I Thought We Wouldn't Row Until She Was A Teenager

Lynne went out with one of her pals today and left me holding the baby. We were well prepared, there was a pot of soup on the hob for me for the baby there was a bottle in the fridge with 130ml of breast milk, painstakingly collected by Lynne over the previous 24 hours, and in case of emergency, a pack of ready-to-use Aptamil formula.

Everything was ready. Lynne went out. Then the baby started crying. A-ha, I thought. Bottle time. I heated it up in a cup of warm water and put the teat to the baby’s lips.

Still she cried, chewing the rubber nipple listlessly and dribbling down her chin. Jesus Christ, I thought, she can’t have forgotten how to feed from a bottle already. It’s only been two weeks! I rocked her for a little to calm her down then tried the bottle again. This time the volume of her cries did not reduce when I took the bottle away.

I put on Paul Simon. By now the child has ruined that album for me, but if it works… It didn’t. The baby showed no sign of noticing and I was now being assailed by irritating noise from multiple sources. I now found myself getting really angry. The baby had feed from a bottle before. She was definitely hungry, pushing her bottom lip out with her tongue. So why wouldn’t she eat? The milk was there, drink it!

I vented my frustration by blowing a raspberry on the baby’s cheek. She fucking hates that.

Too right. Her already ruddy cheeks deepened in colour and, since her little lungs were already crying to capacity, her wailing wound up into a hoarse croak. I immediately felt incredibly guilty.

Here is an important lesson. You will never be able to soothe a crying baby if you are getting annoyed yourself. I put her down in her cot and set her creepy mobile going and stepped back. The angry colour drained from her cheeks and, after whimpering for a bit, she fell asleep.

I had hoped that that would be that, since when she sleeps it is often like pressing the reset button on her mood, but I was mistaken. She was still hungry, but the slightest touch of the bottle to her lips was enough to prompt the most piteous crying. I gave up trying, and just bounced the baby in my arms until Lynne returned.

My daughter was quite happy for Lynne to feed her. Lynne apologised for leaving her with me, but this annoyed me even more. The baby has been happy to be left with me before. I’m her dad, I don’t need an apology. I went out for a pint. As I put my jacket on and headed for the door the baby watched me accusingly with tearful eyes. I pointed at the bottle of breast milk that Lynne had sweated to accumulate, now wasted. ‘You’re fucking drinking that!’ I called out. ‘I’m coming back in here!’

Lynne laughed. The baby gave me a dirty look.

Responsible Waste Management

The world is conspiring against us, but all we are trying to do is do the world a favour. I’m talking about nappies. We have been using disposable nappies, for nearly three months now, and the baby gets through them as if they are going out of fashion. And they are going out of fashion, at least in the little West End bubble we occupy.

Long ago, in that hazy distant past before the baby was born, which was in fact less than three months ago, we bought a starter pack of reusable nappies. There are many different types to choose from, old-skool flannel sheets that need to be folded like a fajita and pinned into place to more hi-tech varieties, but the ones we plumped for were Bambino Mios, because they were going cheap on Ebay.

We contemplated a future of rinsing poo from off-white bits of cloth and having freshly washed nappies hanging from every radiator in the flat like so many other smugly ethical West Enders that have gone before. But then fate lent a hand. As we reached the end of our original supply of disposable nappies and we were gearing ourselves up for the Bambinos, our pipes froze. Obviously you can’t reuse reusable nappies with no hot water to wash them in. So we bought more disposable nappies. We will try again when these run out, we thought.

Now our washing machine has packed in. It can be fixed, it just needs a new dial, but for the time being I am taking our stuff to the launderette. I don’t think the old dears in their would take kindly to me shoving their machines full of shitey bits of cloth, they have already seen fit to pass comment on the length of my shoelaces and my ignorance of the spin dryer. So we have bought more disposable nappies.

I reckon the baby needs to be changed about five or six times a day, sometimes more. That means we use nearly hundred nappies every two weeks. That is a lot of landfill and it is a small Scotland. We are already perilously close to being submerged in garbage as it is without adding several tonnes of dirty nappies to the pile.

Reducing waste and recycling seem to be on the back burner of environmental concerns right now, eclipsed by the huge 'debate' over carbon emissions and global warming in general, but it is the issue closest to my heart. I have always been annoyed by the wilful wasting of resources. Take the crap plastic toys you get in cereal boxes. They are made in their thousands using our ever-dwindling supply of hydrocarbons and they are so absolutely fucking useless that it makes me angry. I challenge anyone to provide an example of a child having fun with a toy out of their cornflakes. I don’t believe it has ever happened.

The compromise we have reached is to use Nature’s Path biodegradable nappies. They are fully compostable, apparently, but just who would want to mess about with them in such a way is beyond me. They sell them in the Boots round the corner so it is handy and they are not that expensive. They are certainly better than the Boots own brand; we have a whole pack of them that we shoved in the cupboard in disgust. The only one we ever put on the baby disintegrated on contact with her poo and we never used them again. Maybe we should just throw them out.

