Purpose

I could probably write a post every single day about something a politician has said which has caused the urine in my bladder to approach boiling point. When I see what our elected officials are spouting the air in my vicinity adopts the vivid purple hue of a two day old bruise, as the blue from my swearing mixes with the crimson of my rage.

I don’t write those posts every day, because I don’t have the time. Or the inclination. Or the purpose.

Ah yes. Purpose. It’s not only me who lacks it. According to Childcare Minister Elizabeth Truss the nurseries of our nation are riddled with purposeless toddlers. Apparently, our approach needs to be more closely aligned with the French (yes, really, a Tory politician who thinks our continental cousins have something better than us).

Our nurseries are “chaotic settings, where children are running around”. How DARE THEY? Children, some as old as FOUR, with not even a hint of a schedule. Which means, of course, that by the time they get to primary school they are not prepared to sit down and listen to a teacher.

I’m sorry (I’m not), but what utter, utter tripe this is.

First off, let me say this: I want my child, and the children of others, to grow up in a world where they are allowed to be children. Actually, allowed? No. Encouraged. Being a child is amazing. Playing is amazing. All the fantastical things we believe as children which are driven out of us before our tenth birthday, Father Christmas, the Tooth Fairy, and all their friends, are great. Not having a care in the world is lovely, and it should last as long as possible.

Seriously, adults, just because we’ve signed up to a world model which requires constant growth which we have trouble sustaining, doesn’t mean we ought to be grooming our children to be part of it from ever earlier ages.

Second, has Elizabeth Truss ever seen how purposeful a two year old can be? Perhaps the nanny she employs to look after her kids could give her an insight into that one. Here is a brief video of Cam:

Looks pretty purposeful there, doesn’t he? Sure, the purpose he’s displaying might just be to remove as many tissues as possible from that box, but he seems pretty sure of that intention, right?

Cam’s not even two. He’s only just one. A purposeful one year old.

Like all other one and two year olds, his purpose is simple: learn through experience. Play. Discover. Explore. Interact with the world around him.

Be a baby. Be a toddler. Be a child.

Let the adults worry about having a purpose because, in all honesty, most of them probably haven’t worked theirs out yet.

Seat

Just over a year ago, when Cam arrived into our lives, we accepted that Things Would Change.

Once there is a tiny additional human occupying your spare room, opportunities to do the things which used to be the things that you did to relax and enjoy yourself become a bit thinner on the ground.

I have been tremendously lucky; Mrs L has been extremely accommodating of my need to go out and play a stupid game where ten grown adults throw a ball through a hoop for forty minutes. Basketball generally takes place during times when Cam would (and, thankfully, is) usually sleep, so I've never felt like I'm leaving Mrs L to deal with the baby while I go out and enjoy myself.

The same can not be said for my other pre-baby hobby: cycling. 

It is fair to say that I have missed cycling. Time spent on two wheels since Cam arrived has been minimal. Which is fine, obviously. I love the time I spend with Cam and I wouldn't change it for anything. 

Unless I could combine cycling and Cam. I don't mean I want to create a cyborg bicycle child. I just want a way to get out on the bike without having to leave the family behind when I do.

Which is why, pretty much as soon as he was able to hold his head up, I started thinking about bike seats for Cam. There's not an enormous amount of information out there about cycling with a baby, but there is some. I looked at www.cyclesprog.co.uk and www.sustrans.org.uk. Most importantly, I got some first hand information and recommendations from Cathy Bussey's blog. All of which led me to thinking that Cam's first birthday would be a good time to start seriously considering cycling with him.

Cathy had some good things to say about a Dutch baby seat called the Yepp Mini. So, I bought one. Here it is mounted on my 1994 Kona Kilauea:

Fitting it was very simple, a five minute job which required only a couple of allen keys (Yepp even include one in the box, although it is made of metal which is about as durable as a mild cheddar). The mount goes between the stem and the headset if you have a "traditional" threaded headset.

If you have a threadless headset, you'll be needing an additional adaptor before you can fit the seat. This, to me, seems a bit backwards. Most bikes now come with a threadless headset, it would probably be more sensible to include the adaptor as standard. I'm not complaining though, since my ancient Kona has the old style headset.

Once it was fitted, I looked at the bike and thought "there's no room left for me". Luckily, this is a bit of an optical illusion (apparently I don't occupy as much space as I thought). Once on the bike I was close enough to Cam to feel like I was giving him a cuddle, without him being in my way, or me being in his. My knees do brush the back of the seat a bit, but a bit of saddle adjustment will hopefully sort that out. 

