go for miles. It can carry a formidable amount of shopping in the undercarriage, but be careful with this because it affects the steering. Remember if you pack loads of shit in your pram you still have to push it home. Out of the three methods of transportation this is the one with the most room for the little passenger, she will never look squished, even in a huge furry bear suit. The only problem with it is carrying up and down the stairs to the flat. It’s light but not four-flights-of-stairs light. We have left it chained up at the bottom a few times, but I don’t like doing this because I don’t want it getting manky. There are students live below us and I don’t want them coming home drunk one night and playing with it. I would end up trying to fight them in the stairwell in my underpants.

Score: 9/10 can’t be beaten on range and payload, but it’s a pain in the arse when you live on the top floor.

Quote of the Day

Lynne asked my mum what she wanted the baby to call her. My mum said

'She can call me anything she likes. Just not nan, gran or nanna, or anything like that. I'm not a goat.'

Southpaw

You know, I don’t believe in ‘cluster feeding’. I think they have just been making it up. It seems to me that as the baby gets bigger, she needs more milk but Lynne’s boob is always the same size.

I think the baby is going to be left-handed. It’s the side she favours. As Lynne cradles the baby’s head and moves her mouth towards the nipple, the baby curls her right arm across her chest in a classic guard posture and swings wildly for Lynne’s face with her left fist.

The Baby Grew Up While I was Out

I should have known better than to take on the assistant vice principal on his own turf. It was the last day of the survey today, and he played a blinder. I can only shake my head in admiration. What he did was this; about 10am he put a sign on his office door saying MEETING IN PROGRESS. DO NOT DISTURB. Then some time around midday he went home, leaving the sign on his door. I didn’t realise there was nobody in his office until 2pm. I have no way of knowing how many people were in the meeting, when they were there, and when the office was empty. I have no numbers for that room all day.

Ha ha! I salute his raw cunning and if I had to be outwitted by anyone I am glad it was him. But I don’t really care. I am finished, and I will get paid all the same.

They say a watched pot never boils, and my daughter seems to have grown a personality while I have been out. She looks up at me and smiles when I come in, a big toothless smile that transforms her into a little person. When I left for work on Monday she was still an inert lump that would just lie there, staring into space and blinking. It's surprising how much she has come out of herself in so short a space of time. There are other changes too. She has decided that she is no longer willing to sit about in a dirty nappy. She now tells us if she needs to be changed. She also likes to shout; as I was changing her she was grinning, kicking her legs and saying ‘MAAUUGH!’ This is the start of conversation. She is more aware of the world around her and will gaze in wonder at a rattle or a stuffed zebra that squeaks, where she showed no interest before. I can’t wait until she starts to laugh.

But I don’t think I have missed anything. Things I might have missed are her first trip to Braehead, an epic journey on the bus that Lynne took her on yesterday. The furthest I have been with the baby so far is Partick Library, but more on the outside experience in a later post. Today she hawked up her first loogie. Apparently she sneezed up a huge ball of snot and Lynne didn’t keep it for me to see. Babies born by c-section are a bit more mucusy for the first few weeks because they haven’t been wrung out in the mangle of vaginal birth.

Anyway, now that I am officially unemployed again we can get back into the old routine.

Being Paid To Watch Jeremy Kyle

Lynne reckons that the baby misses me during the day. Awww. I wasn’t so sure whether that was true, it’s still hard to say how much the baby takes in, but when I came home today she looked up at me and gave me a big, gummy smile. She’s been trying to smile for a few days and now she’s cracked it. It made going to work worthwhile.

I have one more day on the college survey. Good. It’s pish. My little round of rooms takes about ten, fifteen minutes to check off and then I am free for the rest of the hour. It’s not enough time to do anything else, but just enough time to be a bit bored. I sit in the staff common room with the other guy that is surveying the building, talking shit and watching daytime telly. Everyone else that uses the common room is a middle-aged woman and, as you can no doubt imagine, this is a nightmare. Any work place with a single sex population is always problematic. If it’s all men it quickly turns into a pirate ship. If it’s all middle-aged women, well…

Yesterday one of them grassed us up to our boss because I left my bag on the sofa. Apparently someone had wanted to sit there and couldn’t. Nobody had said anything about my bag to me. Bear in mind that all day all these women had grinned a big ‘Hiya!’ at us whenever they came in or out. Today the crisis was over milk. Who was drinking it all? I bet it was her. That sort of thing. The staff fridge is now full of separate pint cartons with labels on them to identify their owners, the levels marked with marker pen. As we were redistributing the milk between the cartons so they all held the same amount before we left tonight, we noticed that the cleaners had misspelled ‘cleaners’ on their carton. It was a cruel laugh, but we laughed it anyway.

One of the joys of my round is the office of the assistant vice principal. A lot of the staff in the rooms I’m surveying seem to be scared that if I don’t put down that they have lots and lots of people in their rooms they will end up being allocated tiny offices in the new building. They think I'm a spy. I don’t think it will work like that. I think they will take my numbers, make it into a graph, bin the graph, design a big fancy building, decide they don’t have enough money, and then build a glass and steel box same as they always do. It seems to me that what I’m doing is pretty pointless.

Anyway, the assistant vice principal is one of the more prickly customers. He is used to being an alpha male round here, he doesn’t like to be counted. Every time I knock on his office door, every hour throughout the working day, he has a new bit of shit to give me. Last thing today I find him having a meeting with another guy.

‘Let’s see your numbers, then,’ he says.
‘It’s boring really. See?’ I say. I turn my clipboard round so he can see it.
He holds out his hand. ‘Come on, don’t be shy.’
I pass him the clipboard. ‘You're that line.’
He frowns. ‘There’s a lot of zeros. What do all the fives mean?’
‘That’s the code for what you are doing. Five means admin work.’
‘It doesn’t mean picking my nose or scratching my arse?’
‘No,’ I say, deadpan. ‘That would be a seven.’

I'll see your waaaugh and raise you WAAAUGH.

The baby is never going to last six months in the moses basket. When we lay her in it the space between her head and the top of the basket is getter smaller and smaller. She is growing fast, which isn’t surprising given the amount she eats. At this rate in a few weeks I will have to dismantle the cot in the nursery and put it up in the bedroom, and there won’t be any room to move in there. I am also starting to doubt Lynne’s ability to eat enough food to supply all this milk and still stay alive. The kid won’t leave her alone.

I say this because I have only seen the baby’s grumpy side for the past two days. I am working. That’s right. Its only for this week; I'm doing the college survey again. I have to get up in the morning and leave the house like normal people. I don’t get my morning cuddles any more, where I remove the noisy baby from the bedroom so Lynne can sleep, give the baby the milk Lynne expressed the night before and watch her blink in the morning sun as I drink my coffee. No. I get back about 5pm when its already dark and the kid’s been up all day and just wants to be fed for hours so Lynne can’t have her dinner. I take my jacket off and pick her up and she flails her little arms around and goes red, her face puckering for the big howl. I howl back at her. She looks puzzled.

So the baby is finding her voice now, and it’s a loud one. But it’s still not as loud as mine.

A Bit of Sense, Anyone?

Here's a wee video for those of a thinking persuasion:

Cow and Gate Update

The formula was a bad idea in the end. My daughter has been crying inconsolably all afternoon and into the evening. She has just gone to sleep now. We couldn’t work out what was wrong with her, she was making hungry faces, but she gurns all the time anyway. She would only feed a little at a time so we thought she was only suckling for comfort. She was red faced and grumpy every which way I held her. She was sick on my side of the bed. I had put her in a wee dress that she had never had on before, so I changed her into her sleepsuit and checked the seams of the dress for scratchy bits. Nothing. We checked her for rashes. Nothing. We discussed whether she felt warm. She always feels warm. I even looked up ‘crying’ in the Pregnancy Bible. It said that sometimes babies cry for no reason. Thanks for that.