Tactical Bathing

I haven’t posted for a while, you may have noticed, or maybe you didn’t. There are a couple of reasons for this, one, I have been a bit busy, and two, each day I didn’t post made it harder to come up with something good enough to justify breaking the silence, if that makes sense.

Anyway, I got the job. It’s only part time though, so I think I can still cling to the epithet ‘bum’. It’s very dear to me. I’m just waiting for my start date.

Last night we went out for dinner without the kid for the first time. My folks came round to baby sit. Despite spending the last two nights crying until one in the morning, the baby sittee (or should that be baby sat?) showed every sign of behaving like a little angel in front of them in order to make us look like fools. Lynne fussed about with bottles and sleepsuits, laying them out in easily accessible places and showing my mum where they were and so on, but I couldn’t get out of the door quick enough.

Ha ha! It was odd being out of the house, just the two of us. It really hit me as I got off the bus. It was a little tingle at the back of my brain, as if I had left the house with two bags and had come back with one and suddenly thought, ‘Oooh, I had something else, didn’t I?’

Tonight we bathed the baby. She is getting smarter. She knew exactly what was coming and was red faced and shrieking before she was even in the water. She has learned there is only one reason she is ever naked in the front room.

Lynne almost wavered, but held firm and grimly continued washing the baby down. The baby, seeing her last ally desert her, responded with the only card she had left and pooed copiously into the bath water. It was green. That brought an abrupt end to bath time, I can tell you.

The Quack Of Doom

There is an awful smell behind the baby’s ears. It is a sharp mix of yoghurt and armpits, the kind of smell that is so bad that you can’t help smelling it, coming back time and again for another whiff, as if to confirm that, yes, it really is that bad.

As a result we have stepped up bath time to two nights a week. It seems to be about time. The baby seems to be more inclined to tolerate the bath now; she looks up at me with wide, worried eyes and doesn’t start shrieking as long as she can brace her feet against the bottom with her arms clutching wildly at the sides. That is until she gets her face wet, so we have to wash that last. Then her composure crumbles.

She has a flannel duck to try to inject some fun into bath time. When you squeeze it’s belly it goes QUACK-QUACK-QUACK, QUACK. I’m not sure she isn’t a bit scared of it. Nobody expects that fourth quack.

Brrr. Bit chilly.

In one of those unusual and shocking instances where what happens on the news actually impacts on real life, my pipes froze. I mean the water pipes in the flat, so stop sniggering at the back. There is nothing I can do, but the heating is a closed system so we can still run the boiler on the water that’s in there, and we have a power shower (for some reason the cold tap still works. Must be a different pipe). So all it really means is that we can’t do the dishes. Hooray! And we can’t wash any shitey baby clothes. Boo!

Despite knowing in my heart of hearts that the heating system would be fine we panicked, what with having a baby and everything, and called out a plumber anyway. It cost us a £93 to find out that the pipes were frozen and there was nothing we could do but wait for it to get warmer. We already knew both of these things.

Oh well. Today Lynne was annoyed with me. This was because I don’t have boobs. You see, I can waltz out to the shop any time I want while she is welded to the hungry baby. She hadn’t been out of the house for days and was going a bit stir-crazy, so she decided to go to Boots, to look at nail varnish and buy nappies. I would stay in with the baby; this was the plan. She wouldn’t be gone long.

But instead of leaving the house, she stood over me with her coat on being grumpy while I played with the baby. ‘Stop fussing!’ I shouted eventually (and quietly, to avoid upsetting the delicate sensibilities of the child). ‘Just go, if you are going!’

When she came back she told me that the supermarket was rammed with people panic-buying all the shit. It’s funny how the British like to think of themselves as generally stoic, level-headed people, but then if anything happens everyone goes mental. IT’S SNOWING! CIVILISATION WILL COLLAPSE! BUY UP BOTTLED WATER AND DISPOSABLE LIGHTERS! GET A DANGEROUS DOG!!!

At least for a couple of weeks of the year the main issues that affect the State Of The Nation aren’t wheelie bins and terrorists. They are snow and terrorists.

Our Baby Is Not A Horse

I don’t think that our baby has colic. I think if she did we would know all about it. She is definitely more windy; sometimes I wake up in the morning to hear her bum happily phootling away like an old tank engine coming up to steam, but she is bright and chirpy as long as she is on the breast milk.

The crying seems to have been the formula milk. Her wee stomach just isn’t used to it. It’s not even gulping air from the bottle, she has happily been drinking breast milk both from bottle and boob all along with no ill effects. She hasn’t had any formula since Hogmanay and she hasn’t done the inconsolable crying thing since.

Lucky us, eh?

Party's Over

The Christmas decorations came down yesterday. The holidays are over and I can no longer justify sitting about drinking. Despite our new arrival we managed to have a merry Christmas, entertaining lots of people, on one occasion even providing a pot of soup for seven, count them seven, people. (I bet you didn’t think I could make soup, did you? See, I’m a proper househusband). Having a baby does not necessarily mean the death of your social life. In fact, people seem to enjoy coming round and playing with the baby, probably because it’s easier than having one of their own, they can always give her back when they are finished. All the fun with none of the nappies or crying.

