An anachronism against Mumsnet!

I've been quiet for a while. That's partly because raising the child and doing the day job have both taken up a vast chunck of my time recently. It's also because I've been thinking through my online presence as a dad in light of the recent clash with the denizens of mumsnet.

For those of you reading this from overseas, mumsnet needs a bit of explaining. From a user perspective its like Reddit for permanently aggrieved matriarchs who feel that just because they've given birth, they're entitled to vent collectively on subjects ranging from foreign policy through to school dinners. People post about everything from their partner's sexual preferences (I think he'd prefer someone who wasn't spending every waking moment gossiping over a digital hedge about his lack of enthusiasm in the bedroom since she's had a kid and started spending 5 hours a day talking about their sex-life in online forums), their children's problems at school (If little Barry isn't being bullied yet, he certainly will be when they realise his mum posts as ParanoidNutcase1990), and what they're having for dinner (you're ordering from a takeaway... your dinner has burnt whilst you've been online!).

As you know, dear reader, I joined mumsnet as a way to have some kind of voice... not for the prissy, slightly cowed metro-dad who gives a damn about what the world thinks, but for the type of dad who's aim in life is his son's happiness... after I started posting on mumsnet I lasted about a month until I got a rather snooty email and a ban (interestingly, mumsnet is a digital security nightmare, it would be possible to bot-spam the place into submission as random email addresses can be used to register with no further checking). So what were my crimes? Well, I managed to upset people... I'm not really that sorry, so I'll tell you what I said, to who, albeit with comical overtones:

Little Mz Breadline

"I'm so poor, my son's father had to buy him a coat!"

"I buy all my kid's coats, what's so bad about that?"

"I'm a single mother {sniff}"

"Yes, but not the Virgin Mary... it's still normal for dad's to buy coats... get over it.

Trying to conceive

"I really want to conceive, but my husband hasn't agreed to do the deed again"

"When you asked, were you (a) fully clothed and staring at the computer? or (b) naked and staring at his crotch? Because if it's (a) then his reasons for refusing are the same ones you give for refusing to perform fellatio during match of the day!"

The Management

"We read your blog."

"That's nice... didn't you do that months ago, before approving me?

"Not really, blog approval is all about metrics, so we'd approve anything that contained enough uses of the word "child" "parent" and "hormones" initially. The thing is, we've had a couple of complaints, and we don't think it's right that you're part of the mumsnet community?

"Any particular reason? Is it my lack of self-pity and sense of entitlement? Or perhaps I haven't clicked enough revenue generating ads?"

"Well... both!"

So there we have it, a parting of the ways. Mumsnet will always be sadly ironic... they've decided that they're going to protest against the bounty packs being given out in hospitals, whilst simultaneously attempting to monopolise the online and spending patterns of thousands of parents who "just want the best for their child". They host content generated by a variety of less than child- or liver-friendly product promotions (at the moment it's Gin!) following a marketing strategy devised by the nice people at EngageSciences who explain exactly how mumsnet work in a clever little flowchart on their website entitled "Social Marketing's Secret Sauce". Mumsnet are not an advocacy group, they're not a parenting club, they're not a social conscience. They're an ingenious way to turn slightly vulnerable mothers into readily profiled fish in a barrel for marketers to exploit, and by targeting bounty, they're not helping mums, they're eliminating the competition.

DAD

Creating space for kids

I'm sure that plenty of touchy-feely readers have dialled into this expecting me to harp on about kids emotional well-being, so we may as well get the disappointment out of the way early. I grew up in a house where we were briefed on the rules and rights in much the same way that Tom Hanks informed his co-star in Turner and Hooch "this is not your room". Emotional space is a by-product of physical space which is why it was important that Harry Potter got out of the under-stairs cupboard in time for discovering girls and hormones (not to mention his magic wand). As I have also been informed that I can't just sling a hammock under the stairs for my little child (which is a shame, as I'd already gone to the trouble of carpeting the space) I'm busy transforming the house into a child friendly area, complete with his own bedroom. My order of play is safety, then function, then aesthetics. Like most parents I'm working to a budget and many of the things I want to do I think about very carefully.

The next project is the design and installation of a bedroom for the boy. This is going to be quite the undertaking, not least because the people we brought the house from were the type to hide rather than fix their D.I.Y. mistakes.