About 8pm she did a massive fart. It was huge; the shockwave reverberated round the round the room like the Tsar Bomba had just gone off in here. Then she chilled right out. All that time she just had trapped wind. Fuck Cow and Gate.

Early Morning Drinking

My daughter is in the middle of another cluster feeding frenzy. She was latched on to Lynne for just about the whole day yesterday, finally going to sleep at 10pm only to wake again about 1am. I was still up watching a crappy Bruce Willis film. I had little flashes of recognition, so I think I had seen the film before, but I must have blanked it from my memory because it was so tremendously bad. That’s a good thing; its like watching a whole new film. What was also new was that although I was up alone on a Friday night, I didn’t ransack the kitchen for horrible booze. I happen to know that there are the dregs of a bottle of cooking sherry and the arse-end of some Crabbe’s green ginger wine in the top cupboard, but I didn’t touch any of it. Over the past year of unemployment I have necked the Bulgarian whiskey, which smelt of seaweed and turned my pee green, the Bercherovka, a Czech spirit that I think tastes of Christmas but no one else can stomach, and the grappa, a colourless tipple with the ‘nose’ of petroleum that substitutes an acrid burning sensation for flavour. All these and more I have chugged with my late-night pal Bruce. Now something is different. I have responsibilities now. Parenthood has changed me. I drank milk.

But I digress. Lynne and the baby got up at 1am and the baby cried, had a feed and then refused to go back to sleep despite some pretty intensive rocking action, cried again, had another feed. The baby feeds for a bit, then drops off Lynne’s nipple like a sated leech, lying on her lap with a wee smile and eyes closed. This is the Milky Coma of Pleasure, and should never be mistaken for actual sleep. She will undoubtedly want to be fed again and will object to being moved. This cycle can last up to two hours. All this meant that I missed the second half of the film, thereby ensuring that at some point in the future I will sit through it again, thinking I have never seen it.

That was us until 3am. The baby wakes again at 6. At 8.30 I give in and get up, determined that Lynne is going to some sleep. In the back of the cupboard is a single carton of Cow and Gate ready-to-use formula. I put the sterilizer on, full of bottles and that, make some coffee and change the baby. She is chewing her fist and making hungry faces. I go to wash my hands and prepare the formula, but the baby starts crying again, I think of her lying on the changing mat, thrashing around on her own in the middle of the floor and in my hurry cut the carton of formula in such a way that it goes everywhere. Sloppy. Not very unconcerned. I need to stay frosty.

The baby seems willing to take the formula while remaining unconvinced. I am now sitting with a puke rag over my shoulder and a dozing baby in my lap. Drinking from the bottle makes her burp prodigiously, the force of the last one caused her to head butt me in the teeth. She wasn’t happy.

Thoughts on a Month of Fatherhood

The daily routine is a bit repetitive to bang on about it every day, so I’m going to pad out the blog with my take on current affairs. So here you go.

Who gives a fuck about Tiger Woods? He plays golf.

Should we ban minarets like the Swiss? After all, you're not allowed churches in muslim countries are you? So, nah nah-nah nah-nah. Leaving aside the idiocy of saying things like 'if we don't want sharia law we have to be more like Saudi Arabia', here are some pictures of churches in Iran. Some of them are pretty big and shiny too. Oh.

Nobody is going to ban Christmas trees, for fuck's sake. They are not religious symbols anyway, unless we’ve all started worshipping Odin while I wasn’t watching. Actually I wouldn’t mind if we all worshipped All-Father Odin, Lord of the Slain. Its just that hunting down my enemies and giving them the ol’ blood eagle might put greater demands on my masculinity than I’m used to. Anyway I’ve checked in the Bible. There’s no tinsel or crackers in it either, so I don’t know what’s been going on there.

That’ll do. I just gave the baby a bottle with 30ml of expressed milk. When she finished it she cried for 30 seconds, then forgot and fell asleep. She woke up at 8.30 this morning just when I was in the middle of a vivid dream. I don’t remember anything about it now, just that it was very engaging.

She is a month old today. The days are long but the weeks pass quickly. Odd that. So far the whole fatherhood thing is not as daunting as I thought it would be. It helps that we have a calm, happy baby. Some babies cry all the time for no reason. That would be a fucking nightmare. We are lucky. Some babies can’t figure out how to drink from a bottle once they are being breast-fed. We are lucky with that too. Some babies get covered with thrush and their mother’s nipples get all cracked and infected. Jesus.

But since I’ve got this parenting thing down, here’s some handy hints.

Don’t panic. All a newborn baby needs is to feed, have its nappy changed and sleep. Its straightforward, if a bit relentless after a while, so as long as you are doing these things it will all be fine. If you are freaking out the baby can tell, and it will get upset. Remember its relying on you to know what’s going on. It hasn’t got a clue.

Don’t prod the baby when its asleep to check if its still breathing. I’m pretty sure it will be, and if you wake the baby up in the middle of the night it will be really pissed off and then it’s a fucker to get it to go back to sleep.

Do leave your dishes in the sink. No one will think any less of you. If you have a newborn baby most people will be surprised you’ve got your shirt buttoned up the right way. If you have time to do housework, you should be asleep instead. You’ll need it.

Don’t be afraid of handling your baby. I know it seems really fragile but its tougher than you think and it likes its cuddles. Just remember to support its little head and don’t drop it or bounce it until its sick or anything. Look at the midwives in the hospital; they tossed the baby about like a piece of chicken, didn’t they?

Don’t be shy of the baby’s poo. You will get it all over yourself no matter what you do.

If you are a man, get as involved as you can. If you can get paternity leave take as much as you can. If both of you are in the house with the baby it makes everything much, much easier. Looking after the baby is not just woman's work; its fun too.

That’s it, I think. I’d better go, everyone seems to be waking up.

Milky Tips

The health visitor came round again today. She is a cheery, dark haired woman from Inverness. She doesn’t stay long, since we seem to be coping we get pretty much left alone. People aren’t interested unless you are freaking out, I suppose. My daughter was weighed again, she is now 10lbs, the wee butterball. However, we have a couple of questions about feeding, and the answers are actually pretty useful, so pay attention if you are going to have a kid.

Lynne has a gig at Hogmanay and the kid will be staying at home with me. I need to be able to feed the baby and Lynne isn’t really expressing the volume of milk required. Is mixing with formula feeds with breast-feeding allowed? All the literature recommends against it. In fact its absolutely fine to give formula feeds when you are breast feeding. The only things you have to watch out for is that if the mother’s milk isn’t regularly squeezed out, then the mother’s body will reduce the amount of milk it produces accordingly. And maybe the baby will be unconvinced by the differing taste and texture of formula compared to breast milk, but as far as I’m concerned the kid will get what its given.

The other thing is expressing. Lynne was coming round to the idea that it was a waste of time. She didn’t seem to be able to express more than 20ml in one go. It just doesn't seem like much. Any tips on expressing? Apparently 20ml is fine for a mother with a four-week-old baby so don’t worry about it. Vary the time of day that you try to express to see if that makes any difference and bear in mind that you don’t have to keep all the milk separate. Its fine to mix it all in one bottle in any 24 hour period. That way you can acumulate a decent feed over the course of a day.

This may all sound straight-forward enough, but these are the kind of things that you stress about when you are a new parent. As always, it all turns out to a fuckload easier than you thought.

DIY vs NHS

The pull cord in my bathroom that turns the shower on is bust and I need to put in a new switch. To get an electrician round would cost £65, plus VAT. I decide to do it myself, but maybe it’s more complicated than I thought? The switch has a little light on it and everything. I phone my dad.

