I overheard a conversation in the lift today. A tired looking guy said to his companion “my wife keeps telling me that I’m asking the baby irrational questions like “why aren’t you sleeping, you’ve just been fed”. She says the kid can’t understand these questions, so you’re not going to get an answer”.
I smiled to myself because I’ve been asking the same irrational questions lately. You tend to speak to infants in two ways. The first is baby talk. Lots of Gooh, gooh, gooh etc. Although I’m not sure why this is called baby talk as I’ve never heard a baby talk like that. The second is adult talk such as “why are you screaming when I put you in your pram? You loved it last night.” You say this as though you’re expecting them to answer, “the climatic situation is significantly altered from yesterday and my dietary requirements have not been met in a consistent manner”.
To judge by most of the conversations Dads have with babies, you would think that we are all raising Stewie from Family Guy.
The truth is that we’re actually talking to ourselves in these situations. The presence of a small child allows us to avoid looking like a madman, which is what most of us are after fractured sleep and putting up with an hour’s screaming. Babies only have two speeds as far as I can see, absolutely beautifully angelically quiet and full throttle screaming at jack hammer level. And they can go from one to the other quicker than you can say “I think we have her settled”.
Before our daughter was born, I found myself drawn towards Fatherhood stories and books and songs aimed at us blokes. I should say of course that this a female dominated industry. Most of the parenting literature out there is aimed at them, and rightly so. They have to carry and deliver the baby after all as well as carrying round the mechanism for feeding the offspring once they are born.
Fathers are less well catered for. Our role is undervalued to a large extent. I’ve sat in meetings with doctors and nurses where my presence has either been invisible or given the impression that I’ve walked in with dog pooh on my shoe. After the baby is born, we men tend to go back to work while the mother stays at home bonding with the child and also taking on the lion’s share of rearing duties. It’s a tiring business all round but we men aren’t allowed to express this because there is somebody nearby who is clearly more exhausted than we are. As a result, it’s pretty hard to talk about the challenges of being a new father.
Thankfully, anonymous web postings give me that opportunity. The first thing I’d say is that being a new Dad is the most physically exhausting thing I’ve done since I passed down my own Mother’s birth canal and came kicking and screaming into this mad world. I’m a pen pushing accountant and the hardest physical labour I do is reposition my oversized posterior in my non ergonomically designed office chair every hour or so.
These days, I do my non physical day at work and come home to an evening of lifting the baby from one place to the next. 4.5kgs of wriggling muscle is harder to transport than you might think. I pick up nappies, wraps, clothes, toys, dummies (damn, I’ve outed our family as dummy users, which in middle class circles is akin to admitting you feed your baby cocaine), all of which mysteriously find their way to the most awkward recesses in the house.
But the mental exhaustion is far worse. Babies are genetically designed to cry in a manner that can’t be ignored. Our baby doesn’t cry much, she’s a good little girl most of the time but when she does it’s impossible to ignore and it changes your mood instantly. I’d like to say I’m ice cool but the truth is I get frustrated and highly strung in these situations, mainly because I’m a rationalist and 6 week old babies aren’t rationale. You can feed them, change them and put them in the same clothes in the same cot with the same temperature as the night before and you’ll get a different reaction.
And I get frustrated because I don’t know what to do. Except hand her back to her mother, which to my shame is something I do too often.
One thing that seems to help though is music. We’ve been playing white noise at a high volume, which seems to sooth the baby and annoy the parents in equal measure. I’ve noticed that normal music seems to work just as well (by which I mean it is perfect some nights and a complete waste of time on other occasions). When she’s particularly growly I play her Tim Minchin’s “lullaby”. For those of you unfamiliar with this Australian comic genius, I’d recommend you hot foot it to Youtube immediately. His song is a melody he wrote to his daughter to encourage her to sleep. It’s pretty cruel to be honest, but I get a giggle out of playing it to our little one when she get’s hysterical.
She’ll no doubt read this and hate me for it in twelve years time but Dad’s will do anything to try and stay sane.
Having said all that, she is, as we Irish would say, a wee dote. She recognises me and stares into my eyes and smiles, which is just about the most heart-warming thing you’ll ever experience. When she’s good, she’s very, very good. When she’s bad...well she’s still the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Babies change you for the better. The stop you from being self obsessed and force you to look outward into the bigger picture of family, friendship and love. It’s a long journey along a bumpy road but we now have someone in the back seat to make us laugh.
