Door

Yesterday, I made my son cry.

My beautiful, perfect, delicate little boy. I scared him, and I made him cry.

“So what?” you may be thinking. “Big deal? Kids cry all the time.”

Yes. They do. My son is no exception to this rule. He cries when I try to clean his face after a meal. He cries when I put him down for a nap. He cries when I get him up from a nap. He cries when I stop him chewing on the business end of a can of athletes foot spray (how dare I?) He cries for seemingly no reason at all.

He is very good at crying when he hurts himself. His mouth goes from its usual wide crescent smile into a downturned trapezium as he emits a primal sound which leaves no doubt as to its meaning: “that thing I just did really, REALLY hurt”.

It was in the process of trying to prevent one of those cries that I managed to make him cry myself. My vicarious fear for him causing himself pain transferred into real fear for him.

I feel lucky, and fortunate, to be able to say that in Cam’s year and a bit on Earth I’ve rarely had to shout at him. Actually, I’ve never HAD to shout at him. I’ve chosen to a couple of times. The times when the dark cloud of frustration comes over me and I wish with all my heart that he would stop doing whatever it is he’s doing. Just for a moment. Please. Stop winding me up.

But those occasions are few. And mercifully so. How easy it is for me to forget that my boy is tiny, and I am large? That he can be loud, but that I can be so much louder? That his actions may frustrate and irritate me, but that mine may terrify him?

Whoever designed folding doors clearly did not have children. Or hated children. Tiny gaps between wooden panels are seemingly irresistible to tiny fingers which are exploring the world for the first time. Cam has recently discovered the tiny gap, which can be peered through for “peepo” purposes. Soon, the peering gives way to pushing a tiny index finger through. At the same time, a barely perceptible shift in his position means the door begins to close.

The tiny gap gets tinier.

The finger remains.

Tinier.

The finger remains.

Tinier still.

I move my foot into the path of the closing door, stopping the immediate danger. But I am trapped. Sat on the opposite side of the door to him and unable to move to his side without removing my foot and  allowing the door to close completely.

I push his finger from the gap.

He immediately replaces it.

I push it away again.

He laughs. It’s a game now.

I wish he could talk. Wish he could understand EVERYTHING I say to him, not just “what noise does a pig make?” He can’t though.

He is in a giggling, ecstatic state. He bounces in excitement. This game is fun!

All I can think of is a tiny, crushed index finger and a frantic drive to hospital. This game is not fun.
I shout, because it is the only weapon I have left: “Cameron! No! DO NOT PUT YOUR FINGER IN THE GAP!”

The laughing stops. The finger remains. The smile is uncertain.

“CAMERON, NO!”

The finger is withdrawn. The bottom lip curls and trembles. The eyes well up. The noise begins its journey from his vocal cords to the atmosphere. His eyes question me: “who are you?”

I leap up and remove him from the vicinity of the door. The bastard, bastard door. I hold him tight and stroke his hair. I whisper comfort into his ear. Tell him I love him. Tell him I am sorry. Tell him I never want to scare him.

Ten minutes later we are playing happily together again. I hope he has forgotten all about it. That I am back to being the person who hugs him, tickles him, reads him bedtime stories in the softest tones I can muster. I hope that he is not afraid of me.

I consider smashing the door from its hinges.

I hope I never make my son cry again.

Sensitive

If you have met me you will know that I’m not at all scary. I’m generally possessed of a fairly cheery disposition, I like a chat and a hug and a laugh. I dislike confrontation and being made to feel uncomfortable.

It takes a lot to make me genuinely angry, and when it does happen it is usually a fleeting moment of rage.

I’ve never been in a fight, which is perhaps fairly unusual for a man. I did, once, get sufficiently consumed by the red mist that my brain fired the following message to my left arm: “throw a punch at that guy”. That message was immediately followed by another: “oh fuckshitballs, what are you doing, no, abort! Abort!”

Momentum carried the punch into the cheek of the person who’d riled me, but without the force of anger behind it I suspect the recipient thought I had intended to give them a gentle caress, not a knockout blow.

Actually, I know he didn’t, because he spent the next ten minutes taking the piss out of me for having such a feeble punch. The fourteen year old me happily accepted that he was right.

To adopt a cliché, I’m definitely a lover not a fighter.

Recent events are making me think Cam has managed to inherit my sensitivity and general wussiness.