‘Yes, ‘course you can just do it yourself. It’s simple. You’re meant to get an electrician these days, but that’s all come from the EU.’ For my dad, everything can be traced back to the EU somehow. The EU or muslims.

My dad offers me a lift to B&Q. He comes round the next morning so it turns out that I am out when the health visitor comes. My mum tagged along with dad so she could see the baby, but she ends up making herself busy in the kitchen while the health visitor quizzes Lynne. Where were our parents born? How were we coping financially? Did we take drugs? Was Lynne a victim of domestic abuse? The health visitor points out that if Lynne told her anything that concerned her, she would have to pass it on to social services. It’s lucky that my mum was in the kitchen leafing through recipe books while the health visitor was saying all this; if she’d heard it she would have gone berserk.

Of course, the only box the health visitor could tick after speaking to Lynne is the one marked Smug. The health visitor weighs the baby who is now a whopping 9lbs. Oh, and I forgot to mention the umbilical chord has completely come away and I am please to confirm that my child has a beautiful innie belly button.

B&Q with my dad is a blast. We look at drill bits and argue about whether treacherous politically correct town councils are trying to rebrand Christmas as Winterval to appease the muslim community. I opine that it’s all a bunch of tabloid bullshit, while he thinks that this used to be a Great Country. Look at it now. I’m scared to ask what he thinks is wrong with it in case I’m disappointed with the answer. Instead I tell him he should stop buying the Sun. He says that he only buys it for the puzzles. I don’t believe this. The puzzles in the Sun are really easy.

It turns out he is right though. Rewiring the switch in the bathroom is a piece of piss.

Cluster Feeding

At the moment we are completely baby-lead. That is the technical term for it. This means that the baby gets what it wants when it wants. The baby is too small for us to have it any other way, but it does mean that Lynne is up feeding her at all hours of the night, while the baby has a nice long sleep in the late morning/early afternoon. Not very convenient.

Lynne has been trying to express milk into bottles that we can keep in the fridge, but it needs a little more practice. This morning I fed the baby from a bottle that was in the fridge, the most plentiful expression so far, an abundant 8oml. This is not enough for the baby. Still, it keeps her quiet so that Lynne can have another half hour's sleep. It's an odd feeling, holding a suckling baby in my arms, watching her serious eyes gaze at me over the plastic curve of the bottle. It's amazing to think that anyone could be so small and helpless. So dependent on me.

The baby is having a growth spurt and wants to be fed all the time. This is aparently how it works; the baby goes through periods of 'cluster feeding', demanding milk all the time to fuel a period of growth. It lasts for a few days and then returns to normal. Until I can bottle feed this is harder on Lynne than me. On the upside, Virgin 1 is showing Unbeatable Banzuke at Jesus Christ o'clock in the morning most days. It has Brian Blessed in it. And he is dressed like this

Absolutely fantastic. Look at his shiny little codpiece. Brian is as always, really very good value. It takes a lot of front to carry off a costume like this.

My daughter is certainly getting bigger, her eyes can focus now, large and solemn, but she shows little interest in any soft toys, even ones that rattle and squeak. She likes to start the day early. She snuffles and gurgles every morning from about 6am. The temptation to check on the baby when she starts burbling is irresistable, but she is always, always just happily thrashing around in her blanket. I ignore her for as long as possible, then I get up and take her into the other room so that Lynne can sleep in peace.

Friday Morning

The baby won't really settle in her bouncy chair and while I can pick her up, I can't type one-handed. I have changed her nappy and heated up a bottle for her, but she pushed it away after a couple of wee slurps. I think she just wants to stop me filling out this application form. Have you ever tried to demonstrate a competency for Personal Effectiveness-Collaboration with a crying child in one arm? Its actually not that easy.

The closing date is noon today, and I have done as much as possible by trawling the myriad other applications on my hard drive, cutting and pasting what I could. I was meant to finish it last night but I was too tired and got distracted by the telly. I will make it though. One of the competencies is, after all, Delivering Results-Motivation.

Quote of the Day

Lynne has been trying to express milk. It involves a manual pump with a little bottle hanging underneath.

'But I'm not a cow,' says Lynne in a small voice. She has started saying this a lot.

Sorry, I had to Wait For My Arse To Subside

I have been ill since the weekend. Pissing out of my arse to be precise. Between the baby and me it’s been like living in an open sewer in here. We’ve been working in shifts.

But now I’m back. What’s been happening? On Friday I went to the Registry Office and reported the baby to the authorities. She is now legal with a birth certificate and everything. We had to register her within 21 days of her birth and I was tempted to leave it and see what happened. Would they have deported my baby? Would there have been a dawn raid? A midnight flight to Diego Garcia and a crèche full of orange sleepsuits? But I bottled out and conformed in the end. I didn’t even give her any comedy names, I left her middle name as her gran’s, even though her gran hasn’t acted nearly grateful enough about that.

I also went to the doctor’s to get a new prescription for nicotine gum. My doctor is a big, round, grey haired guy with pilots’ glasses who is normally pleased to see me. I think that he is glad to see someone sensible after all the bams and old dears he has to deal with, and if that seems patronising to you, then you should see his fucking waiting room. Even though large glasses on the older male are a sure sign of an arsehole and the doc does spit when he’s talking, I think he’s ok. I expected to spend a wee half hour talking about his wife’s horses and how much he misses smoking himself, but this time he was all brusque and businesslike. He had a medical student in with him and was trying to pretend he was the Man in front of him. He didn’t want to give me the gum again because I have been getting it on and off for ten months now, but I reckon he was just talking tough in front of the new guy. He gave in in the end.

If you have never tried nicotine gum, its pretty disgusting. As you chew the nicotine gets released and you feel a stinging sensation on your tongue, a numbness spreading over the backs of your gums, then your gullet tightens and your gorge starts to rise. But then, if you remember, your first cigarette was pretty disgusting too wasn’t it? And you get used to the gum if it’s your only source of nicotine. I quite like it now. I really should be weaning myself off it, and hopefully with the baby on the scene I will be busy enough to keep my mind of the withdrawal. Giving up smoking is a funny thing, its easy if you want to do it, impossible if you don’t, but either way you need to really keep yourself occupied if you are going to stand a chance. I’m still going to have a cigar at Christmas though. But from now on I’ll have to go outside to do it.

Quote of the Day

Lynne left the house yesterday. She went to Boots to buy some nappies. I stayed in the house with the baby because I am ill. When Lynne came back she said,

'I'm glad we didn't take her on her first trip outside to Boots. I saw a drunk man. And some litter.'

Clearly this outrage cannot stand.

'I don't like it! I don't like it!'

The baby can’t hold her head up on her own, especially not in a bath of water, so I have my hands under her neck and back. For a few moments it seems that she might get used to the bath, but then I submerge her further and she starts screaming again.

‘Right, that’ll do,’ says Lynne.
‘You’re joking aren’t you?’ I say. ‘You haven’t even washed her face!’
The baby continues screaming. Lynne rubs the cloth quickly round her cheeks and forehead.
‘There,’ she says.
I shift my hands to get one free and splash some water gently over my daughter’s chest. Her eyes are screwed up, little face puckered crimson, shrieking at the top of her tiny lungs. I laugh.

Lynne gets the towel. ‘Come on. That’s it,’ she snaps. With the baby crying like that, Lynne can’t handle it. Me, I have gone all the way through unconcerned and deep into cackling callously. The towel has a little hat in the corner, and Lynne put it on the baby’s head as I lifted her out. Lynne lays her down and delicately dabs her dry. My daughter has stopped making that horrible noise, but still looks aghast at the depth of our betrayal. Then she pees all over the towel.

