On Fatherhood

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.