Now, as I have said, the holidays are over, and I am not looking forward to taking all the empties to the bottle bank. On the up-side, I now have a sturdy pram to transport them all in, but anyone who saw me pulling all those wine bottles out from under the pram would probably phone social services. I could make two trips, split the difference as it were, but if I was observed by the same person each time it would look even worse. It’s a real dilemma.

Today Lynne took the baby to the doctors’ for the first time. I stayed here. Lynne put a white shirt on, dressed the baby in some fancy clothes and then dropped her lunch on her. It was beans. Fortunately the beans landed in the pattern on the baby’s dress, so you couldn’t really see it. Then, with the baby in a big pink bear suit, they went to the doctors’.

My daughter got her first injections. They covered a dizzying range of illness, polio, tetanus, whooping cough, diphtheria, and so on. She had one in each leg. Poor mite. One in each leg! I bet she cried like a fire alarm.

Who The Fuck Is Larry Anyway?

The baby is now too big for the moses basket. I have moved the cot into our bedroom and put the basket in the cupboard. It’s incredible how fast the wee girl is growing, some of her vests are looking a bit tight and one of her pairs of jeans is too little. We put her in the cot and she flails about a bit, gurgling, burbling, gargling and babbling. The cot has a mobile of wee animals on it that plays a tinkly tune. I’ve seen far too many horror films to ever find it relaxing, but the kid loves it. She looks as happy as Larry.

I’ve been saying things like that lot recently. I don’t know who Larry is. I have started to talk like a parent. When the baby is crying I accuse her of being a ‘grumpy boots’. I got a woolly jumper for Christmas and used the word ‘toasty’ to describe its comfort and warmth. I might even have attempted to express my enjoyment of the Christmas dinner by saying ‘yummy’. I don’t know where all this stuff is coming from, i'ts just spilling out of some secret subconscious recess of my head. Lynne thinks this is hilarious but I just want my brain back.

White Christmas, Babies and Horses

Feeling better, I have decided to more fully chronicle the festive period. I have no idea why I felt so crappy yesterday, I only had two beers, a wee whiskey and I didn’t have a chance to drink any of the port before Doctor P chugged it all. I think it was the stress of the crying baby coupled with going to bed without brushing my teeth, or something like that. Or I am getting old.

My daughter’s first Christmas was white. She wasn’t bothered. As for me, I think there is something exciting about looking out of the window and seeing everything muffled in a blanket of white. A comfy chair, good food, some sipping booze and a few presents. That’s what Christmas is all about. And this year I even managed to watch the Bond film in its entirety instead of tuning in sometime after the first twenty minutes. I don’t think that has ever happened before. I saw the bit before the titles and everything.

Next Christmas will be different. My daughter will be old enough to know what’s going on and so Christmas 2010 will of course be entirely focused on her. But for now she is more concerned with prolonged crying at about the same time every night. We think she might be getting colic.

Colic is a nebulous affliction hinted at darkly in all those baby books that clutter up my bathroom, which I never read. It affects babies and horses. It starts at about seven weeks (in babies, my information on horses is sketchy), usually peaking at twelve weeks old. Beyond that it is characterised by inconsolable crying and might have something to do with trapped wind, but it’s true cause is shrouded in mystery. I suspect it’s just a catch-all term for your baby being a grumpy little bastard.

On Christmas Eve it is so bad I run out to Boots to buy some gripe water. That is a bizarrely Victorian name for a baby medicine, but I don’t know what else to call it. I ask the apocethary, nestled as she is amongst her darkly glinting bottles of salves, tinctures and other trucklements, which one to get. She says they are all much of a much-ness, so I plump for Infacol, on the strength of the picture on the bottle. Not for the first time I think that once the kid can hold her head up on her own we should look into baby modelling. There are some fucking ugly pictures of babies on the boxes of stuff they expect you to buy.

Anyway, the faces my daughter pulls when I dose her with this stuff are hilarious. She purses her lips as if she is sucking a lemon, then slowly chews it with her eyes screwed shut. It does taste awful, right enough, and it smells of a clean, clinical mix of mint and aniseed, an odd smell that seems to bring up memories in me that are so ancient I can’t quite grasp them. Maybe I was given Infacol at her age too.

Happy New Year

I woke up this morning with that usual guilt and furry mouth that welcomes each new year. Ah, the future. I was wondering when it was going to get here.

Last night Lynne was playing a gig while I stayed in with the baby. I was equipped with formula milk and Infacol. I watched the BBC Hogmanay diddly-dee programme. I couldn’t hear it because the baby screamed pretty much constantly from 7pm to within a half hour of the bells. Doctor P came around with a couple of beers, but he quickly moved onto the port and fell asleep. I was glad he was there though; you can’t really strangle your child if someone else is watching. I even deployed the Paul Simon to no avail. After trying everything I could think of, including just ignoring her and staring dully into space, I finally managed to calm her down by holding her face down along my arm with her head hanging over my elbow, joggling her up and down and rubbing her tummy. Ten minutes of this treatment was enough to release an explosive series of farts, after which she fell asleep.

At midnight she woke up, bright and cheery, as if nothing had happened. But I won’t forget. I’m going to save it up for the wedding speech.