We had left it ten days; the baby had had only one bath until now, in the hospital the afternoon after she was born. The midwives did that. We weren’t worried about our smelly baby, the community midwife told us not to worry about it, babies’ skin is very delicate and if you bath them too much when they're tiny its not good for them. The West End is full of babies with dry skin and eczema from being bathed daily by fussy mothers, while more, ahem, working class areas are full of healthy, dirty kids.

We have a wee baby bath and I filled it with a few inches of warm water, using my elbow to test it, making sure it was blood temperature, so I knew her dismay at being bathed didn’t come from the water being too hot. I leave flinging babies into boiling tubs to Attila the Hun. I think she just didn’t know what was happening to her, poor mite. Just when she thought she was beginning to work out how things worked, we take off all her clothes and dump her in all this weird stuff. Ha ha, I think. You'd better get used to it. We are going to do it again on Sunday.

Here is a picture of a shark. It's too big to fit in the bath, so it's a pretty tenuous illustration really.

Ball Sack Offender

It’s raining like hell so I don’t think we will be going on our big mission to the outside today. That was the plan, Lynne and the baby haven’t left the house since they came back from the hospital and we wanted to try out the sling thing, see whether Lynne could manage the stairs yet (we live on the top floor of an old red sandstone tenement), and just generally show the neighbourhood that even though we have a baby we won’t be pricking about the shops in matching waterproofs. We are not sponsored by Northface.

Lynne is asleep, as per the morning routine. The baby is in her bouncy chair, hiccupping. She does this a lot, because her diaphragm is not strong enough yet, but she doesn’t seem bothered. I couldn’t hiccup for as long as she can without getting really angry about it, but she can eat or fall asleep in the middle of a bout. That’s a life skill, remaining calm during prolonged hiccupping. Another life skill she has picked up is less positive. She still doesn’t cry much but she has discovered that if she gurgles as if she’s choking in the middle of the night it gets us out of bed and all the lights on far more effectively than anything else she could do.

As I changed the baby this morning I noticed that the umbilical cord, a scabby bit of black pudding with a white plastic clip on it that hangs from the baby’s navel, well that has started to come away. Its all gummy underneath, and I still can’t make out how the belly button is going to turn out. As I write this, I am looking out, through savage gusts of rain blowing against the window, into an iron sky and wondering if I can bring myself to love a child with an outie belly button.

That’s a joke. What isn’t a joke is that Lynne’s sister came to visit and I’m pretty sure she saw my balls. Yesterday morning I was up in my dressing gown and boxers changing the baby. Lynne’s sister was at the head end, cooing and shaking the baby’s little hands, that sort of thing, while I did the business. It was a prolonged operation that required an entire change of wardrobe, and towards the end of the procedure I glanced down to see my knob and balls hanging out of the leg of my shorts, all red and crinkly. They had been there for God knows how long. I put myself away as surreptitiously as possible, and Lynne’s sister didn’t seem to have noticed, but that’s the kind of thing where if you don’t say something straight away it never gets mentioned again. I eyed her suspiciously for the rest of the day, but she never gave anything away. She was playing it cool. She left last night, before the rain started.

I Am At The Centre Of A Conspiracy To Part Me From My Cash

Another day, another rejection letter. I now have enough of these to insulate the loft. Today’s was pretty sooky, ‘although I undoubtedly have much to offer’ they will not pursue my application any further and they ‘are sorry to give [me] this disappointing news at this time’. They also thank me for my interest three times. Count them. Three. It could be worse; I got one rejection letter that told me sternly that there were ‘other candidates who more fully fit the job criteria’, which I thought was pretty fucking rude. They might as well have told me I was shit and had done with it.

There was also a letter from the bank. Aw, you fucking bastard. My credit card payment bounced and they are charging me £35, plus £28 unauthorised overdraft fee. They don’t say what the thirty-five quid is for, it’s just some kind of generic fee I suppose. That means that the work I did on Friday, the money from that has gone straight to the bank. They did it again! There is a fiddle that the bank runs and it goes like this. When they take your money it happens instantly, a miracle of modern technology. But when you pay money in it takes up to five working days to clear. By this simple mechanism they fuck you.

‘Judas priest!’ I cry. ‘Forget you, you bunch of forgetful monkey-chuckers!’
I try not to swear in front of the kid, you see.

Well, this isn't happening again. I phone up my credit card and cancel the standing order for the minimum payment. The woman asks me if I have thought about insuring my cards against identity theft. I tell her that anyone can steal my identity if they really want it and good luck to them. If I am late with my credit card that costs me twelve quid, but the bank are waiting to sting me for nearly seventy. Twelve quid, thirty-five quid, these are serious amounts of money when you are unemployed, large enough to worry about, but small enough for you to actually do something about. The fact that if you add up my mortgage and everything I owe a horrendous sum of money, thousands of pounds, is of no consequence. It’s an astronomical figure, it might as well be a round £100,000, or a cool million, because there is absolutely nothing I can do about it right now. I might as well worry that the sun only has enough hydrogen fuel for another 5 billion years. It isn’t real, its the small numbers that get me worked up. I suppose that's where the banks fucked up in the first place.

That said, I would be even angrier about the sweaty, grasping hands of the bank if any of my tax had gone to bail the bank out, but I haven’t really paid any tax for about a year. I can rest easy knowing that the last time I paid any tax they just used it to buy bombs to drop on Afghanistan, so that’s all right.

I explain all this to the baby as I change her. She has been awake most of the night and now Lynne is getting some much-needed sleep. The baby has managed to poo right through all her clothes and bedding, so I am cleaning it up. I say ‘poo’ rather than ‘shit’ because, even though it smells pretty bad and I get it all over my hands, it isn’t really as offensive as my own faeces, and I have had occasion during my long and varied career to find that in some places that I hadn’t fully anticipated. No, ‘shit’ is too harsh a word. Even 'crap' doesn't convey it. 'Poo' is perfect. For the record, the poo started green at the beginning of the week, like pesto with hints of mustard, but has now settled into looking like carrot soup with crushed almonds in it.

So I tell the baby about the iniquities of the banking system. I tell her about money, the little tickets that everyone agrees are necessary for survival on this planet, and how nearly everyone is sick of this game, but everybody has been playing it for so long nobody knows what else to do. She doesn’t seem bothered, as soon as she is clean and in fresh clothes she falls asleep in my arms, pink and warm. I suppose she is right. It doesn’t really matter, does it?

Parenting Advice

A congratulatory email has come flooding in and alongside the well-wishing, there is much information in it that seems pertinent to young parents. I feel that a portion of it bears reproduction here:-

Heard some quality neds on the upstairs of the no.20 the other day. After the usual stuff about picking fights in the town ( every time ah punch som'bidy ma haun hurts), spraying graffetti etc , ned 1 says to ned 2 " ur yous wanting a boy or a girl?"

Ned 2- " ah want a girl so ah can punch her first boyfriend"

Girl ned- " ah just want the wee bastard oot, and am allowed to call it a wee bastard cos we no married".

ned 1 then passed on his experience of parenting , being the father of both Sean and Connor, advising that as children could learn from parents you had to be "heavy cautious wi' the blaw man".

ned 2 then rehearsed how he would coach his child to answer questions about suspicious bruising- " say yi walked intae a door, right, say yi walked intae a door".

So if you had any concerns about parenting rest assured that with competition like that you'll have no worries. Just as long as you are " heavy cautious wi' the blaw".

Thanks for that Michael.

Thoughts on the First Week of Being a Dad

Fatherhood is still setting in. I seem to have a permanent tingle of excitement in my belly, not a huge tingle, just the amount I would have if I was going on a holiday abroad in say, three weeks' time. The child is very cute, I am not sure if I am saying that because I am her dad, and therefore biased, but she did seem considerably better looking than the other babies in the hospital. She has a full head of dark hair, delicate wee features and a little pointy chin, and since she was delivered by c-section she did not come out that black-and-blue way newborns usually do; rather she was pink and pristine. By comparison the other kids were bald and lumpen.