Monday 30 January 2012
Tuesday 17 January 2012
Sleep well my Angel
I lived in Luxembourg years ago in the dark ages before the Internet was invented. Or at least in the years before it became publically available and wasn’t just the preserve of members of the Industrial, Military machine and geeky University researchers.
To feed my voracious appetite for news, I subscribed to the Irish Times. This cost an arm and a leg, so I only got the Monday edition, because if I’m really honest, I’m only interested in sport. It was delivered to my work post-box every Monday lunchtime by a man who made his living driving up and down the motorway to Brussels airport. That road bored and fascinated me during my time in Luxembourg. It rolls in a straight line over the Ardennes mountains with nothing to see except the monotonous countryside of Southern Belgium.
In summer, it was a little more interesting as the road would be filled with a never-ending procession of Dutch caravans heading to the South of France. To amuse myself and my travelling companions, we would try to be the first to spot a Dutch caravan coming towards us and you’d accumulate points for correct spotting but lose ten points if the caravan turned out to be Belgian, twenty if it was Danish and elimination from the game if it turned out to be Irish.
The complexities of that game would easily pass the two hours it took to get to the airport and it also spawned the title for my upcoming novel. “Counting Dutch Caravans on the Road to Brussels”. I have the title, now all I have to do is come up with a plot and a narrative.
Having finished the sport, my favourite destination in Monday’s Irish Times was the TV review section. This was strange in that I hadn’t lived in Ireland for eight years at that point and was in country where none of the shows being reviewed would ever be shown. It was like I had a basic need to reconnect with a life I’d previously enjoyed. Or maybe they were just funny.
I find myself in a similar position now as a new Father. I pour over cinema reviews with the intensity of a forensic scientist. And yet I know that I will never get to see these films, unless I can wangle a plane trip to an overseas destination. There are many things you have to sacrifice when you become a parent, sleep being the obvious one, but it’s the little things that strike me most. The cinema, pub and sporting outings will all have to be put on the back burner for a few months, until we get our little angel into some sort of routine that will allow her parents a modicum of a social life.
But it’s a small sacrifice to make for all the pleasure a child brings. It’s hard work for sure, particularly for Mammy who has to do all that breastfeeding and has sole responsibility while Daddy is at work. But when a three week old girl smiles at you for the first time, you would happily gave up all those material things that filled your previous child free life.
Many people have asked me if our baby has changed much since she was born. She has gotten bigger that’s for sure and after some initial weight loss problems is now stacking it on. But really she hasn’t changed much at all. They reckon kids have to adapt to the environment, but actually I think the environment adapts to them. The real change is in the Mother and Father. We start to learn cues, we become comfortable with changing a dirty nappy in darkness so as not to wake a sleeping baby and we change our sleeping patterns. The kid just eats, poohs and sleeps her way through most of this madness.
As an Accountant, I have become fascinated with the numbers involved. She’s gone through approximately 324 nappies so far, at an average of 10 a day. She wants to be fed 8 times per day, which means that her Mother has to produce about a litre of milk every 24 hours. She averages 3 clothing changes per day and throws up or poohs on enough blankets to warrant her own washing machine, which would run on a permanent cycle.
But while her Father is fascinated by numbers and averages, she is proving to be an independently minded baby. Just when we think we have her on a nice three hourly cycle of feed, play and sleep, she can decide to stay awake for 4 hours or to sleep for so long that we have to wake her up (something no parent ever wants to do as a sleeping child is like manna from heaven). The hours of 5pm to 9pm are a particular problem and when you mention this to other new parents, they nod in sympathy and talk about the “witching hour”. She needs more attention that Paris Hilton during this time and her Mother and I have already accepted that we won’t be having dinner together for a long time.
Every day gets easier though and every day she becomes more beautiful and develops her own personality. She doesn’t like socks or mittens and has learned how to remove these herself. That’s something I reckon she inherited from me, as I’ve slept with nothing on but a smile since I was six (which led to a few embarrassing sleep walking incidents when I was teenager and started staying over at friends houses).
She likes clouds and trees and seems fascinated with the world. And she can grip your finger and stare into your eyes in a way that makes me teary just writing these lines. I guess there is a scientific reason for all this. Kids need feeding and nurturing, so they need to develop an emotional bond with their parents. But who cares, it’s just the loveliest, most amazing thing that has ever happened to me. Sleep well my angel. Outside the storm is howling but you’re safe here.