Cam has a friend (well, Mrs L and I have some friends, and they happen to have a baby). She is about six weeks younger than Cam. She is a fair bit smaller than Cam. She is a mild mannered and contented baby.

Every time Cam spends any time with her, he cries.

Proper crying too, not just a bit of gentle whimpering. Full on, bottom lip curled out, streams of tears, bawling.

Why?

Because she shouts at him.

When this little girl gets excited she shouts. To the adult observer, it is cute. It’s a small explosion of noise which she seems unable to suppress. A verbal expression of joy which bursts from her mouth without much warning. It’s actually really lovely.

But Cam doesn’t like it.

Which, considering he’s off to nursery in three weeks time, is giving us a bit of cause for concern. What if our beautiful baby boy isn’t cut out for the dog eat dog world of Happy Hours Nursery? Will I be coming home from work to collect a tiny human exhausted and dehydrated from ten hours of uncontrollable sobbing?

Or, perhaps, like a stint in the army, nursery will be like baby boot camp for the little mite? He’ll go in a meek, easily upset cuddlebug and come out a finely tuned killing machine little bit less tearful.

Either way, we’ll soon find out, because there’s no alternative available to us at the moment. I just hope the other babies at nursery are nice and quiet………

Soppy

DISCLAIMER: The following post is short, badly written and won't make you laugh. 

I just had a bit of an emotional outburst.

I'm all sorts of soppy, me. You may be coming to that conclusion of your own accord, but let me save you the bother with the following tale:

Our little guy is always happiest when he's being cuddled, rocked, walked around, but this evening he was really unhappy with any attempt at putting him down for a moment.

Which is why I found myself pacing our living room, him held close in front of me with his eyes wide open, me sweating profusely, the stereo playing the Beatles.

We did that for about half an hour, something I'm now quite used to. As time goes on his eyes usually start to roll around in their sockets. We call it his Gizmo impression (you know, from Gremlins?)

Tonight, his Gizmo impression had been going for about ten minutes when "Here Comes the Sun" started playing. He dropped off to sleep while it played. At the same time, tears of happiness started rolling down my face. I have these moments every now and then, where I am just overwhelmed by the strength of feeling I have for that tiny boy. 

It doesn't last long, a matter of seconds, then I'm back to normal (which is to say, all gruff and manly, obviously. Like a cross between a bear and a bad tempered crocodile. Grrrrrrr.)

He let me put him down to bed too, and half an hour on he's still sleeping. I should cry more often.

Made me cry. For I am a wuss.

Colic

Colic is a thing. A thing which no-one really knows what it is. Like electricity. No, wait, clever people probably know what that is. Ok, dark matter. Clever people can’t find that, and they’re clever.

No-one really knows what colic is, not even Wikipedia, which has the following to say on the matter:

“Colic, right, is, erm, yeah……when your baby cries. For ages. Because it’s got colic. And stuff.”

Wikipedia didn’t really say that.  I did. But it’s paraphrased. I may even go and edit the article in a minute.

The world is so unsure about colic that it can’t even decide whether a baby HAS colic, IS colic, GETS colic or what.

But, unlike dark matter (have they tried looking under the fridge I wonder? I bet that’s where it is) I can tell you EXACTLY where to find colic. You can find colic in my house. My baby is OOZING colic. He’s like a COLIC MINE. I’m going to set up a stall at our local farmer’s market (natch) in an attempt to offload some of the abundance of colic there is in my life right now.

Colic is a bitch.  A bastard of the highest order. Our baby has been/had/is/got colic for about a week so far. That’s nothing. The people who don’t know what colic is certainly do have some thoughts on how long it can stick around: up to a YEAR.

There’s also plenty out there on the side effects of colic: emotional stress, feelings of inadequacy in parents, low self esteem, resentment, marital discord, postpartum depression. There are even studies attributing car accidents to colic. I’m sure I heard that Hitler had colic, and we all know how well that turned out.

See those stars? They're colic. Probably.

To be serious for just a moment, colic has the potential to be genuinely devastating. If your baby has/is/gets/oozes colic I would encourage you to seek out any and all support available to you. Also remember this: it is not your fault.

It is not because you are doing something wrong as a parent.

It is not because of something you did during the pregnancy.

It is not just your baby. It is not unusual.