Things are still surprisingly calm in the flat, and I am inclined to think that people who tell you how difficult it is to look after a newborn are painting it blacker than it really is. And you know how people love to tell you horror stories. Best thing is not to listen to other people under any circumstances. The child wakes up two or three times a night, gurning and thrashing her little arms about, and we get up, I check her nappy while Lynne gets herself organised to feed her. Then I go to bed and leave Lynne watching Sign Zone or some other crap late-night telly, baby at her breast. This stage is easier on me than it is on Lynne right enough, I really only get up out of solidarity. In a couple of weeks Lynne will be able to start expressing milk and we can keep it in the fridge, so she can sleep while I feed the baby. Perhaps things are easy so far because breast-feeding has gone so well, and the baby is content. She certainly doesn’t cry much, or for very long when she does.

Still, Lynne is tired all the time. So am I, but not as much as her. She gets a sleep in the afternoons and early evenings when the kid is asleep. As this week has gone on the baby seems to take less milk more often, and if this trend continues it will mean less and less sleep for Lynne. I get the feeling that maybe if the baby was awake more during the day, she might sleep more at night, but at a week old there is not much you can do to keep her awake without making her cry. She is still too little to really know what is going on around her.

At a week old, she cannot focus her eyes and cannot support her head by herself. When I hold her she only seems vaguely aware that I am there. To her my face must be some kind of dim shape looming over her. She is fascinated by the light coming in the window, or by the lamp at night. Light and shadow, that’s it, everything else is a blur. She is disappointed that I don’t have breasts and opens and shuts her mouth against my jumper in vain. She doesn’t mind music and loud voices, but a sudden noise will make her eyes open wide and her arms flail wildly for a moment. I have established two methods of interacting however; she will grab my finger and squeeze it, which is good fun, the other is that when I am rocking her she will lift and lower her chin in anticipation of my movements, in the same way that you move your legs when you are on a swing. Oh, and she likes it when I sing Paul Simon to her. 'The Boy in the Bubble' is her favourite.

Winning Bread

Today I did an honest day’s work. An agency guy phoned me last night to go and count heads in a college in town. They are building new facilities and want to survey how the old ones are used so that they can see what they need. Absolute waste of money, paying me to do what I did today, but it got me out of the house and the guy sounds like he will put more work my way. Hurrah!

I was posted in the unimpressively-named Allan Glenn's Building. I think The Allan Glenn Building has a bit of a better ring to it, but then there's not much you can do with a name like Allan. All day I patrolled the seminar rooms with a clipboard, counting classes full of sports science students who stared back at me with slack-jawed incredulity. Good canteen though, for lunch I had what seemed to be a deep fried sausage roll with a side of tepid beans. I was glad to be finished after eight hours of this, I wanted to get home and cuddle my daughter.

On the way back I bought some lamb chops in Sainsburys to celebrate, and found that I nearly have enough nectar points to get a fiver off my shopping. This is where being unemployed gets you, obsessing about nectar points. This level of spendthriftery is made all the more ridiculous since every so often I crack and buy fags, which I then have to smoke by stealth because Lynne thinks I have quit. You don’t get nectar points on fags either.

Homecoming

Yesterday afternoon my family came home. We had our first night in the house together. Its nice not to be alone in that big empty bed any more, even if it has only been five days. Everything seems to be going smoothly enough, the baby slept at the end of the bed, woke up at 1.30am and then at 5am, I changed her and Lynne fed her each time. Seems that I get the arse end in this deal, while Lynne gets the laughing end. Still, if this turns out to be the routine I reckon I can totally cope with it, but then the baby's lungs have a lot of growing to do.

Today was pretty relaxed as well. Bit tired, but not too bad. My parents came round with cooing and presents. The baby did a poo and so I changed her, but since my folks were watching, she didn't kick me or scream at all. Good girl.

It's odd though. All this time it has seemed like the pregnancy was the whole thing, but now it turns out that that isn't the thing at all. Having the baby is the real thing.

A Diplomatic Incident

I don't know what it is but, from personal experience and three other cases I have observed, there seems to be something about having a first grandchild that somehow makes women really angry. I don’t know if it is because they feel like they are finally losing control of their child, or if they think they should be the centre of attention, or if its just a menopausal thing.

I’ll explain.

Lynne’s mum is cross with me and do you know what? I’m pretty pissed off with her as well. When they moved Lynne from the recovery room down to the ward I went home to get some sleep. On the way I phoned our parents to tell them the baby was born, that both Lynne and the baby were healthy, it was a girl, and the birth weight and time. I left out the grisly details. As far as I was concerned it was nobody else’s bloody business, especially since Lynne was sleeping off the diamorphine and I had been up for two nights straight. I was dog-tired and feeling pretty wrung out and tearful. Neither of us was in any shape to talk to anybody. We had arranged with the grandparents before-hand that they would come and see us after Lynne was home from the hospital, and she could tell them as much as she wanted to then.

I got back to the flat, ate all the bacon in the house with a slice of stale bread and a triangle of Laughing Cow cheese, and went to bed. I meant to only sleep for an hour or so and then go back to he hospital where I was needed, but when I woke it was 2pm. I had slept longer than I meant to so, thinking shit, shit, shit, I had a quick shower and rushed back to the Queen Mum's. I stayed until after nine at night, went home and tried to put some pictures on Facebook but my internet connection kept dropping and I was too tired and cross to work it. I watched some crap telly, drank some milk and went to bed again.

In the morning I checked the phone messages. There were lots of well wishers, which was expected. All day my mobile was filling up with texts as fast as I could delete them. There were also a series of messages from Lynne’s mum, growing increasingly snippy, asking how things were. I don’t know why she thought I would be in the house waiting for her to phone me instead of being in the hospital with my wife and child, but there you are. Among other things, she wanted to know if Lynne had any stitches, and if so, how many. Cheeky cow, I thought. What’s it got to do with you? I didn’t even know how many stitches Lynne has, and I was there when she fucking got them!

When I went to the hospital that day, I told Lynne she had better phone her mum. It was peaceful on the ward, despite the other howling babies, and Lynne was enjoying having no visitors and time to bond with the baby by herself, but she sighed and agreed it was time to let the outside world in. She phoned her mum and told her she had had a c-section. Her mum was pretty clipped on the phone, but that seemed to be that.

An hour later my dad turned up at reception. His eyes were rimmed red and I thought what the fuck is going on here? Lynne’s mum had called my mum in hysterics. Had Lynne had a blood transfusion? What hospital was she in? I was keeping the truth from her! I was hiding things! Then she slammed the phone down. When I heard this I was absolutely fucking raging. So that’s how I told my dad about the c-section, standing in the hospital lobby among all the crappy plastic seats with a fuzzy telly burbling from a bracket on the wall beside us. My dad said that my mum was ok, just a bit bemused, but that he wanted to warn me before things got out of control.

Unfortunately, I can’t just fall out with my mother-in-law. I’m not allowed. That night I went round to Doctor P’s house to use his computer. I emailed all the pictures I had taken of the kid to Lynne’s folks and then phoned them up. I let Lynne’s mum tell me off and hang up on me. Doctor P said ‘Aye, whenever something good happens, there always seems to be someone who just has the knack of spoiling it.’ I laughed a lot at this. It was exactly what I needed. Lynne folks drove down the next day, and at visiting time they came in to see the baby. Lynne’s mum was glassy-eyed, her smile fixed on her face, but when she saw Lynne and the child she snapped out of it. Nothing was said about what had happened. We all played nice.