Here's my game plan for doing the room:

Start from Scratch

The first thing you'll want to do when planning a child's room is to strip everything right back to blank walls. This will give you a clear idea of what you've got to work with. For us this means ripping out some rather crude fitted wardrobes (then replacing a missing floorboard one of them was hiding!). Next the room will be repainted and carpeted. Then I'll be kneeling down and looking at the room from that height as anything I put in place is for the benefit of someone much shorter. This means that any shelves or cupboards up high are going to be out of reach of the child, and his desk and bed need to be scaled in some way. I'm thinking about light, warmth and comfort and the bed is going opposite the window towards the centre of the house (where he'll have good views, but fairly static temperatures). I have tried to place everything round the walls as it leaves an area of carpet free for play and my son's favourite headless chicken impersonation. To avoid a14 year old being marooned in a Buzz Lightyear bed, children's furniture is going to be neutral so that he can exert his own personality with changeable posters, stickers and bedding. I am building him a cabin bed and ladder, because I always wanted one as a kid, and I'm making the assumption that his friends will find it cool too.

Think of the future

I hinted at this above. Your baby will not be a baby forever, and their teenage self may not appreciate living in a room that reflects their infantile love of comedy sheep. Avoid incorporating anything into the fabric of the room that will require a complete gut and refit in future. You may not have the time to do that kind of work and some kids change their preferences very quickly. My preference is for plain painted walls and good quality wooden furniture, with as much made in house as possible.

Know your limits

My dad is capable of building a table out of some old stuff he found in a skip, some spare wood and a couple of hours work. He's got tools for everything and knows how to use them. Importantly, from my perspective, he's giving me a helping hand doing some of the larger jobs round the house. Without these skills (and the extra pair of hands) some of my more ambitious plans would have to be reined in, rather than risk creating something that at best is ugly and at worst is unsafe. Do not try to do anything that is beyond the capabilities of your body (e.g. heavy lifting) or skill-set when there are perfectly reasonable alternatives. You can usually achieve a good balance between your ideas and affordable high street offerings to avoid the 3 year long apprenticeship in joinery you'd follow before successfully crafting your first set of drawers.

There are other projects ongoing. A leaky radiator needs fixing, and a new extension will be built, and then, hopefully, we can have another addition to the family (probably a dog!). That's all for now, feel free to comment on your experiences of DIY for kids below. I'll follow up with a photo-timeline once I've finished.

DAD

Guest-star

I’ve just written a guest post at kiddycharts. So if you’re missing your blog fix head on over there.

Kiddycharts is run by Helen Neale and I think she might be onto something... when we were kids the dog would sometimes manage to get fed twice buy pulling a hungry face at whoever was late home after she’d licked her bowl clean. Kids are even more devious so having some way to keep score whilst you’re focused on the rest of your life is massively important if you don’t want to be conned by your own kids, just remember to keep the stickers up high.

DAD

Prerogative

In the eyes of his mother, there are times when the boy is "my child" (most recently when he defecated with such force that it exuded from the sides and back of his nappy, and then tried to eat the new paste-like substance he found in his inflatable toy-pit), and there are other times when my wife insists that he's "her son", normally when he's doing something nondescript like sleeping peacefully. The baby can also have his descriptor altered in a subversive and manipulative manner.

Sometimes it's "my baby needs me" when avoiding a tricky conversation (yes, he might want a little attention, but as we're not American and our kids don't have guns, a yes/no question could be answered before dashing to rescue him from his own imagination. I've also heard "your son has given me a headache", which sounds good in principle, but if my contribution to his DNA really did causing headaches of that magnitude, he'd never have been conceived. Women do this on autopilot, and some get very aggressive with their willingness to use the possessive to apportion blame(ask any witness (divorce lawyer), or perpetrator (a single mother who's discovered feminism thanks to the aforementioned donation of DNA).

Men aren't hard-wired for this form of psychological warfare, and are rarely comfortable with alternately describing a child (or pregnancy) as something that's been imposed on a woman against her will, or that she's uniquely qualified to deal with by dint of her anatomy (interestingly, once the child's born, they can only claim to be uniquely qualified if they're breast feeding, but I wouldn't suggest pointing that out to anyone face to face). I am genuinely in love with my wife, and think the kid's amazing, and that actually makes it more difficult to play the game of prerogative that women want to play. After much more than a year (counting pregnancy and the life of the child) here's the tricks I've learnt that might help redress the balance.

When you feel you're about to be blamed for a particularly horrendous infantile act, pre-empt and take credit with a hearty "that's my boy/girl". The mother will then be left with only a rueful smile as she can't blame you when you're "acknowledging and accounting" for your fault. Similarly, when the baby is doing something nice, pre-empt with something along the lines of "I knew your child would be peaceful/cute/happy" or (and we're moving onto underwater-ninja-pistol level skills here lads) "they look just like you when they're peaceful... it reminds me of when we first started spending time together and I'd watch you sleep." This will earn you mega-points as you are paying an indirect compliment, it also saves you having to listen to a similar comment being made in that whiny tone that flays your masculinity from your bones!

Verbally I've always struggled to find the right balance in situations. Whilst my wife was pregnant she had her toe-nails painted and claimed that it was "the only thing she'd done for herself in ages".

