Made of straw

The girl's been making a huge mess when drinking lately. She's pretty much given up on the sippy cup and now just treats it a chew toy she can bash food with. We've been giving her water from an actual cup for a couple of weeks. She drinks it, but ends up soaked. We've tried shallow and wide and narrow and deep, but she finds a way to spill most of the glass all over herself and the high seat tray.

Today, on a whim, I tried a straw in the cup. She immediately started chewing it, then spent a few minutes blowing bubbles in the water, She liked that. Then, just as I'd resigned myself to an afternoon of her blowing bubbles in water, she started sucking up the water. The flow was more than she could swallow, so some dribbled out. But for the first time in weeks she drank a whole cup of water without drenching herself.

Of course a few minutes later she realised she could take the straw out and play with it. But that just means I have to hold the straw in the cup. For now (I hope).

She ended up drinking over 250ml after dinner. Which means I think we're in store for some very wet nappies overnight. Mixed blessing that.

Baby shower

I had my baby shower on Sunday. Well, it wasn't a normal baby shower. Besides the fact that I'm male, of course. It was closer to a low intensity stag do. A few of us went out for drinks and bowling. The basic concept was that it was my last night out before knuckling down and preparing for the birth. After the bowling, the wife came to join us for a few hours of random natter. Definitely fun, though my bowling is terrible. I really must get better before I take the kid bowling – she has to believe I'm wonderful at all things.

Or maybe not. I have promised myself I will try my best to not lie to her. It's hard. Adults have a really hard time not lying to kids. They're just so willing to believe anything. I've caught myself at it a few times, and I'm conscious of it. It's really hard to stop, even though I know that it's just wrong. It must be hardcoded in or something.

There are a number of things I promised myself I would not do, but since I've been doing all kinds of reading on the subject I find that there a logical reasons for a lot of them. Like why people talk to babies in baby talk. However, I am firmly of the mind that babies should be imitating you not the other way around. But it seems that some mimicry is just easier for them to process. So we'll just have to see where I draw the line on dignity.

On that note, I've decided that the baby shower will be my last night of any but the most trivial of drinking. If the wife can pop at any moment, I want a clear head to be always at hand. After the shower we had a little scare that she might be in labour. My reaction was simply Holy shit! I'm not ready. Turns out she wasn't and that this was a known effect of the raspberry leaf tea. But at the time we didn't know, so I had to go around and prepare things. I found that after all those G&Ts that I could not keep more than a single instruction in my head at time. The scare only lasted half an hour, and afterwards I was able to stop panicking. But I realised that I needed to be constantly on the ball for the next month, since I'll have to have some working brains at a moment's notice. It's an interesting lesson to have learnt.

Work and labour

I've been rather silent for the past few days as real life has gotten in the way of me writing anything beyond cover letters.

I'm keeping myself quite busy with the job hunt and in bringing my skills up to date. I do wish I could have spent all this time off work after the baby is born when I could really use it. As it stands, I'm spending too much time contemplating the future rather than doing something with it. I'm still rather concerned about all the time off work I'm going to need to take. Paternity leave is only ten days, and, since I'll be too new at the job, I won't get any paid leave. And since I won't have much holiday accrued yet, I'll probably need to spend all of it just on baby.

All the stuff I've been reading lately has got me afraid of how long the wife and kid will spend in hospital. If it is two weeks, there goes all the paternity leave in one fell swoop. Unless things really go wrong, I don't want to spend my days in hospital waiting for test result after test result to see if they'll let us go home. I'm just picturing the wife and I going stir crazy with no sleep waiting for result of a blood test they took 12 hours ago to drop or go above some magic number an NHS manual considers to be healthy.

I'd voiced my concerns to the wife earlier and she asked if I'd reconsidered doing a home birth then. I though about it and then realised that at least in a hospital we only ran the risk of the staff not knowing what they were doing. At home it would be guaranteed.

The wife's superpowers were in full force last night at a house party. Various smells from foods, drinks, people, etc, were starting to annoy her, while being undetectable from everyone else. Or at least the first real day of spring here was blocking my nose enough that I wasn't able to tell at all. It was good getting out and being socialable. And even though she spent most of the party in a chair, she did noticeably have a good time.

She got a bloody nose today. Every year I can tell the first day of spring since I get my first (and often only) bloody nose of the year. I am wondering if the offspring is passing my allergies on to my wife. Is that even possible? Or is this just an oddly timed pregnancy symptom.

The little one's been moving around quite a bit lately. Today I put my cold hand on the wife's belly and I could feel it shift and squirm under the skin. I drew my hand back quickly and said I'm sorry! I'm sorry. I didn’t realise it was so cold. The wife said It's ok. Your hand isn't so cold. You can put it back. Um. I wasn't talking to you — I'd managed to offend them both in one gesture. I'm off to a good start.

And finally, words have started to take on the special birthing meaning. When I hear the word "engage” I immediately think of the proper positioning of the baby's head just before it starts coming out. And the song Express Yourself now just makes me think of lactation.

I can see 40

In under a week will it be my last child-free birthday. To be honest I have no real sense of what the impact of a child will be on having a festive time. Obviously the main impact for this birthday is that the wife won't be able to drink (sorry hon). But, for now, I'm really pondering on what future birthdays will be like.

I'm guessing from watching friends that it means only one of me or my wife will be able to make it out for a night on the town. So we'll have to get used to being antisocial with other people or antisocial with each other.

I'm not so keen on that.