To feed my voracious appetite for news, I subscribed to the Irish Times. This cost an arm and a leg, so I only got the Monday edition, because if I’m really honest, I’m only interested in sport. It was delivered to my work post-box every Monday lunchtime by a man who made his living driving up and down the motorway to Brussels airport. That road bored and fascinated me during my time in Luxembourg. It rolls in a straight line over the Ardennes mountains with nothing to see except the monotonous countryside of Southern Belgium.
In summer, it was a little more interesting as the road would be filled with a never-ending procession of Dutch caravans heading to the South of France. To amuse myself and my travelling companions, we would try to be the first to spot a Dutch caravan coming towards us and you’d accumulate points for correct spotting but lose ten points if the caravan turned out to be Belgian, twenty if it was Danish and elimination from the game if it turned out to be Irish.
The complexities of that game would easily pass the two hours it took to get to the airport and it also spawned the title for my upcoming novel. “Counting Dutch Caravans on the Road to Brussels”. I have the title, now all I have to do is come up with a plot and a narrative.
Having finished the sport, my favourite destination in Monday’s Irish Times was the TV review section. This was strange in that I hadn’t lived in Ireland for eight years at that point and was in country where none of the shows being reviewed would ever be shown. It was like I had a basic need to reconnect with a life I’d previously enjoyed. Or maybe they were just funny.
I find myself in a similar position now as a new Father. I pour over cinema reviews with the intensity of a forensic scientist. And yet I know that I will never get to see these films, unless I can wangle a plane trip to an overseas destination. There are many things you have to sacrifice when you become a parent, sleep being the obvious one, but it’s the little things that strike me most. The cinema, pub and sporting outings will all have to be put on the back burner for a few months, until we get our little angel into some sort of routine that will allow her parents a modicum of a social life.
But it’s a small sacrifice to make for all the pleasure a child brings. It’s hard work for sure, particularly for Mammy who has to do all that breastfeeding and has sole responsibility while Daddy is at work. But when a three week old girl smiles at you for the first time, you would happily gave up all those material things that filled your previous child free life.
Many people have asked me if our baby has changed much since she was born. She has gotten bigger that’s for sure and after some initial weight loss problems is now stacking it on. But really she hasn’t changed much at all. They reckon kids have to adapt to the environment, but actually I think the environment adapts to them. The real change is in the Mother and Father. We start to learn cues, we become comfortable with changing a dirty nappy in darkness so as not to wake a sleeping baby and we change our sleeping patterns. The kid just eats, poohs and sleeps her way through most of this madness.
As an Accountant, I have become fascinated with the numbers involved. She’s gone through approximately 324 nappies so far, at an average of 10 a day. She wants to be fed 8 times per day, which means that her Mother has to produce about a litre of milk every 24 hours. She averages 3 clothing changes per day and throws up or poohs on enough blankets to warrant her own washing machine, which would run on a permanent cycle.
But while her Father is fascinated by numbers and averages, she is proving to be an independently minded baby. Just when we think we have her on a nice three hourly cycle of feed, play and sleep, she can decide to stay awake for 4 hours or to sleep for so long that we have to wake her up (something no parent ever wants to do as a sleeping child is like manna from heaven). The hours of 5pm to 9pm are a particular problem and when you mention this to other new parents, they nod in sympathy and talk about the “witching hour”. She needs more attention that Paris Hilton during this time and her Mother and I have already accepted that we won’t be having dinner together for a long time.
Every day gets easier though and every day she becomes more beautiful and develops her own personality. She doesn’t like socks or mittens and has learned how to remove these herself. That’s something I reckon she inherited from me, as I’ve slept with nothing on but a smile since I was six (which led to a few embarrassing sleep walking incidents when I was teenager and started staying over at friends houses).
She likes clouds and trees and seems fascinated with the world. And she can grip your finger and stare into your eyes in a way that makes me teary just writing these lines. I guess there is a scientific reason for all this. Kids need feeding and nurturing, so they need to develop an emotional bond with their parents. But who cares, it’s just the loveliest, most amazing thing that has ever happened to me. Sleep well my angel. Outside the storm is howling but you’re safe here.
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