My repost was perfectly logical and funny to everyone in the room except for my wife (I'm sure that "my baby" was sniggering away in utero and I found it hilarious); I said "Well, that was a waste of time, you can't see your toes any more!"

She burst into tears, and in that moment I had an instant of pure zen... it was like being in The Matrix: I'd known for a while that she wanted a girl (I'd also seen the ultrasound images and my family history, and knew that it wasn't likely) so I said "don't be upset, you'll worry our daughter". I'd never referred to him as a girl before or since, so the response was instant smiles, happiness and hugs all round (the end justifies the means). Rather than pour more oil on the fire, I wont tell you how much more post-baby sex you'll get if you start hinting that "next time we'll have a boy/girl [delete as applicable)" {oops}.

So there we have it men, your briefing on how to turn prerogative and gender in your favour. I'm feminist authors everywhere will be outraged that I'd encourage you to be so calculating, but the alternative really is pretty grim, and as an aside to all the women out there who are about to get enraged, read it through again, slowly, and ask yourself "would it help and make me feel better?" before starting to harangue.

DAD

Salt pillars

Life is full of dilemmas. I don't mean the choice between two evils we get taught about in school, but the binary choices we make that have exclusive outcomes. For example, it's possible to travel to London or Edinburgh for the weekend and both are nice places, but you can't be in two places at the same time.

One of my favourite poems touches on this theme perfectly, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The step into parenthood is like this, it's a road that you can walk down where there's no going back. It's why people who loose their kids to tragedy take on a listless, broken quality, because the ground really has opened up right under them. Most of us will never have to suffer like that, but should still be mindful that there is no going back, after all who wants to become a pillar of salt (occasionally the theology degree comes back to haunt me!). My past of derring-do and colourful adventures becomes the stories that will entertain and inspire Harris.

I've seen snow in a desert, flown a fighter jet, been awarded a medal, won a knife fight (there was one knife, and the other guy had it to start with), saved a couple of lives, and perhaps most importantly, been willing time and time again to travel to far away places with only my somewhat distended baggage allowance (I travelled often enough to perfect a wardrobe that gave me an extra 30kg!) for extended periods of time to face the unknown or, in the case of some former students, the unknowledgeable which in a strange way is far more challenging). Honestly, being a dad is so much better and I wouldn't go back even if I could. After all, as someone who's always tried to live like an action hero, this is my chance to train a sidekick.

DAD

Words and Lyrics

We have a CD of children’s songs and nursery rhymes. It is musical saccharin, with happy, bouncy tones and in many ways is ideal for playing to a child during a game of musical chairs, as it’s been hacked to death enough by the producers and musicians that its musical quality is hardly dented by repeated stop-starts. I detest what the production company has decided to do to traditional lyrics – the black sheep has become a woolly sheep and the drunken sailor has become the jolly pirate.

Let’s consider What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor as a telling case of the misguided assumptions made by adults that take exception to the traditional lyrics and impose a new-speak devoid of cultural or historical significance for children. Basking in their own lack of lyrical and practical knowledge, they believe that removing the reference to alcohol somehow stops kids thinking about beer. If they’re wrong, as I believe, then they are just wasting their time and lessening the song, but if they’re actually right, and songs are able to influence behaviour then the drunken sailor song is actually quite a strong anti-drinking message. The traditional lyrics document a wide variety of punishments including keel-hauling, a naval punishment whereby a rope is attached at one end to the bound feet of a miscreant, and at the other to his hands, the salient detail being that in the rope then forms a loop running across the deck, down one side of the boat, under the boat (and water) and up the other side. To keel-haul and individual the rest of the crew would pull on this rope so that the bound individual completes a lap of the boat. As a communal punishment, keel hauling is unique in that there is almost no way for the administrators of the punishment to be “nice”, pull too slowly and they drown their mate, pull a little harder and they grate his supine form across the barnacles encrusting the bottom of the boat &nadash; as any rescue diver will tell you, such an injury is almost certain to get infected. All in all I think you'll agree this is hardly an advertisement for drinking!

I have a sneaking suspicion that Baa Baa Black Sheep may be being re-branded because of some vague sense that the word “black” may be in and of itself racist. This is a rather stupid assumption on their part. When filling out passport application forms we are told to“use a black pen”, because pens, like sheep (and indeed the wool they produce) come in a variety of colours including black. Countless government offices, employment agencies and other lovers of easily scanned filled in forms all instruct us to “use a black pen”, they don’t sidle round it by saying “use the darkest pen you can find, nothing too gothic but darker than blue” and I feel we should have the same faculty to describe sheep in song.