This assumption does come from seeing friends who had kids much younger than the rest of the crowd they hang out with — so maybe it doesn't have to be that way.

How many babies can one solitary person handle at once? Is it possible to have one person look after 2 or 3 babies, so the 3 or 5 parents can have nice care-free night out on the town? Rotating baby-duty could save many couples from premature middleagedness.

I could just have parties at my place. The bloody flat cost enough, I should take advantage of it. How long do I have before the kid is too old to just spend the night zonked out or oblivious to mildly-tipsy adults having fun in another room?

I suppose I just want everything. I want my birthday cake, and a nice slice of my kid's dinosaur-shaped cake too,

She likes angostura bitters

When we go to the pub she orders angostura bitters and tonic. The glass looks like it's got any anonymous spirit, and doesn't raise any eyebrows or questions. Except from the barstaff. Apparently, when you’re in a pub (especially a festively unquiet one) and ask for angostura bitters you get a very blank look, particularly when the barstaff is not native English-speaking.

Last night I went to the bar to get us both drinks. I got a gin and tonic for me, and, for her, an angostura bitter and tonic. It went something like this:

Me: A Gin and Tonic, and an angostura bitters and tonic.

Barman: (With an eastern European accent) Ok. (goes about pouring the G&T)

At this point I’m relieved and think it'll be easy.

Barman: What was the other drink?

Me: Angostura bitters and tonic.

Barman: (points to a beer tap) Bitter with tonic?

Me: No angostura bitters

Barman: What?

Me: (furiously scans behind the bar for a bottle of angostura bitters) ummm…. (more awkward silence). There! (points to the pepper shakers below the rack of spirits) behind the pepper. Angostura bitters.

Barman: Um. (more awkward silence while he just looks at me and and the beer taps. Specifically does not look behind the pepper shakers)

Barman: Um. (goes and gets manager)

Me: Can I have an angostura bitters and tonic.

Manager: Ok. (pours a tonic and adds a few drops of angostura bitters)

Sigh. My hardcoded be-nice-to-woman-carrying-my-child can only take me so far. She needs to find another non-alcoholic drink of choice.

New rules for cleaning house

We agreed that I will take over all cleaning that involves chemicals. That's reasonable and makes sense. She will take over cleaning that doesn't involve chemicals. Which means I now have to clean the oven after years of getting away with not having to do so. She gets to take over... actually we didn't really clarify what tasks I give to her. Well, at least she agreed to empty the Dyson when it fills up.

In a separate note, we're going to gigs while we still can. Two this week. One a week ago. Fortunately, with the chaos of the gig, it's easy to get by without drinking, especially if I don't drink either. It's odd and awkward having to keep it a secret, since it is really interesting news. But I understand why, so I'll keep it quiet til the end of the year.

Gestation begins now

The point of this blog is to note down somewhere the process of becoming a father. I've read dozens of blogs from women detailing all the things they go through in becoming a mother, but few men I know go into anything but the most superficial details. I'm partly curious to see if it's a personal thing or something inherent in the fact that all the action happens somewhere else. So, without the squicky bits, is there anything to blog about?

I’m going to keep this anonymous for a while, mostly due to the fact we’ve not told anyone at all. Finding out you’re going to be a grandparent via a blog is a little cold, as I see it.

Now that that's out of the way...

It’s been 4 days since the test showed up positive. We’d suspected something since her period was really quite late at this point. We used a bog standard pee-on-a-stick test. When three minutes passed she told me I had to look at it. Fair enough. It was clearly positive. No ambiguity there. I just handed it to her... I wasn’t speechless. But I was surprised how much of a shock it was. I mean, it was not a surprise and nothing unexpected, but somehow it being real just was different. I somehow keep being surprised that I’m just made of meat and hormones and not just sense and logic. So when I get life-changing news I am stunned and I do babble and falter. I put on the kettle and made tea.

Of course, I don’t drink tea. But, being British it just felt the right thing to do for such a momentous event.

This was around 10 on a Friday night. We spent the next couple of hours backtracking to when she must have conceived and when she’ll be due. She estimates that she’s just shy of 5 weeks along and will be due on 23 July. We decide we won’t tell anyone til she can get to the GP and get a proper test from a proper doctor to be sure.

Saturday is spent with various friends at the pub and dinner. The only issue was making excuses for her not drinking. Easy enough to avoid. Or at least I tell myself that no one noticed me switching wine glasses with her when mine got low, then switching again, when mine was empty.

Sunday night we decide we need to sort out our diet. This is important for me to know, since I do just about all of the cooking. I’d been trying for ages to get our diet a bit more diverse, but now I really need to.
Folic acid! Lots of it. Oh the beans our diet will need. So many.
Vitamin D. That’s, ummmm…. mushrooms and sunlight. We’re fine for mushrooms, but sunlight? In England? In winter? We’ll just hope eggs, salmon and soy milk will do.
Vitamin A, but not too much. How much is too much? Is a big carrot too much? How do I go nutrient overboard and just leave out A? Then there’s the rest of the Bs. So I make pasta. With a sauce that has all the veg in the world in it. She computes that it’s shy on D but otherwise hits all the marks.

She can’t get an apt with the GP til Tuesday. She gets an early slot and calls me at work when she’s done. Yup she’s preggers. Yup, she’s 5 weeks along. Yup she’s due on the 23^rd of July. And, yeah, she still needs folic acid supplements. The cook in me is slightly offended.

Today is Wednesday and we’re planning to tell both sets of parents. I’ll post later how that goes.