I phoned my mum to tell her the crisis seemed to have been averted. She said that when I had put her off from visiting the hospital, at first she had suspected that it was because Lynne wanted her parents to see the baby first.

Christ Almighty, I thought. Don't you start.

No Fireworks After All

We were in the ward until about half seven. Lynne dozed on the bed but I could tell she wasn't asleep because every couple of minutes she would toggle the TENS boost button. I sat by the bed trying to do the sudoku in Take A Break!, but I couldn't even do the easy one. I had Lynne's dinner, I wasn't supposed to, the food is ONLY FOR PATIENTS, but Lynne was too wasted to eat. It was canteen roast beef and tatties, anemic with salty gravy. Mmm. There is nothing quite like canteen food, a friend of mine once said that you can't make macaroni cheese like they do in a canteen. You make it too good yourself. And canteen lasagne and chips, come on, admit it. You love it.

At seven thirty the midwife came and checked her again. I went out and paced in the corridor. Then the midwife came back out and said, 'It looks like your wife's going to have a baby really soon!' I had begun to relax over the afternoon, but now things were happening again. The midwife went to get a wheelchair while I stopped Lynne from putting her jeans back on. Easier said than done, she was still under the effects of the diamorphine and was insisting on being fully dressed at all times.

The labour suite is on the third floor, small blue rooms, hot enough to send you to sleep if it wasn't for the adrenalin. The midwives work twelve hour shifts and were just changing over as we turned up, so we got a fresh one, Kirsten. We plugged in an mp3 player to listen to some music, we weren't supposed to use stuff that hadn't been checked by the hospital technician, but we decided we would just say we did plugged it in when no one was looking. They are closing the hospital in nine weeks anyway.

And then things slowed down again. Lynne was still getting regular contractions, but she still wasn't fully dilated. So there we were in the labour suite, Lynne on the gas and air, Kirsten writing up her notes and checking the baby's heartbeat, me drinking the hospital coffee, which tastes exactly like flat cola when its cold. We listened to Elbow, then Ben Harper, then Beth Orton. Out in the corridor you could smell cordite and see the fireworks bursting over Govan and Partick. It got closer and closer to midnight, and there was still no sign of the baby.

Lynne chuffed her way though an entire tank of gas and air and they had to get her a new one. Midnight came and went and it wasn't until 2 in the morning that she started getting the urge to push. By this time Lynne was absolutely exhausted, and I watched helplessly while she strained to push with each contraction. I hadn't realised this before, but apparently pushing is only useful during a contraction, and Lynne was so tired by this time that her contractions were slowing down. Even worse, the midwife suspected that the baby was the wrong way round, trying to come out chin first.

Suddenly, even though it was 4am, the place was full of people all doing stuff. The registrar came in and talked about trying to turn the baby with forceps, but if he couldn't then Lynne would have to go to the theatre for a caesarean. Lynne only wanted to know if she would feel anything, she was exhausted and had given up on any ideas of keeping control over what happened to her body. She just wanted it over with.

They couldn't get in with the forceps, so they took Lynne to the operating theatre. I wasn't allowed in until the anaesthetist had given Lynne a spinal, which would numb her bottom half completely. I changed into scrubs and sat outside in the shabby corridor, too tired to be terrified, just dully wondering what could go wrong next. A doctor came up the corridor, eyes bloodshot, and told me they would get me soon as the anaesthetist had finished. Then she yawned a massive yawn.

Finally they came and got me. Lynne lay on a table the middle of the room, her arms and legs pinned out like starfish, with a green screen across her chest so that, when I sat on the stool next to her head, I couldn't see what was going on. Lynne looked happier than she had for hours. 'You look very handsome in your scrubs,' she said. 'This is just like ER, if ER was in 1982.' After ten minutes of activity on the other side of the screen, there was a strangled, gurgling squawl. Lynne and I looked at each other. And that's how my daughter was born.

Birthday Fireworks?

You read all the books and you go to all the classes but you still don’t have any idea what its actually going to be like.

We got back to the Queen Mum’s about two in the afternoon of the 5th, and waited in triage while the staff ran around after a girl who had had an asthma attack when she went into labour. She was behind a curtain, making a horrible noise, while people wheeled gas cylinders in and out. Lynne didn’t make a so much as a whimper, she just stood by the bed and when she had a contraction she would press the boost button on the TENS machine, tip her head and close her eyes until it passed. As always in moments of crisis my bodily functions had come to the fore and I was desperate for a piss, but I didn’t want to leave her.

After what can’t have been more than twenty minutes but felt like hours the midwife came to check Lynne over, and I headed for the toilet. If the Queen Mum’s maternity unit has any failing it is that there is only one gent’s, and it is way back at the entrance. As the night wore on and we progressed deeper and deeper into the building, it became more and more of a mission to get there, my bladder’s insistence constantly being balanced against being needed where I was and the length of the journey.

When I got back Lynne was going to be admitted to the ward until she was a bit further on. The midwife said she would check her again in two hours. Lynne had been in labour for nearly twelve hours now and was in a lot of pain. She hadn’t been convinced by the TENS machine at first, but now that the contractions were getting stronger it seemed to be having more effect. Even so, she had decided to have a shot of diamorphine. I was glad; it isn’t often that I have seen Lynne in that much pain and it just made me want to make it go away. Or hurt someone. I hated it.

I grabbed our bags; Lynne’s handbag, my bag, Lynne’s bag of clothes, the bag of baby clothes and blankets and Lynne’s coat, and then stumbled after her into the ward. There was space for four beds, but we shared the room with only one other girl. She had a pink dressing gown and a bammy family who sat around eating crisps and swearing. We drew the curtain around the bed and Lynne got her shot. She was still in a lot of pain and was only comfortable standing, but after about ten minutes she leaned against me, closed her eyes and let me lower her onto the bed. She kissed my neck. That’ll be the morphine, I thought.

‘This is a big adventure,’ she said, her pupils like pinpricks. ‘You’re my Sherpa. What was his name?’
‘Tensing,’ I said.
‘I always felt sorry for him. He was the one who took them up the mountain. I bet he did it himself all the time, in an afternoon.’

I’m not sure that he did.

It's A Girl!

Just a couple of words because I am wrecked. I have a daughter as of six o'clock this morning, and both her and her mother are fine, they've spent most of the day sleeping off the diamorphine. I had a wee nap about midday, but apart from that I have been awake for the past forty hours so the gruesome details can wait until tomorrow.

Bricking It, Big Style.

But then freaking out is my job at this point. Last night I went round to Jeff's to watch the football. I had 4 beers and smoked a couple of rollies, which I really shouldn't have done, because Lynne woke me at 4am to tell me her contractions had started. My mouth tastes like shit and I have cleaned my teeth 3 times today already. Pineapples and raspberry leaf tea work like a fucking dream it seems.

Lynne had been up since 3.15, and had been meticulously noting down the time and duration of each contraction. If we had thought sooner we could have had a spreadsheet, she says. I hooked her up to the TENS machine, which was a bit of a struggle coz she wouldn't keep her hands out of the way while I stuck the pads to her back. Then I took her back to bed, but she couldn't really lie down comfortably, so I made her a little nest of pillows. She dozed off here and there through the night, but we kept up with the list, including anotations of when I went back to bed.

In the morning I nipped out to get some milk and a paper, for something to do more than anything else. I bought blue-top milk instead of green and didn't notice until I was putting it into the fridge. Lynne is a bit pale, feels a bit sick, but seems ok. The contractions are starting to hurt a lot now.

About 10.30 I phone Jeff and he gave us a lift to the hospital. Lynne's contractions are 5 minutes apart and lasting for about a minute each time, but they had been pretty much since 5 this morning. But the midwife reckoned Lynne was only 2-3cm dilated and sent us home! That's where we are now, we are going back in a couple of hours.