The other reason this bugs me of course is that “woolly” sheep sounds like such a weak cop-out when presented with a musical educational opportunity. If we really want to go for it we could mix and match animals and cooking techniques so that kids are still learning something (I’ve composed two examples below):

Recipes with Duck

QuackQuack Cooking Duck
are you nearly done?
Yes Sir, Yes Sir, lunch at half past one.
Breast meat with orange sauce,
A leg in cassoulet,
The other we'll have tonight, in Chinese takeaway!

(this only works if you pronounce cassoulet as a French word (kas-ou-lay)

The Tesco Horsemeat Song

Clip Clop Lonely Horse
Have your friends all gone?
Yes Sir, Yes Sir, round here there are none.
One's gone to Tesco,
he is in a pie,
Yet they tell you all it's beef, keeping prices high!

That's all for now. If anyone knows a production company that wants to put children's songs with teeth and educational value on a CD have them drop me a line

DAD

"Normal"

Ask yourself, "what is normal?" Answers to this question span the entire gamut of human experience, because my "normal" is me and your normal is "you". That could of course make us destined for a violent and untimely clash (if your "normal" is Jihad, paedophilia or "peanut and jelly sandwiches" [peanut and jelly sandwiches are something the culinary world wishes it could uninvent, putting it right up there with VX gas].

In a similar vein I have a friend who's a police officer. We spend a couple of hours a week talking and spending time with each other. He says it normalises him, as he spends so much of his waking life dealing with individuals whose tail-spin lives damage those around them in a vortex of aggression, violence and crime. His working life is completely different to mine (next week I'm attending training in Paris with mild mannered boffins whilst he'll be kicking down doors and taking names) and it strikes me that what we see as normal profoundly effects our path through life.

Take something really simple, like home ownership. Before the kid came along I lived mostly out of suitcases in a variety of overseas jobs. Within 8 months (he was early!) I'd returned to the UK, purchased a house and established myself. I see it as normal that kids grow up in a house that belongs to the parents, rather than having some vaguely Freudian landlord looming in the distance. I do this because it's exactly what my parents did, and therefore is normal and "makes sense". The effect will probably be that in 25-30 years when my grandchildren are on the way, my son will see the same thing as "normal". The world our children know as they grow up shapes them fundamentally (which is why religious indoctrination of the young can be so very wrong as the wife-beating nutter in the semtex vest probably thinks he's normal too). I feel that having the security of a family owned house makes an individual slightly less deferential, and slightly more ambitious. With these observations in mind, what can we do to establish a good kind of normal for our kids so that they demand and receive a successful future?

Comparing their present status with their future is a valuable exercise whenever you have a choice to make. Let's consider school meals:

Plated service

All the kids sit in their place, and food is brought to their table. There is either plated service, or part-plated service (i.e. they help themselves to vegetables from tureens in the centre of the table). This isn't just for private schools. The state run primary school I attended served meals in this way, and several of the local government-funded schools still do this. I eat like that when "client facing", and when sitting in the officer's mess.

Buffet Service

The kids line up for their meals, and balance plates, cutlery and bread rolls on a tray. They have some power to choose what goes on their plate, but in exchange do their own leg-work. This accurately reflects the factory floor, most office work and the cuisine offered to enlisted men. Societally this is quite normal.

Trays with slots

If the kid's school has those special trays with moulded slots for the different components of the meal, served by a slightly moustachioed woman of indiscriminate age, then your children are role playing prison every lunch-time. It's time to consider home-schooling, or a shank.

Of course, it is possible to become too obsessed by all this, and speaking as a parent who likes his kid to have variegated friends and slightly inappropriate hobbies (canal swimming and practical jokes anyone?), too far is currently represented by Katie Hopkins who comes across as slightly neurotic and definitely snobbish. I'm not overly bothered with micromanaging my son's life in terms of the friends he has or the homework he does (provided he passes the test). Instead I feel that the biggest dose of "normal" he should absorb is that happiness is a given. Hopefully he'll be as comfortable sleeping in a 5* hotel as under a hedge, and as compelling in the boardroom as in the comedy club, just like his dad.

DAD

Talking in soft voices

My wife has a cold and her sneezing scares the child. Yesterday she erupted whilst he was sat on her knee and the poor mite was terrified; it wasn’t just a plaintive little whimper it was the clarion scream that signifies true fear... and she got that reaction by sneezing whereas I only manage it when he squirms his soapy little self from my grasp in the bath and finds himself holding his breath and looking up at me through the bubbles... (he’s far too bright to open his mouth under water, he just lets me know that he’s not happy once he’s been fished out!)

Not only that, but when my wife did scare him, I managed to reduce him to giggles again with my usual mix of animal noises and over-the-head baby acrobatics. She thinks that it is unfair that whilst I can pitch my voice at “werewolf growl” or deliver a chest-thumping Tarzan ululation to giggles and smiles, a simple sneeze from her delivers panicked tears.