The first few moments of riding feel a bit weird; all of your baby's weight, plus that of the seat, is on the bit of the bike you use to steer. You know how it feels if you put a carrier bag with some heavy shopping in on the end of your handlebars? It's a lesser version of that. Once I'd been riding for five minutes I didn't even notice it.

You do lose some steering lock, and I'll probably add some padding to either my bike's frame or the metal bars on the seat, to stop any risk of dents in the top tube. It's not a big issue though, and you're probably not mounting a child's seat with a view to riding extreme terrain. My mother in law has told me in no uncertain terms that I'm not to do any stunts with Cam on board. No wheelies then...

Okay, that's the factual stuff over with. I would recommend the seat. The seat is good. Moving on...

Cam seemed to enjoy his first ever bike ride, we only went for a local ride, but he got to see the world from a different point of view (it's nice and open compared to his buggy) and didn't cry or scream once.

I came back with a massive smile on my face and a feeling that we have opened a door to all sorts of potential family fun. Getting out of the house with a baby can be a bit of a chore. Everything takes AGES with a little person in tow. Buggies are very short range instruments, and starting the car to drive a mile seems incredibly wasteful to me.

A bike seat occupies a lovely middle ground, it offers much of the freedom a car does, but without the running costs. It also means I will have more chances to do a thing I enjoy, and involve my baby in it as well. 

Erm, it might read like one, but this isn't a sponsored post. I just really like cycling and I'm really glad I can now do some with Cam on board. If Yepp want to give me some free stuff, I'd gladly take it, but they haven't up until now...

Routine

Since Mrs L's return to work, it is largely my duty to sort Cam out in the morning and ensure his timely arrival at wherever he'll be spending the day.

On the day I am not at work this is blissfully easy. I get up when he does, do the usual morning things, nappy change, feeding, playing, etc. and if I manage to squeeze in a shower for myself then that's great. If not, I hope that no-one gets close enough to smell me.

The main thing is; there are options. Flexibility.

On the days that both me and Mrs L scuttle off to our respective offices things are a little different. Mrs L catches her train at 7am, so needs to be up at 6am. There is little leeway in her routine, so sorting out Cam is pretty much impossible.

I get up at 6:15am.

We creep around, trying our best not to disturb the delicate slumber of our son until seven. A still snoozing son means I get to shower without fear of my shoe being thrown into the bath to keep me company.

The remainder of the morning routine is finely honed. Change the baby. Get the baby dressed. Give the baby his bottle. Make my porridge and leave it to cool a bit. Entertain the baby. Throw work stuff in my bag. Pack bottles into baby's bag. Eat porridge. Bundle baby into car. Leave.

Because I hate being late to arrive at places I know exactly what time all of the above things need to happen in order for me to drop him off and get to work on time.

But there is a problem. Sometimes, the morning throws a curve ball. Routines don't allow for curve balls, but babies show little respect for routine.

This morning, there was a curve ball. Cam had been given his bottle. I was about to start sorting out my porridge when a noise came out of my son. A noise which made me wonder whether perhaps he had somehow managed to swallow an eighteenth century factory during the night.

The sound did not indicate a normal poo. The sound made me fear for my nostrils. I contemplated grabbing the Marigolds prior to dealing with whatever was inside that nappy.

I needn't have worried, since there was as much outside the nappy as there was contained within it.

(Question: when putting on a nappy, do you pull the elasticated leg bits out as far as they'll go, such that the evacuated excreta has the maximum possible room OR do you leave them contracted, in order for them to act as a device to SLOW DOWN the brown projectile as it comes out? Answers on a clean Pampers please…)

You know there's been some significant evil force at work when the poo looks like a Korma and has escaped from both legs and the top of the nappy. When the answer to the (rhetorical, rhetorical!!!) question "has this leaked" is answered by finding a wet patch on each of the baby's feet.

Still. Shit ain't shit. I'm used to this by now. I wrote another post about poo almost a year ago.
The clean up operation is quick. Deftly dealt with. Clean the bits you need to hold first. Assess the cleanliness of the various items of clothing. Remove as necessary (all of them in this case). Don't spare the wipes. Suppress the wince as Cam's (brand new, from his great gran) soft toy is deposited into the nappy while you're not looking. Dry the bum. Apply the Sudocrem. New nappy. New clothes. Wash hands.