Unleashing My Inner Pedant

Pregnant women at full term are often described as being ‘hot and bothered.’ You ask an expectant father how his other half is and this is the reply, ‘Oh, she’s feeling a bit hot and bothered, she just wants it over with.’ ‘Hot and bothered’ in this case seems to be a euphemism for being a sweaty, bloated, red-faced, screaming monster. Lynne is not ‘hot and bothered’; rather she is ‘glowing.’

Reading through yesterday’s post I realise that far from sounding unconcerned I seemed to be verging on moderately-concerned-to-slightly-hysterical. My apologies, concern is not the aim of this blog. Lynne is healthy and happy, ‘glowing’ as I said, and the baby still has room to kick about. But we still want to avoid having her induced if we can help it. The free book from the hospital Ready, Steady, Baby! contains only 3 lines on inducing pregnancy. This could mean that, hey, there’s nothing to it, but it seems more likely to me that they couldn’t think of anything good to say about induction so they left it out. Your Pregnancy Bible is more forthright, mentioning vaginal tablets and gels, and also a ’25-cm (10-inch) long plastic instrument with an end like a crochet hook.’ Mmm, maybe give that a miss, thanks all the same.

So, with that in mind, today’s mission was to find a pineapple and some raspberry leaf tea. Curry for tea tonight, and possibly a bit of nipple tweaking, but Lynne says this is too silly. Old wives’ tales are the way forward, no matter that this article says they are just myths. What the hell does the Telegraph know anyway? It’s a right-wing comicbook!

The pineapple was no problem, but just try finding some raspberry leaf tea in Glasgow. Every shop and supermarket has some kind of raspberry flavoured tea, but made out of dried fruit or some silly shit. Now, I like a herbal tea as much as the next hippy, but you don’t make tea out of fruit. You make juice out of fruit. Juice not tea. (I would allow banana tea though, because as any pedant knows, a banana is a herb).

I was getting quite cross, it was raining and everything, but I kept my cool. I have a rule never to moan at people who work in shops, since I worked in shops myself for so long, and I have stuck to that rule, even that time in Iceland when the girl tried to tell me creme fraiche was just a posh name for cottage cheese. I finally tracked down the tea in Napiers on Byres road, a wee packet of spongy green leaves for the reasonable sum of Fucking Hell! I mean £4.50.

The girls in Napiers are very helpful. Aparently the curry thing is nothing to do with fenugreek, which I had a vague idea it was, but is all about the spices stimulating something and getting the bowels moving. It's important to keep the bowels open. Lovely. Pineapple is meant to help release some hormone in the cervix that brings on labour. The girl steps closer to me and lowers her voice. I'll not shout this across the shop, she says, but sperm has the same effect on the cervix.

Interesting.

'Get Your Godamn Hands Off My Membranes!'

Another appointment at the hospital. The baby is now four days past its due date and, apart from a couple of twinges in the night, the little fella seems happy kicking about in Lynne’s belly. There is still room to move in there, for now. The midwife checks Lynne’s blood pressure and we listen to the heartbeat. It sounds like a train. Healthy. Spontaneous labour could start at any time.

The midwife offers Lynne a membrane sweep to hurry things along. Lynne politely declines and the midwife agrees that she would probably leave it too. It is only effective 35-40% of the time and if Lynne is still comfortable and we are in no rush.... However, if spontaneous labour doesn’t start in the next week or so then somebody is going to have to go in and get the baby. Thank Christ that I’m a guy; my bits are simple, I don’t have to put up with all the indignities and minor infections that come with a furry front bum. Men are only required to show their tackle to medical staff in extreme cases of absolute fucking disaster. Have a look at this picture, detailing the measurement of fundal height during pregnancy:

See? Awful. I think you will agree there is something disturbingly callous about this open-palmed insertion. The words 'full bladder' also seem particularly unsympathetic. I think this diagram comes from more primitive times, when women were thrown on their backs, had their muffs shaved and their feet shoved into stirrups, while a doctor yanked the baby out with a cruelly gleaming pair of forceps. Ahhhh, the 70s. Those were the days.

Lynne has escaped such horrors so far, but the baby needs to move fast if she is going to get away unscathed.

Quote of the Day

Well, quote of Friday actually. We are walking down the street when Lynne says,

'Imagine if it was your job to audition cute puppies for adverts!'

and then looks delighted that she thought of it.



This is what that would be like:

'Yes.'

'Yes.'

'No, no, NO!'

Demonstrating Bullshit Level 1, with SPECIFIC examples

The job search continues. I am currently wrestling with a Competency based application form for some crappy admin job. Reading the hefty Competency Framework Booklet that comes with the application pack I have reached the conclusion that it is a management consultant’s heaven and a jobseeker’s hell.

Let me explain. In the Olden Days there would be a bit on an application form that said:

‘Use this space to explain how your skills and blah blah blah meet the job spec blah blah. (Continue on a separate sheet if necessary).’

In the modern world this is obviously no use, it needs to be much more complicated. This is where Key Competencies come in. Instead of writing a spiel about yourself you have to identify the Key Competencies for the role and provide an example of a time when you were Competent. There are usually about five Competencies in each job, like Communicating or Initiative, so you have to come up with times when you Communicated or Initiatized (I know that is not a word).

Keeping up so far? Good. Well, depending on the Grade Band of the job, the Level of the required Key Competency changes. This is shown by different Positive and Negative Indicators for each Level of each Key Competency. A Level 3 Positive Indicator might be to ‘understand what might happen if something is not done in time’, so assumedly Levels 1 and 2 don’t need to bother about what happens if something isn’t done in time. See? So if the Competencies are:

Communicating Level 3
Decision Making Level 1

This means that they want a bullshitter who doesn’t know what he is doing. On the other hand:

Communicating Level 1
Decision Making Level 3

Means that they wants someone who knows what to do, but doesn’t know how to tell anybody about it.

Still not sure? Well, here is a handy table from the Competencies Framework Booklet that should make it all crystal fucking clear:

Not Much Happening Here

It is the day after Lynne's due date. The bag is packed for the hospital, we are ready to go, mentally prepared and so on, but nothing else is happening. Lynne has the odd twinge, she reckons that's her cervix is thinning, but nothing that could be described as a contraction. Right now she is asleep.

I don't know what to do with myself. Waiting is always the hardest part. The doctor told Lynne on Wednesday that he thought the baby would come before the weekend, but the weekend is here and there is no sign of it. What the hell does he know, he's only a GP. The only other useful thing that he said was to smuggle some gin and tonic into the hospital, because it would be nice to know it was there.

Our parents are phoning excitedly everyday. Lynne has finally convinced her mother that we do not need to put sterilizing fluid in the steam sterilizer. This has been a long running arguement, conducted mostly out of my hearing, but which Lynne assures me has been going on since we got the sterilizer 3 months ago. Lynne's mum said she was sorry, she is just worried.

Aren't we all. My dad rang up yesterday morning, purely to see if there was any news, but somehow we managed to get into a huge arguement about immigration. My dad is an old-school bigot and self-confessed Little Englander. We ended up yelling at each other and I told him what he was saying was pathetic. Just when I thought we were on the point of saying things to each other that there was no coming back from, he said, 'Well, thats the world set to rights then. Just phoning to see that the pair of you were alright. Bye.' Then he hung up, leaving me wrung out and wondering what had happened.

Maternity Leave Starts

Lynne doesn’t really know what to do any more; instead she looks confused until she starts to giggle. She had her last day at work last Friday, which is just as well because it seems that all her energy is being directed to her womb and starving her brain of blood, or oxygen, or whatever it is that the brain uses to think about stuff. This new vagueness isn’t annoying; it’s a nice change. It used to be that we only went to the supermarket together so that she could shout at me in front of other people, but now she follows me around as meek as a lamb and I decide what goes in the trolley. I decide! On the down side, I have to carry all the shopping home.