I feel that this is another one of those areas where many parenting books get it wrong by trying to do too much of a good thing... they often teach that you shouldn’t startle a child or talk in harsh tones around the child; that hushed, gentle tones should always be used.

My own thoughts contradict this for many reasons: the fact of the matter is that your emotional and endocrine based responses are there to keep you alive and well and protect against social and macro-scale (i.e. something your size or slightly larger) threats that want to do you harm, and in many ways they are analogous to the immune system. Now, whilst some restraint is to be encouraged (i.e. don’t torture your kids [as an aside all the cases of children being water-boarded seem to come from the USA!) wrapping them in verbal cotton wool is likely to produce analogous results to fearfully rationing peanuts whereby low exposure leads to sensitization and death! Similarly, experience of growls, sarcasm and even vastly over-dramatised threats at a young age is likely to lead to the kind of young adult who grins knowingly and thinks their way out of a conflict situation or mugging in later life (if a child has never heard a sarcastically raised voice, they’re likely to be the fetal-position chalk outline with extra groin based damp patches!)

This is something that the wife and I agree to differ on. I feel his exposure to both approaches is advantageous in the long term, and it is interesting that when he’s feeling down both her dulcet tones and my growls have the same calming effect; maybe it’s not so much what you say, or how it’s said, but that you’re there, caring enough to interject.

DAD

The right amount of worry

I have this friend who’s recently become a dad. Our kids are about the same age and I guess we’ve got an awful lot in common, even down to the way our kids were dragged into the world (bonding over forceps conjures an interesting mental image, but I digress!)

The thing is with this dude is that he’s a worrier; part of me thinks that his adventures are more somber because he worries, and part of me thinks that maybe it’s the other way round... he worries because he’s one of those unfortunate individuals to whom bad things happen as a matter of course.

Take our attitudes to caring for a baby. My personal philosophy is that a baby will survive most things with a minimal of fuss, and this is borne out by the fact that whilst I’ve been dizzy and out of action for three days with a seasonal bug, the net effect of the same bug on the baby is that he’s learnt to enjoy gurgling snot-bubbles of various hues out of his nose. Meanwhile my friend panics that the child will somehow contract Ebola from a swallow-borne coconut (an African swallow obviously!) and when looking at a kid from his perspective the child suddenly appears far less robust.

The problem I often face is when dealing with questions. Recently we’ve had the following exchanges and I feel my responses haven’t really lived up to his angst-driven expectations:

“My baby wakes me up every night. He grunts whilst breast feeding!”

“He probably wont pull more than once at Glastonbury!”

“My baby shows signs of autism.”

“Well, looks like you’re holidaying in Vegas in matching suits!”

“I don’t have any time to relax.”

“Let me show you how to cradle a sleeping baby and play xbox at the same time!”

This is the usual pattern of our exchanges, and I often play the voice-of-reason in his more pathetic metro-sexual moments. The last exchange has been rather more worrying and my usual humour doesn’t seem to be cutting it... he said:

“I walked into the room, and the baby was laughing but my wife was in tears, what should I do?”

To which I wanted to reply:

“I saw this in a movie once. Get an exorcist, the baby’s clearly possessed!”

On reflection I really wasn’t the best person to go to for advice in this kind of situation. If I ever encountered a moment like that with my own wife and child, I would probably check the room for sharp objects and then try to make up my mind whether the wife or demon-child posed more of a threat to my person and sanity before calling the ghost busters. For once my somewhat lumbering friend got it right, he gave everyone a big hug, told them he loved them and is just keeping a quiet eye on them both.

It would appear that when it comes to dealing with upset and depression in a family being more of a man means being less of a lad. I think I learnt something and would like to throw the blog open to comments from anyone feeling they’re shouldering it all some days, because you’re not alone.

DAD

Seduced by the Dark Side

Those of you with an eye for detail may have noticed the new badges which point to the fact that this blog is now a member of the “mumsnet blogger network” (I’m buried in their directory somewhere in the M section!) , and can also be found in the rather small fatherhood category.

Is this going to change my blogging and parenting style? The short answer is no, which only leaves the question of how long a father who believes in introducing his child to the wonderful world of adrenaline fueled laughter and risk taking is going to hold on to his affiliate status. I tend to find the idea that mums are the only or primary parent either comical or offensive depending on how the marketing spin is presented. As such my link to mumsnet is an attempt to move behind enemy lines and start rattling some cages.

