D Day

Today Lynne went back to work. No going back part-time, no half measures, no fucking about, she is nine to five from here on in. Me and the baby watched the football.

That's not entirely true. I was working this morning so my mum came round to babysit. The nursery has let us down: their building work is going on for another six weeks so we are looking elsewhere. We might have a place for the baby in a nursery round the corner from the beginning of July, but we haven't been to see it yet.

In the meantime, my mother has stepped into the breach. My folks live 45 minutes in the car away and they do like to see the kid, but I feel bad about getting them to babysit while I go to work. I have volunteered to work every Saturday instead of doing the Wednesday shift to make it easier, but this isn't ideal either bcause that means that I will have to use my holidays to get a weekend off. We have been here before.

The baby and my mum have made friends now. I don't know what the baby had against her, I think maybe she had sussed out that when my folks turn up Lynne and I tend to disappear and leave her with them. Or maybe it had to do with stupid noises. I mak a lot of stupid noises, so does Lynne, but my mum is a bit uptight for that carry on, and maybe the baby found being clutched at in steely silence a bit alarming.

Anyway, my first proper day of being a true hausfrau was fine. I got back about lunchtime, we ate, we read books, the baby chewed the books and we watched the football. I had a fiver on Chile and they won. The baby feel asleep before the end of the match so I missed the Swiss free kick that was their best chance of the game. Just as well, if I'd been watching it, it would have gone in.

When Lynne gets home we will all have our tea. I will put up some recipes tomorrow.

I'm a Bit of a Knob Sometimes...

After my last post I had intended to continue over the weekend by riffing on feeding and sleeping patterns, vis-a-vis the baby, but events conspired to prevent me. So instead I offer this, three instances of petulance on my part that happened this weekend. I tell these stories against myself.

I was eating breakfast on Friday morning when Lynne said,

‘Give the baby some of your scrambled egg.’

‘No,’ I snapped. ‘She’s got porridge and she’s [expletive deleted] eating that.’

Lynne leaned towards the baby as if to share a confidence and cooed, ‘Daddy is angry with us.’

Two points about this. The first is that I am trying not to swear so much in front of the baby, she is still too little to take it in but I need to kick the habit before it’s too late. You have to imagine the [expletive deleted] spoken in a neutral voice an octave lower than the rest of my statement. I’m not saying that is an honest transcript of what I said; just that that is how you should imagine it.

The second point is that I was angry with Lynne and the baby. It went back to the asparagus Lynne gave her. I know it is important for the baby to try new foods, but giving her exciting things like asparagus, or strips of toast spread with Dairylea, with her dinner only serves to highlight the shortcomings of the goo that forms the bulk of the meal. And if the baby does not embark on the voyage of sleep stuffed to the gunwales with grub, she wakes up hungry and I end up getting up at 5am to shovel baby rice down her throat. So, quite neatly, I have shown that the fact that I was tired and grumpy was all Lynne’s fault.

My in-laws came down for the weekend. Yas, ya fucken beauty! There is still a slight frisson of tension between me and my mother-in-law, but the baby is blissfully unaware of this and loves her grandparents unreservedly, giggling and bouncing up and down as they play with her. This is made all the more irritating as the baby howls with displeasure at the sight of my mother’s face. Stupid baby.

That is all background to instance of petulance number two. I came home from work on Saturday to find Lynne and her mother fussing over the baby in her cot.

‘Hey,’ I cried, pointed at Lynne’s mother’s feet. ‘No shoes in the bedroom! We’ve got a cream carpet in here! I’m not allowed shoes in the bedroom!’

‘Oh, sorry,’ she replied in a voice that didn’t sound very sorry at all. That was the only point I scored all weekend. Pretty needless really. Make sure you mark it up there with the rest.

On to number three. On Saturday night I went out to for Tiny Eric’s leaving do. He is leaving for America on Wednesday so he wanted a few drinks in the pub. I was there at 9pm, but he was nowhere to be seen, but I saw another guy I knew so we had a pint. He was only staying for one and then going on to the Halt Bar. Tiny Eric pitched up half an hour later with another one of his mates and said he was going to find a table round the corner, but my Halt Bar mate was in the middle of a story so I told Tiny Eric I would join him in a minute.

When I went in search of Tiny Eric I couldn’t find him. There were bands playing down the stairs, a girl sitting at a table in the doorway taking the money and stamping the hands.

I asked her, ‘Did a little guy with glasses and a tie go in here?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s indie music. They are all little guys with glasses and a tie.’

‘How much is it?’

‘Five pounds.’

‘A fiver?’ I scoffed. ‘I’m not paying a fiver to see shit bands in the pub!’

So I went to the Halt Bar. I probably won’t see Tiny Eric ever again.

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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.