Hello, I’ve taken over my Dad’s blog this week to introduce myself to the world. I made my grand entrance at 12.22pm on Friday 16th December. I was a bit late, my parents were expecting me to turn up on December 5th but I figured that my future birthday parties would be more fun if they were closer to Christmas. But don’t even dream about getting me one present in the future and telling me it covers both Christmas and my birthday. I’ll be expecting to be treated like a princess on both occasions.
I think my Daddy was secretly hoping for a boy and I played a little trick on him when I popped out by placing my umbilical cord between my legs. The expression on my Dad’s face was a mixture of pride and astonishment that his offspring had an extremely long willy that happened to be green with yellow stripes.
Anyway, it didn’t take my giddy parents long to realise that I’m actually a girl, a result that would have been obvious had anyone studied my Mother’s gene pool.
I arrived into the world weighing 3.226 kg and was 42 centimetres long, which gives me a better BMI index than my Father, a statistic I intend maintaining for the rest of my life. I was born in the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, a fine establishment that welcomes several thousand babies into the world each year, but still found time to make me feel special. Mammy and Daddy bought some chocolates for the nurses, but I think they would have been better off joining the campaign to have those nurses paid a decent salary. I’m only a couple of weeks old but already I find it strange that nurses get paid less than bankers. I’ll change that when I take over the world (more of that later).
My Dad is Irish and my Mother is a Kiwi and it turns out that I now have both these nationalities plus that of my birthplace. As the only Australian in the house, I expect to be awarded special privileges, such as pavlova on demand or vegemite on my toast.
I am assured that my parents are in the process of obtaining three passports for me which will be allow me to commence my inaugural world tour. I can’t be bothered with queues and having lots of passports will allow me to get into Dublin, Auckland and Melbourne quickly.
I guess over time I’ll develop a favourite among my three nationalities. At the moment I’m happy to be a citizen of the world but Australia will have a head start as the place of my birth. Mind you, I was under the impression that this was a modern country that had fully embraced the metric system. However, when you’re born, people want to know what you weigh in pounds and ounces. Are we living in medieval England, people? Anyway, for the benefit of all those old fashioned fuddy duddies out there, I was born weighing 7 pounds and 2 ounces, which in the immortal lines of Roddy Doyle in the Snapper, is a decent size for a baby but would be small for a turkey.
I know I’m a girl and all that but it seems that I have arrived into a weight-obsessed world. I intend stacking it on for here on.
While I was still inside Mammy, I heard Daddy talking about his anxieties. He gets a bit weak at the sight of blood and was nervous about taking the wrong route on the way to the hospital. In the end I decided to help him out. I waited long enough so that Mammy was booked in for an induction and then decided to make my grand entrance three hours before this was due. As a result, Daddy already had the bags packed (why do people take more stuff to hospital when a baby is due than they would take on a two week holiday?) and had the car filled with petrol.
The dash to the hospital was much more straightforward than anticipated, although it did include three forks in the road in quick succession. Left, left and right is how I remember it, although I was swinging around in amniotic fluid at the time. Dad thinks all these forks in the road are a metaphor for something but he hasn’t had much sleep lately and can’t think what it is.
I’m two weeks old now and starting to find my feet. At least I think they are feet. They are two odd shaped things that seem to wave uncontrollably in front of me when I lie down. I’m getting eight meals a day, sometimes from grumpy parents at 3am (they’ll just have to suck it up, I’m the new boss around here) and I’m getting lots of cuddles and sleep. Oh, and isn’t it nice to have someone change your nappies? I’m getting through around twelve a day at the moment, about the same as my Dad does when he goes for beer and curry. Except I can do mine without the need for a newspaper or other reading material.
I went for my first spin in my pram yesterday. That was fun, but there are a lot of shadows out there in the big wild world and I found it all a bit too fascinating at first. But gradually the motion got me to sleep. I think Mammy and Daddy have discovered a quick way of settling me down and something tells me that I’ll be spending a lot of time in that pram in the wee small hours of the morning.
That’s my story for the time being. I wish I had more to report but it’s true what they say about Bubbas. Pretty much all we do is eat, sleep and pooh. But I’ve got a lifetime ahead of me for everything else. Time for a snooze folks. I’ll talk to you in 2012.