A telling case when looking at gender bias in parenthood is TESCO’s marketing campaign. They have recently managed to be both offensive and unintentionally humorous. I received a magazine, addressed to me, with vouchers from them as part of their “shop even more with us now you’ve had a baby” marketing campaign (I’m not sure what the official name of the campaign is as they have not yet replied to my emails). The magazine had two tiny pictures of men buried in its pages – one of whom was demonstrating a complete lack of chivalry by standing at the top of some steps watching a woman labour to carry a pushchair, presumably containing his child, down the steps. These two solitary men were massively outnumbered by women, often clutching a baby whilst grinning womaniacally (a feminist maniacal grin!). Marketing material like this is offensive; those women would not have the baby to clutch without a man being involved at some stage, and assuming that the woman remembers his name, there is no reason why the guy’s presence in the child’s life isn’t as celebrated (and photographed for glossy promotional literature) as the woman’s.

As for the humorous, the vouchers I recieved contained one that read “introduce a friend to our mother and baby club so she can experience our discounts too!” Reading this as a man I imagined sitting next to a rather buxom young lass in a bar and trying the line “would you like to try some TESCO discounts, because there’s a special club I can help you join!” My imaginary conquest didn’t end well, nor did the imaginary divorce hearing where “TESCO made me do it” was not considered a rational defense!

So, dear reader, I see it as a moral duty to fight the corner of dad-ness. I may even try to goad some of the mumsnet denizens into commenting on my posts, but will remain true to my principles and the importance that being a dad has for me and the sprog.

DAD

Dad’s night out

Two days ago I had my first night out since Harris was born. It was really quite dramatic, and involved both drugs and a nice blonde running her hands up and down my bare chest...

Sadly, this was in the context of being admitted to hospital... the drugs were painkillers and the girl with the nice hands was an impossibly pretty surgeon who was busy deciding how much of me she was going to turn into hors d’ouveres for Hannibal Lecter this time (it seems that every two years a different chunk of my insides is sent to the pie factory in the sky!). The most incongruous element is that I had a lot of fun; the team consisted of the aforementioned bombshell together with an eerily cheerful yet far too tired nurse who kept writing all my vitals in the wrong boxes on the form, leaving me with a resting pulse of 98 and a blood oxygen level of 67, and a diminutive Iranian health care assistant who talked geography and homesickness whilst taking my blood and explaining that it didn’t really matter which tube she filled first (despite the instructions to the contrary on the poster in the nurses’ station!), and all the time I was immersed in the world beyond bills, nappies.

What’s kind of scary is that the only person on the ward who was finding hospital as exiting as me was the guy in the bed next to me. His day out consisted of "worse TV, but better food" and the surgical extraction of the mobile phone he’d somehow managed to turn sideways whilst concealing it in his rectum from the guards at HMP Nottingham (he deserves a medal, it was a large Sony Ericsson, not something manageable like a Nokia). We sat, (flanked by the guards who couldn’t really go anywhere on account of being chained to the patient just in case he received a suspicious call) discussing how good it felt to be on the outside... the only difference being that his sentence is up in 10 weeks time whereas mine runs at least until the kid finishes university.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank ward C31 at Nottingham’s Queen’s Medical Centre for providing a degree of light comic relief along with excellent medical care... it would be really nice if you could start doing theme-nights!

DAD

My Grandfather's Axe

There is a scene in the work of the great Terry Pratchett’s book The Fifth Elephant where the Low King of the Dwarves is explaining about the importance of having something to pass on. The King explains that his axe has been in his family for many generations, but at various intervals in history, the weapon has been modified with new blades, handles and ornamentation so much so that no part of the original axe remains... yet the axe is still the same axe that has been handed down through 14 generations.

As we’ve moved into the new house and started our family I’ve been acquiring and inventorying things that I’ll be putting to good use. I guess these things can be categorised into tangible and intangible goods; I’ve got the dining room table that went from my grandfather to my parents, back to my grandfather, to the local church and finally back to me; when moving it in the other day I found the sticker that a removal company fixed to the base in the 60’s on the underside bearing my maternal grandfather’s surname “Gribben” in neat biro lettering. The tablecloth we’ve been given to go with it was a wedding present to my mother. Perhaps most touching though (and the items that put me in mind of the Pratchett quote) are the mismatched set of kitchen supplies and utensils that my father has put together for me. Dad is a chef, and nestled in there is a history of his career; an army issue cook’s knife from his days in uniform, and other items acquired along the way. Most impressive, provided it is used sensibly, is a giant heavy long bladed cook’s knife from “before he joined the army”, the blade is well over a foot long and it is probably as close as this family would come to a heraldic weapon. My dad would dismiss it as “just a big knife”, but I feel that the sword hung on the wall of some lofty and ancient family’s manor also started out as “just a big knife” before whichever battle in which it was deployed to prune the family trees of other nobles. I’m proud of it because I know the history, even if it wasn’t one of the big knives at Bosworth Field.

