I Am That Dad

Another weapon in the arsenal  for any parent is the power of song. A soothing voice that when combined with your well established Rock is a very effective tool to get your child to go to sleep. For weeks now I have been singing Noah to sleep almost every night; the melody may change with each rendition and the words are almost always made up more or less spontaneously, usually describing how tired he is but often it can be about anything; what I've done today, what colour his sleepsuit is, how desperate I am for the toilet and so forth. I figured it wasn't important, its not like he can understand me anyway is it? So I've sung nursery rhymes, The Beatles or The Rolling Stones and other great classic ballads, even the song my parents used to sing to me which I demanded every night for years and sometimes on loop (The Cuckoo by Pentangle if you're interested). But for Noah, nothing works quite as well as Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas. ...

As a parent you quickly develop a rock. Your rock is powerful, it is your main line of defence in the soothing of your child. Your rock is good. No I am not referring to the follically challenged Quo, with their power chords and endless rewrites of what appears to be the same song, or any other rock band for that matter. I am of course talking about the rocking motion employed to calm your baby, to encourage sleep and the cessation of tears. After five and a half months I do it without thinking now, in fact it has become my default stance, so much so that this morning I found myself queueing in the supermarket, waiting to buy my breakfast banana, swaying from foot to foot. Of course having no baby in my arms just makes me look a little bit mental, made worse because its a cold November morning and I am wearing what Nikala affectionately refers to as my "murderer's coat" and "rapist's gloves".

This week my mother has been to stay and apart from providing Nikala with some much needed grownup company, its been lovely for Noah to be able to spend some time with his Grandma, especially as this week Noah decided it was time to up the ante and do something new. Nikala and I have been feeling like somewhat neglectful parents recently as we haven't been giving Noah enough "tummy-time", you know so that he learns to crawl and stuff instead of just lying on his face lightly suffocating on the playmat. The thing is he hates it on his front, probably because of the aforementioned face meeting floor, and we just can't bear to see him cry and pick him up straight away. Well that has all changed in a day. In the way that only Grandmas can, my mum spent all day playing with him on his front and upon my return from work they had something to show me. In an excited hush we all got down on the floor and gathered around Noah as he was placed face down on his playm...

Last weekend we met up with the other parents in our NCT group and it was great to see all the other babies and where they are in their development. I can't help but be reminded of the school playground but instead of making unsubstantiated claims about our parents strength and prowess, we were all secretly comparing our children. Oh he's still waking for a feed every two hours? Ours sleeps 7 hours at night now. Look how alert he is, yours is still sleeping lots I see. And so it goes on and I realise I am already a competitive dad. I was absolutely brimming with pride when the other dads were impressed with how strong Noah's neck was, how good he is at holding his head up. Yes thought I, my son is brilliant he is super clever and way more advanced than any other baby that had ever lived. Clearly I need to start him on Japanese lessons next week.

So this weekend saw the end of the London 2012 Olympic games and when we applied for tickets all those months ago, we had absolutely no idea Noah would be with us. We were fortunate enough to gain tickets for the BMX finals this weekend and so for the last couple if weeks we have been trying to encourage Noah to take to the bottle so we could enlist one of our parents to look after him whilst we went out on a day trip. He had other plans however, spitting out the bottle with a look of disdain: 'what is this rubber thing? What do you think your playing at daddy? Do you think me the fool?' We abandoned the idea of leaving him with a grandparent and with some trepidation decided to take him with us. Which as it happened was fine. Sure it was ridiculously hot, the hottest day of the whole games, yes our seats were in full sun so we actually only sat in ten for 5 seconds before moving to a shady patch with a very restricted view. But we had made it tithe Olympics with our baby b...

Noah had his 8 week immunisation injections yesterday, one in each of his thighs. I was fortunate enough to be at work for the actual event, definitely a good thing as I am rubbish with needles and from what Nikala told me the needle was huge. In my head I envisioned a knitting needle, the size of one of his femurs and I don't even think that was much of an exaggeration, given Nikala's description. Predictably he screamed, or at least he did for the second; he was blissfully unaware of the torture about to befall him for the first. But what was truly horrible was how unwell it made him feel for the next 48 hours. By the time I got home he was quite listless and didn't want to be put down at all, even though he was exhausted. He just kept on pushing out his bottom lip in that way which breaks my heart. I'd do anything to take his pain and discomfort away. Poor little chap.

So for months I kept peering at other parents choices of pushchair wherever I happened to be. I knew how expensive they were and judged the parents accordingly. What had I become?!?! More than a few times I looked up to see concerned looks in the eyes of a parent. Crap. Of course this looks bad. I'm a middle aged man, standing alone in the supermarket queue, staring at your child. "Except I'm not!" I want to scream at them. "I'm merely curious as to why you spent £1,875 on what was clearly a rubbish pushchair! Did you not do your due diligence and research this properly? What kind of a parent are you?!?!?" Of course I don't say that, instead I avert my eyes and pretend I was looking elsewhere, which of course only adds to the creepy, pervy appearance. A few months later and Noah is now occupying his pushchair, a pushchair we think is just perfect for our needs and what's more, didn't break the bank. Here we are, back in a baby shop for so...

I was going to try and catch up with everything I have missed, but as I am sure is often the case with new parents, things have run away from me. So rather than write nothing at all, I will begin now and hopefully fill in the gaps as we go. So it will be no surprise to learn that our baby has been born, in fact it was two months ago now and although they have been a hard adjustment in lots of ways, it also seems like its the way it's supposed to be, like it's always been. I hope this means we are doing something right. I keep meeting new dads or dads to be and one of the things we all seem to be able to get our teeth into is tech, baby tech to be precise. This is something we relate to, something we can be offer true advice on and research every detail of what is good and what isn't. It makes us feel useful in amongst the breast feeding lessons and how to cope with labour pain advice that as a couple we are inundated with. This is solid, familiar ground, sure the gadge...

So the baby still hasn't turned and we have three weeks to go before d-day. Nikala is very keen to have the baby naturally, but with a breech baby the NHS rarely let you so it would be a c-section, the prospect of which is understandably scaring Nikala a little. The doctors have suggested to Nikala that we go and have an ECV - endo cephalic version - (thats an external, manual manipulation of the baby to try and get it to turn into position to you and I), but apparently even then there is only a 50% chance of it working. Today was the day and we were both pretty nervous as we had learned that it can be pretty "uncomfortable", which if the internet is to be believed means bloody painful! Arriving at the hospital we are shown to a labour room. Apparently they are really busy and so we cant go to the maternity ward. Fortunately the labour room is quite comfortable and hopefully we  wouldn't  be here long anyway. Fortune however, was not smiling upon us and after sever...