Too cool for school (Part 2)

As a man, your baby arriving a little early is a good thing. Ideally you want the baby to arrive sometime after it’s gained the capacity to breath and scream unassisted; at a size where man-paws wont crush or damage the child, but before (and this really is the important bit) you’ve spent too long wandering the streets behind a disgruntled, pregnant, baby book fuelled shopaholic. With this in mind the arrival of my son was ideal. We had sleeping arrangements (a baby hammock I’d purchased with air-miles!) in place, together with a few clothes and as many free nappies as we’d been able to obtain through various supermarket promotions... yet we’d avoided buying an excess of fashionable plastic junk or furniture designed purely for the first few months of his life. This has convinced me that many of the organisations that mums subscribe to are in fact front organisations for novelty producing Mafia; in the same way that the CIA might have a shell-company to fund operations, or organised crime may operate a laundrette, the overpriced-junk cartels of the world have baby books and “community websites”!

The fact that the child decided to burst into the world early was bad enough, and I quickly forgot all about the missed antenatal classes and the baby books that I hadn’t read. Those books wont tell you the following anyway:

1. Women in labour are likely to go through all of the positions they went through whilst conceiving.

2. Gas and air is really, really good... Although if trying it as the dad, you should remember that this is frowned on by the medical profession, and doctors will not approve if you’re high when they enter the room for a progress check!

3. You may end up wearing your wife’s clothes at some stage during proceedings (following being doused, head to toe, in wife-vomit!)

After 10 hours in the delivery suite the doctors decided they’d had enough (this was 4 hours after the vomit incident which was where I’d have made any snap decisions that needed making!) This led to perhaps the most interesting, yet traumatic experience of my life – a forceps delivery under theatre conditions. Breaking this down for you, “under theatre conditions” means that the mother of your child is now semi-conscious – due to exhaustion and a spinal anaesthetic – surrounded by all manner of machines (yet sadly and incongruously lacking the machine that goes ping!) and hospital staff. “Forceps delivery” means that they’re going to be pulling the child head first out of your wife, possibly whilst bracing a foot on the edge of the operating table. There is going to be blood, and most other bodily fluids sloshing around, and just when you think it can’t get any worse the baby appears, carefully made up by mother nature as a special effect from the Aliens franchise.

The baby will be fine with all this, but honestly speaking, as the father, you’re better off with a biology textbook and few gruesome sci-fi/horror movies than you ever would be with a baby book.

Oh, and one essential piece of advice. Once you're in theatre, no matter what happens, DO NOT go round the “feet end” of the operating table... you have been warned!

DAD

Too cool for school (part 1)

The world can seem an intimidating place for those expecting a baby. A big part of this is due to two things; baby books and antenatal classes.

First, let's deal with baby books. They occupy a cavernous niche in the publishing sector, so much so that Amazon lists over 6500 titles in English language paperbacks alone. They exist not to inform parents, but to provide the financial underpinnings to countless publishing houses worldwide. As a dad, or dad to be, you don't really need to read baby books. Whilst studies have shown that such books can be useful in helping at-risk families plan for and mitigate risks, the evidence also suggests that if you're thick enough to need a baby book, you probably wont understand it anyway. The intended target of baby books, both in terms of marketing and written style is overly-emotional women-folk whose very endocrine system has turned on them; this induces more panic and shopping, yet they rarely break things down by giving a realistic summary of odds and statistics.

Next there's antenatal classes. These are of far more use, especially if you're lucky enough to live in the UK and can go to classes run by the NHS. As they are not operating for profit they tend to break things down far more and give a realistic view of the statistics and worries. They usually have little models to play with that involve challenges like getting Stretch Armstrong out of a plastic pelvis. In the UK there are usually two classes, the first dealing with birth and the second dealing with caring for a child. The first of these classes is really useful, and serves to demystify things: the helpful midwife at mine actually suggested that I take snacks and drinks for myself along to the delivery as it can be a long and tedious process. As for the second class, I'm assuming that it doesn't teach too much useful stuff as the baby decided to enter the world the day before we were due to attend...

DAD