After the physical things come the intangible things we inherit. With the kitchen equipment comes a knowledge of how to use it after years spent under the whithering and somewhat sarcastic tutelage of my dad; yet I’m not the chef, I’m just a reasonable cook. Similarly there’s the love of languages and travel together with a fairly common sense approach to the international scene gleaned from Granddad Gribben that seems to be creating an increasingly globally mobile and internationalised family; yet I’m no linguist, I’m just someone with a knack for languages.

Where does that leave us as dads? What is our “Grandfather’s Axe”? It would be a mistake to try and hoist the tangible stuff we’ve surrounded ourselves with on our kids if they don’t want it. For many years I lived out of a suitcase and giving too many things too soon would prevent my kids from seeing the world. It also can’t be the core of our professional beings; different people are capable of very different things, and take quite different routes through life even when they share chunks of DNA.

Instead I think it’s the attitudes that are important and that we can pass on. I’d like to think that my boy will get the family’s attitude to fair play and the raucous sense of humour. I’d like him to be ambitious and to love learning in whatever form it might take. I’d also like him to love food and D.I.Y. like me and his Granddad, try to understand and lead others like his mum, nurture and care like his Granny, always be warm and positive like my Grandma Peck, love languages and differences and seek out peace and happiness for all and adventure for himself wherever he might find it. If I can get him to do that, no matter what he owns and what he does, then far into the future being a member of this family will mean as much to my descendants as it does to me. That identity and security then is my “Grandfather’s Axe”. I believe the motto of Nottingham, my home city, says it best “Vivit post funera virtus” - "Virtue Survives Death" for those non-Latin speakers out there.

DAD

Nappy Fillings

When selecting Crime Scene Investigators and Homicide Detectives, I feel a good initial test would be to have them change, examine and categorise a baby’s nappy. They are likely to react to the crime scene and the nappy in much the same way. Some will turn slightly greeny-pale, attempt to keep their distance, avert their gaze and avoid breathing in; others will note spatter pattern, observe consistency and attempt to determine time of nappy fill (which interestingly, correlates very nicely with the time of death on a crime scene given the body’s inability to control sphincters post-mortem!)

I am very much in the later group. As a baby is not capable of verbalising their state of health and gastric comfort level, a categorisation system of the relevant stool (or to use a more technical term, arse-gunge) together with the method of its excretion is required.

The Gassy Repeater

The baby breaks wind repeatedly. If awake the baby will look puzzled by this. If asleep the baby may make quite adult, yet disturbing, little sighs. Minimal poo will be produced, although this may be enough to remind the baby that they are wearing a wet nappy.

The Blocked Pipe

The baby will want to produce something, but can’t. This infantile constipation is probably due to either not stirring formula milk enough, or (if breast-fed) shaking your wife like a butter churn. If asleep the baby will rub its face against a nearby pillow, if awake they will be cranky. A single large explosion will follow resulting in a wide ranging but quite dry and coarse spatter pattern across the inside of the nappy. If this is allowed to dry the baby will experience discomfort.

The Creeping Ooze

Without any apparent effort or signal, the baby will develop a full sloppy nappy over time. You will discover this when either the baby cries for a nappy change, or when the ooze manages to escape the confines of the nappy and soak through the baby’s clothes. There may be a smell. Because the creeping ooze is unannounced, you can surreptitiously pass the parcel before “suspecting” a nappy change may be due.

The Reverse Exorcist

The baby also has the power to instantly, dramatically and noisily fill their nappy at such high volumes and pressures that the resulting torrent of poo will burst out of the nappy and either fill their socks, ooze out of the neck of the baby grow, or both. You will probably hear a loud ripping noise signifying that your baby's tardis-like capacity for poo are once again in operation. Producing more than their own bodyweight in poo, the baby will be ecstatic, probably because they know that the only response to such a substantial gout of excrement is a warm shower and singing.

Sadly, all of the above are normal and will fill your waking hours with dread opportunities for scientific investigation. In the spirit of “not getting sued” I thought I’d add a few notes on poos that are bad news. As a general rule the thing to be mindful of is not the “how” or even the “how much” unless your baby is producing watery-diarrhoea. The thing to be really careful with is colour: A normal baby should be producing poo that is somewhere between sunset yellow and cheap scrambled eggs (possibly with a bit of green thrown in). Anything other than this, especially if it’s red, black or glow-in-the-dark should be reported to a doctor immediately.

DAD

Lullabies in Brobdingnag

I think my son likes me because I have no shame. This is ironic as this same characteristic often causes adults who know me (particularly his mother and grandparents) to roll their eyes skywards in despair.