It will pass, it will improve, you will have that shiny beautiful tiny person back.

(In case it’s not obvious to anyone, I am telling myself these things as much as I’m telling anyone else who reads this)

Once again, I’m left feeling guilty for not being able to do anything to help Mrs L through the long, scream-filled days she is currently dealing with, while I go to work and feel like someone’s secretly lobotomised me during the night.

He tends to sleep in the night (so far, fingers crossed, sacrifices made to the God of colic) and save his unbridled fury for Mrs L to deal with during the day. So I get just a small portion of the colic. A snippet. A modicum of colic.

Mrs L gets the full fat version. The unlimited use package. I feel so bad as I leave the house, it just doesn’t seem fair.

So now it’s over to you. Your suggestions in my comment area: what is colic? What are your experiences of colic? What is the best animal to sacrifice or witchcraft to perform to exorcise our home of this elusive yet utterly pervasive…thing?

Colic: it can fuck ever so off.

Incompatible

Way back when, in the time before the arrival of The Creature, I went to Cardiff for a week.  Some of you may remember reading about it.  I was there to do a course.

I didn't just do the course for fun, the course was for work.  The course was to help me with my professional development.  The course seemed like a good idea at the time.

When I was on the course, I told the tutor that I was just a few short weeks from being a dad.  The tutor and my coursemates all congratulated me in advance, and we continued the learning.  The weather that week was beautiful; the sun shone in a manner suggesting it had forgotten what month is was (March!  Sun!  In March!  April, take note.)

The trouble with courses, is they come with coursework.  Not a problem in the before-times.  But, now, on top of the powerful distraction provided by Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums, eating, making cups of tea, thinking about eating, the weather and what's on TV, there's the baby.

Babies don't know about coursework.  Because they're babies.  Babies don't care about PESTLE analyses.  Or SWOT analyses.  Or word counts.  Or Harvard referencing conventions.  They don't care at all.  They care about crying.  Screaming and screaming and screaming while you are trying to do coursework.

Fine.

I didn't want to do coursework anyway.  So the baby gets a cuddle.  He stops crying.  I put him down, return to the PESTLE.  He cries.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.

Fine.

I didn't want to do the coursework anyway.  So I shut the laptop.  Close the text book.  The baby gets a cuddle.  I get a cup of tea.  I'm far happier than when I was doing the coursework.

But the coursework must be done.  It is not optional.  It is the first of four, spread over the next four months.  So, readers, I turn to you: what are your strategies?  How do I complete the coursework while the baby is in the house?

Tomorrow, Mrs L will be taking the baby to her parents house for a while, so that I can concentrate on the coursework.  I will miss him.  I'd rather be bouncing my baby than SWOTing.  I'd probably rather be changing a nappy than writing a competitor analysis.

But just because a baby is incompatible with coursework, doesn't mean I don't have to do it.

Two Weeks

My baby is two weeks and three hours old.  Amazing.

Fourteen WHOLE DAYS and we haven't managed to break him yet, he hasn't gone significantly wrong and (touches wood, caresses rabbit's foot, eats four leaf clover, nails horseshoe to self, seeks out seagull to entice into pooing on me) having a child actually feels kind of, well, *whispers* normal.

Obviously, I still look at him several times each day and think "bloody hell.  That's a baby, and it's mine".  I don't know when or if that will ever change.  He's a tiny life and, in partnership with Mrs L, I'm responsible for him.  Sometimes I emit an involuntary squeak when I remember that.

I can't quite believe how quickly he's changing.  Every day, in amongst the nappy changes, the screaming, the little bits of sick, the lengthy naps, there are new things.  I know they all do this, but this is my one doing it.

Eyes which are a little wider every day.

Starting to look over my shoulder rather than AT my shoulder.

His hair is already longer.

I'm pretty certain the tiny hands are just a tiny bit less tiny.

His cry has developed; from the steady pitch of the newborn to the incredibly insistent, anger and desperation infused wail he is now capable of.

Demonstrating his crying skills (also uppercuts)

If you're already a parent you probably read the above with a wry smile.  Perhaps you thought "yes, but wait for the tantrums, the colic, the myriad challenges ahead of you.  Just you wait, rookie, remember these peaceful days of teeny tiny baby time".

You're right.  I know there's a bumpy road ahead of me, Mrs L and The Creature.  But we're looking forward to it.