Friday 30 December 2011
Friday 9 December 2011
Waiting For Godot
Our child is now four days overdue and as a result, we have started calling him/her Godot. If nothing else, this gives us a consistent name that we can use in public. To date, we’ve been calling the kid by the names we have decided to announce to the world once we know if it’s a boy or girl. But we don’t want to announce these in advance, so we can only use these when nobody else is around.
When others are in earshot, we become very impersonal and call the poor unborn child “It” or “The Thing”.
So we’re waiting, waiting, waiting. We’re waiting to find out if it’s a boy or girl. Waiting to find out what colour hair he has (for the purposes of laziness, I’m going to assume it’s a “he” in the rest of this posting). Ironically, my wife’s family provide a risk of ginger to this equation, despite the fact that I’m the Irish one in the gene pool.
We’re waiting to see if he will have my ears. My mother’s family have ears like dumbo, so I risk passing on this recessive gene.
We’re waiting to see if he will sleep like me or his mother. I could sleep for twelve hours during a nuclear holocaust, whereas my wife would wake up if a feather fell off a duck in Alaska.
Sleep by the way, is the first thing people mention to you when you talk about an upcoming arrival. “Get as much sleep now as you can” they’ll say, as though sleep could be stored up like a battery. The truth is that if you slept well last night, it only affects how you’ll feel today. You can’t carry it forward.
Sleep deprivation, baby blues, post natal depression, SIDs, messy nappies and colic are all terms we’ve heard recently. Nobody talks about smiles and the way babies smell after they’ve been bathed. Or the way they run to meet you when you come home from work. There is almost a conspiracy to talk down the benefits of parenthood, even though none of us would be here without it.
It will undoubtedly be tough, particularly as I’m no longer in the full flush of youth. But the benefits will more than outweigh the costs. I’ll have somebody to pass on my silky soccer skills to. I can teach him how to steal apples from the orchards down the road and to fashion pieces of plastic into the shape of fifty cent coins for use in slot machines and pool tables. Basically, all the tools he needs for a happy childhood.
One of the key objectives all prospective parents have is to ensure that they don’t repeat the same mistakes their parents made with them. I have to say up front that our parents (and I speak for the missus when I say this) did a thoroughly outstanding job and we wouldn’t swap it for the world. But there are a couple of teeny, weeny things that I’d like to improve on.
The first thing is clothes. Mother’s should be banned from choosing clothes for boys. They don’t have a lot of experience after all, apart from encouraging their partners to wear pink more often and to ditch the beloved t-shirt he’s been wearing for the past ten years. I wouldn’t be so bold as to choose suitable clothing for a small girl, apart from suggesting that black goes with everything. For the record, I should point out some of the sartorial massacres to which I was subjected as a small boy.
Skin tight trousers with a loop that went under your feet were not trendy in the 1970s and never will be until gravity disappears. A velvet suit would have looked well if I was embarking on a career as a 1960s pimp in Harlem. But it did not look well on the day of my confirmation. Tailored short trousers look good on a Bermudan businessman but work less well in the chilly November days of an Irish childhood.
I hope our child will grow up with the freedom to make his own decisions and if he wants a velvet suit, he’s welcome to one. For now though we’d like him to make one major decision and that relates to coming out into the big wide world. It only struck me recently that we all get to choose our birthday. It’s the baby who decides when to come out, not the mother.
I wasn’t to know it at the time but my birthday has a better than average chance of falling on Good Friday or Easter Sunday. So many of my childhood parties were held on days when everyone was fasting or gouging themselves on chocolate eggs and ignoring my celebration cake.
We’re just hoping he picks his birthday soon. We’ve had the bag for hospital packed for weeks and the nursery decorated and the baby stuff assembled. All we’re missing now is the baby.
Packing the bag was interesting. The web and baby books are full of instructions, including the suggestion that you bring your favourite pillow and duvet. I know cutbacks in the health system are a problem, but surely hospitals still provide bed linen? There is even a list for what the male partner is supposed to pack into his light overnight bag. This includes energy drinks, protein bars and instructions on how to remain the emotional rock that your wife requires during this traumatic journey.
As part of my final planning, I’m reading a book called “cheers to childhood” which is an instruction manual for blokes. I’m on the chapter titled “Practical ideas for pain management” which to my disappointment is not a guide to the best pain killers the father should take when he gets a headache.