I will quite happily sit making ridiculous but giggle inducing faces at him for hours on end, and have little problem in involving him in adult life at such a young age. One of his favourite trips out was the day we visited the solicitor and he sat on the desk leaning back against my shoulder cooing and babbling at every possible break in the otherwise quite expensive and adult conversation between me and my solicitor (and why shouldn’t babies be along for the ride whenever possible? I don’t take him on site when visiting clients, but given the often dull nature of adult life it’s quite fun to see the world through the eyes of someone so tiny that even a small excursion is a journey into the land of the giants... this is another admirable fatherly sentiment and nothing at all to do with the fact that I’m too tight to pay for child care and conveyancing!)

Perhaps my favourite place to take the baby is the post office. The staff there are lovely and always happy to see the baby when we go in – whereas the baby thinks he’s visiting a rather creepy zoo where they only exhibit middle-aged women behind safety glass, so it’s really a win-win situation. However this all changed a few days ago when we visited the post-office with the baby in the carrier and he decided to wake up and howl. The noise was deafening and, as only baby cries truly are, mentally debilitating. Faced with this onslaught I went for the only solution guaranteed to calm a crying baby. In the post office, with a large queue behind me and two slightly bemused ladies looking out from behind the glass I started to sing, not the slightly sad embarrassed whimper that some parents seem to manage, but a full on song, first in competition with, then drowning out his cries. When he realises someone’s singing he stops crying like a car who's tank has run dry, gazes and then forgets to stay awake. I went with the somewhat rude version of ‘What shall we do with the drunken sailor’; within the first verse he was quiet, and by the end he was asleep. Quite what everyone else thought of my singing I don’t know, but I think my son likes me because I have no shame.

DAD

Daily Exercise

One of the most useful things about having a baby is being able to do away with dumbbells. The little guy started off at just under 3kg (6lb 6oz). He is growing steadily and as I use him as a dumbbell my arms are keeping up with his growth.

Readers are probably divided into two camps and I’ll have to deal with you separately. For argument’s sake we could call these two groups “boys and girls”, although these distinctions are blurred by the lovely champion from Khazakhstan (pictured), together with the current trend for metro-sexual males whose lack of upper body strength and desire for emotional-oneness would make Gandhi weep oxymoronic tears of masculine shame.

The first group are thinking “tell me more, I’ve had to cancel my gym membership because nappies are so expensive.” For those of you who are thinking of using the baby for weight-lifting there are some essential safety guidelines:

DO NOT DROP THE CHILD

- Make sure the child is firmly held in your man-paw at all times.

DO NOT PRETEND TO DROP THE CHILD

- Whilst you may think that it’s funny to give them a little fright, this will lead to a lack of calmness and trust, and then when the child struggles, you will drop the child!

DRESS THE CHILD IN SUPERHERO THEMED CLOTHING

- This way their little brain will tell them that they’re battling King Kong or flying, rather than being used as a cheap substitute for exercise equipment.

COUNT AND TALK TO THE CHILD

- This will stop them becoming disorientated and showering you with baby-vomit.

DO NOT LIFT BY THE HEAD... or anything else that might come off

- This is a mistake you’d only make once! I've found a good technique is to lift the baby with the heel of my hand just below his ribs and my digits splayed across his ribcage. He is supported and will find falling off difficult (unless you have tiny hands or a huge baby).

STOP IF THE BABY SHOWS SIGNS OF DISTRESS

- This could also lead to struggling, or worse, a nappy fill so violent that it is forced out between the poppers in the baby grow.

The other group are thinking (in a high pitched, rising tone) “you can’t do that to my baby!”. For those of you in the shrill camp, realistically, what are you going to do about it? Thanks to the aforementioned baby-lifting we’re much stronger than you, and when we hold the child up that high, you can’t reach! On a more serious note (just in case the response to “what are you going to do about it?” was “file for divorce!”), the partner who is exercising with the child is involving the little person in their life, modelling a positive healthy lifestyle and (by virtue of not dropping the baby) building up trust and confidence between parent and child – which is exactly what you’ve been asking us to do in other nagging sessions conversational interludes recently.

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

Record Keeping

Having a child feels like staring in your very own science fiction movie. Not the big expensive type where you’re flying to the stars with every gadget and gizmo man’s ingenuity can create, but the type that features a disaster, or an invasion, and the words “It’s life, but not as we know it” (granted these, are the same guys who had the spaceship, but I couldn’t find another quote that summed up panic quite as well.)

As a result of this I thought I’d start writing my daddy diary. Let me be quite clear, this is a dad’s diary. It serves three distinct purposes. Firstly, it is a record of who I am and think as a kind of “insurance policy” should something happen. It’s also a celebration of all the fun to be had being a dad when our inner child gets to hang out with our offspring. Finally, I’m hoping other dads will also find this and feel at least comforted that other fathers go through some of the same feelings and interaction patterns that they are following with their own children.

That’s about all for now. They’ll be more later. Welcome to the blog.

DAD