She hasn’t quite adjusted to not having to go to work yet. I let her sleep in and she says she feels guilty for being in bed at noon. She doesn’t get up though, so I suspect its all talk. I say she needs plenty of rest to cook up the baby.

She is going to the doctor’s every two weeks, but now the hospital want to see her every two weeks as well. It alternates, like the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games. This seemed an important new development, so I went along too. We were at the Queen Mum’s at 9am, quite a feat to be out of bed so early when you’ve been unemployed for as long as I have, and we saw a tiny, almost inaudible doctor from Manchester. It’s her first day, we were her first patients, and she didn’t know where anything was. She takes Lynne’s blood pressure. She checks Lynne’s urine sample on the windowsill by the sink. She puts a device on Lynne’s belly that makes the baby’s heartbeat sound like overhearing Aphex Twin played too loud on someone else’s iPod. Everything is normal.

The doctor says something.
What was that?
She wants to know if we have discussed our birth plan with the community midwife. We tell her that we haven’t seen a community midwife yet. She doesn’t seem bothered by this.
This is normal too.

Ante Natal

Ante natal classes get a bit samey after a while. Each class is split into two parts, an hour with a midwife pushing dolls through plastic pelvises, and an hour with a physiotherapist who talks about breathing. We put ourselves down for the evening classes so that Lynne doesn’t have to take afternoons off work. They run from 6 to 8 on Tuesdays. The midwife keeps telling us that if we are coming straight from work we should bring sandwiches. The hospital provides horrible juice and custard creams. I haven’t seen custard creams for years. They probably buy them especially to fit in with the Queen Mum’s seventies idiom.

Don’t get me wrong; the Queen Mum’s is good. Everyone is nice and the place is clean. But the truth is that they are running it down. They were going to sell it, merge it with the Southern General, knock the building down and build flats, but then the bottom fell out of the economy. Now it just sits on Yorkhill, desperate for some love and attention. There are blue and brown walls and scuffed orange lino floors, single pane windows rattling in their peeling frames, dingy corridors lit by grainy yellow bulbs, cheap plastic seats worn white by years of arses. The ultrasound machine looks as out of its time as a spaceship in an Egyptian tomb. The place is a maze and it echoes as if it is already dead.

There is life on the maternity ward. At the fourth class we are taken on a tour of the wards. Everyone keeps telling us it’s hot in there, and they are right, it is hot. We queue up at a bright green antibacterial hand rub dispenser on the way in. Women in labour shuffled about in dressing gowns, hands on the small of their backs. A nurse smiles from behind a desk. We take turns to peer through a glass door a newborn baby, 45 minutes old, pink, tiny, sleeping. This is all starting to seem pretty real now.

Pain Is Coming

At the ante natal classes the main impression is that everyone is terrified. How much will it hurt? Will I be able to stand it? What’s going to happen to my body? It’s all right for me. The guys all just sit there, not saying anything. There’s nothing growing inside us, pushing our organs aside, softening our pelvises and altering our centre of gravity.

Pain relief. This is important. There are several methods from the full-on epidural through ‘gas and air’, down to simple controlled breathing. The midwife shows us a fuzzy video explaining it. I think the vertical hold on the telly has gone. Keith Chegwin is presenting the video, and it’s so old that he is still with Maggie Philbin in it. I know this because she’s in it too. They aren’t having the baby; they leer over some woman who is sweaty with labour, inhaling from a facemask. The expectant father has a fine moustache.

The upshot seems to be that if you don’t put ‘ I want an epidural’ down in your birth plan, you aren’t getting one. This is because they are such a pain in the arse to set up, what with a tube going into your spinal column and what-have-you, that if you leave it to the day to decide, then, by the time you’ve made up your mind it will be too late to put it in. They don’t say this of course. Epidurals are brutal anyway, and Lynne says she doesn’t want one. Well, that’s what she’s saying for now. Maybe I should write ‘no epidural’ in the birth plan, in pen just to make sure.

‘Gas and air’ is actually stuff called Entenox, which could more properly be called ‘gas and oxygen’ and seems good and harmless. You can also get a shot of morphine, which sounds good to me, but they are a bit nervous about this because it can make the baby come out all woozy. Moving away from the chemicals, a TENS machine works by putting an electric current through pads attached to your back. The hospital used to have some, but they lent them all out and nobody gave them back. We are going to get one from someone at Lynne’s work.

Still, all the girls still seem terrified. Looking around the other people at the class Lynne and I make up little stories about them, making guesses about their lives. The tall, glamourous girl in the good boots sits next to this big pudding with a shaved scalp and sloping forehead. Surely that’s just her friend...? No, look, they’ve both got wedding rings on. No way! The ginger girl next to the guy in the suit. They sit there grimly and later on I see them arguing in whispers beside the door. The next class, she’s there on her own. Oh-oh. The third class and he’s back again, wearing a t-shirt and jeans. They both look happier. See, it’s all there for you. It’s like a soap opera.

Slightly worrying, they keep talking about things we should say to the community midwife, but we haven’t seen one yet.

20 Week Scan

Tuesday 16 Jne 2009.

We have just been to the hospital for Lynne's 20 week scan. Like the previous scan, the screen was filled with vague grey blobs, while occassionally something recognisable would flash into view. The skull, with the faint butterfly of the brain inside it, a wee pair of legs, and what the nurses described as a 'beautiful spine'. I think thats the only time anyone is ever going to say a thing like that about your backbone, but it was good to see. Lynne said she thought it looked like a sardine, while I was reminded of the chicken-spine curries that old Indian woman used to bring into the shop for Sam.

But the upshot is that the Mark II is going to be a fully functioning human being, with the right number of hands and feet and everything. Hurray!

So thats it. We are halfway through the pregnancy and I still don't have a job. I'm not even worried about it any more, I've been through that and out the other side. It'll help if we are both there when the baby arrives. I don't think Lynne is that worried either, though she does spend her time buying maternity dresses off Ebay by the thousand. Maybe compulsive shopping is a symptom of inner trauma. It could be. In my limited experience of women I have noticed that their worries are a tree-like tangle of 'what ifs' branching off in infinite regress. Then again, maybe she just wants to look nice.

Family Planning

I quit my job in the middle of 2008 to try and do something better with my life. Then the bottom fell of the global economy. Who would have thought that would happen? I have applied for hundreds of jobs, most of the time not even getting a rejection letter, you know the story. I have done bits and pieces of work here and there, but nothing permanent has turned up, and increasingly I have been staring out of the window with a cup of cold coffee in front of me, and talking to myself as I do the housework.

It’s not all bad. Being unemployed is a lot like being on holiday, only a holiday where you never see anything new or have any money to do anything. We are not totally skint though, my wife Lynne has a good job and she is happy to have a househusband because she hates doing the dishes. However, I draw the line at dusting. Dusting is for girls.

We have talked for years about having a baby, but never really thought too much about how it would actually work. Lynne is really happy with her career and I used to work pretty long hours and most weekends, so we let the subject slide by. But after a few months of joblessness we thought, fuck it, if I was going to be in the house doing nothing anyway, I could bring up the baby.

There was no method, no scheduled couplings, calendar watching or maths involved. We are both in our early thirties (though Lynne tells people she is twenty-six), and pretty healthy (though I am struggling to quit smoking). Lynne was pregnant in no time. There was a miscarriage, which I don’t really want to go into. It happens more often than you think, one in three early pregnancies miscarry, but lets just say the difference between relief, disappointment and grief seems to be about a week and a half.

When Lynne was pregnant again, we kept it quiet until after the twenty week scan.