I feel rather helpless it must be said. The woman does all the work and we men are there for “support”. It doesn’t fit the alpha male need to be in charge. But it’s better than waiting. Over to you Godot. It’s time to choose your birthday.
When others are in earshot, we become very impersonal and call the poor unborn child “It” or “The Thing”.
So we’re waiting, waiting, waiting. We’re waiting to find out if it’s a boy or girl. Waiting to find out what colour hair he has (for the purposes of laziness, I’m going to assume it’s a “he” in the rest of this posting). Ironically, my wife’s family provide a risk of ginger to this equation, despite the fact that I’m the Irish one in the gene pool.
We’re waiting to see if he will have my ears. My mother’s family have ears like dumbo, so I risk passing on this recessive gene.
We’re waiting to see if he will sleep like me or his mother. I could sleep for twelve hours during a nuclear holocaust, whereas my wife would wake up if a feather fell off a duck in Alaska.
Sleep by the way, is the first thing people mention to you when you talk about an upcoming arrival. “Get as much sleep now as you can” they’ll say, as though sleep could be stored up like a battery. The truth is that if you slept well last night, it only affects how you’ll feel today. You can’t carry it forward.
Sleep deprivation, baby blues, post natal depression, SIDs, messy nappies and colic are all terms we’ve heard recently. Nobody talks about smiles and the way babies smell after they’ve been bathed. Or the way they run to meet you when you come home from work. There is almost a conspiracy to talk down the benefits of parenthood, even though none of us would be here without it.
It will undoubtedly be tough, particularly as I’m no longer in the full flush of youth. But the benefits will more than outweigh the costs. I’ll have somebody to pass on my silky soccer skills to. I can teach him how to steal apples from the orchards down the road and to fashion pieces of plastic into the shape of fifty cent coins for use in slot machines and pool tables. Basically, all the tools he needs for a happy childhood.
One of the key objectives all prospective parents have is to ensure that they don’t repeat the same mistakes their parents made with them. I have to say up front that our parents (and I speak for the missus when I say this) did a thoroughly outstanding job and we wouldn’t swap it for the world. But there are a couple of teeny, weeny things that I’d like to improve on.
The first thing is clothes. Mother’s should be banned from choosing clothes for boys. They don’t have a lot of experience after all, apart from encouraging their partners to wear pink more often and to ditch the beloved t-shirt he’s been wearing for the past ten years. I wouldn’t be so bold as to choose suitable clothing for a small girl, apart from suggesting that black goes with everything. For the record, I should point out some of the sartorial massacres to which I was subjected as a small boy.
Skin tight trousers with a loop that went under your feet were not trendy in the 1970s and never will be until gravity disappears. A velvet suit would have looked well if I was embarking on a career as a 1960s pimp in Harlem. But it did not look well on the day of my confirmation. Tailored short trousers look good on a Bermudan businessman but work less well in the chilly November days of an Irish childhood.
I hope our child will grow up with the freedom to make his own decisions and if he wants a velvet suit, he’s welcome to one. For now though we’d like him to make one major decision and that relates to coming out into the big wide world. It only struck me recently that we all get to choose our birthday. It’s the baby who decides when to come out, not the mother.
I wasn’t to know it at the time but my birthday has a better than average chance of falling on Good Friday or Easter Sunday. So many of my childhood parties were held on days when everyone was fasting or gouging themselves on chocolate eggs and ignoring my celebration cake.
We’re just hoping he picks his birthday soon. We’ve had the bag for hospital packed for weeks and the nursery decorated and the baby stuff assembled. All we’re missing now is the baby.
Packing the bag was interesting. The web and baby books are full of instructions, including the suggestion that you bring your favourite pillow and duvet. I know cutbacks in the health system are a problem, but surely hospitals still provide bed linen? There is even a list for what the male partner is supposed to pack into his light overnight bag. This includes energy drinks, protein bars and instructions on how to remain the emotional rock that your wife requires during this traumatic journey.
As part of my final planning, I’m reading a book called “cheers to childhood” which is an instruction manual for blokes. I’m on the chapter titled “Practical ideas for pain management” which to my disappointment is not a guide to the best pain killers the father should take when he gets a headache.
I feel rather helpless it must be said. The woman does all the work and we men are there for “support”. It doesn’t fit the alpha male need to be in charge. But it’s better than waiting. Over to you Godot. It’s time to choose your birthday.
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