Of course, you'd expect this tale to culminate in me being late to drop him off at his grandparents, but I'm a step ahead of the game. I've got enough contingency time for TWO nappy changes built into my routine.

Which will be fine, until the day he needs three.

PS: One poo post every eleven months, that's fine, right?

Well

In essence, my son is a healthy human baby. He was ejected from my wife with all the bits and pieces he was meant to have, and without any unnecessary extras. Everything appears to work as it should. I am truly, truly grateful for this.

But fucking hell, he is ill ALL THE TIME.

I reckon, during his short life so far, the baby has been completely free of malady or complaint for about three weeks.

Colds.
Coughs.
Constipation.
Cholera. No, not that.
Projectile vomiting.
Non-projectile vomiting.
Diarrhoea.
Colic.

So many things. Nothing serious. But a lot of non serious things.

This week, he's battling with conjunctivitis. Ever had it? Probably. But just in case you haven't, the main symptom is a copious discharge of gooey eye-crud. The gooey eye-crud then hardens into bright yellow eye-crust, matted into the sufferer's eyelashes like some kind of naturally occurring cement.

Conjunctivitis is a fucker. A stupid, crusty, pain in the arse which stops babies from being able to open their eyes properly.

It is highly contagious, which means you can't go to the party you are supposed to attend, in case your baby rubs his eyes and then pokes another baby in the face, passing on the condition.

It means you have to go and see the nice, but slightly odd, pharmacist who tells you the same thing OVER AND OVER AGAIN FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES.

But the worst thing is trying to administer the eye drops which the slightly odd pharmacist furnished you with.

Here is my step by step guide:

It's a two person job. Or a one person with six hands job. If you don't have a second person available to help you, I suggest calling in a favour. Or collapsing into a heap, sobbing.

Maintaining the element of surprise is key. The drops should be concealed in a pocket for as long as possible.

Sing. Whatever song may prevent the baby from sensing the imminent invasion of his personal space.

"Yakki yakki yoggi, goo goo gee, bah bah bah, beep beep noo see…"

Feel wracked with guilt as your baby looks up at you with eyes overflowing with love (and eye-crud, obviously).

Have your assistant pin the thing you love most in the world down, holding his head still. Wonder how his expression manages to convey disappointment, rage and betrayal all at the same time.

Prise open his eyelids, which seem to be clamped shut with similar strength to that of a crocodile snapping at an unfortunate swimmer. Make a mental note to wear earplugs next time you have to do this.

Swear at whatever hateful BASTARD made the eyedrop bottle from such thick plastic that squeezing the liquid out is nearly impossible.

Feel relief as a drop finally lands in the eye, followed by dismay as it is immediately washed away by the flood of tears your baby is producing.

Once you've repeated the last few steps for the other eye, perform all your best parental distraction techniques in order to calm your irate baby.

Spend the rest of the day considering whether babies are susceptible to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Have I missed a really easy alternative method? Could I have cured the conjunctivitis with liberal applications of witchcraft and fairy dust? Will my baby ever trust me again?

Cam's War

Sometimes, when he cries, I wake with a jolt. As if I am Frankenstein's monster, my bed is the operating slab, and his cry is the immeasurably powerful lightning strike. Fast asleep to full alert in the 0.014 seconds it takes for the sound to travel from his mouth to my ear.

A fully alert brain doesn't translate to a fully alert body. Several full seconds pass before my limbs and joints can be convinced to join in the party. His lungs are now in full swing, gulping in air and converting it to pure anguish. The sound of being alone, of waking up to a world still so new to him that his brain needs to recalibrate every morning, but mostly the sound of doing battle.

His invisible enemies torment him through the day and through the night. They wriggle, they move, they prod and push, though they don't yet protrude. Dentin Soldiers: milk teeth. Waging war on our tiny boy, whose only defences are copious saliva, chewing on his own hands and those heart wrenching howls of agony.

By the time my recalcitrant hips have been coerced into action my wife is already up and soothing him, the soft shushing is designed to comfort, but to my ears also holds notes of concern and helplessness. What use are we to him? What relief can we give? All the quiet reassurances that he's okay mean nothing to him, or to the tiny incisors moving ever closer to eruption. We can not lull them to sleep any more than we can him. I stay in bed. We are zero help whether we are one or two.

Distraction proves impossible. He is lifted and embraced, held tight in my wife's arms and snuggled to her chest. Rocked and swayed. Regardless, the screams continue, the tears roll and leave their salty trace, the limbs thrash.

He comes into our bed, nestled between us to prevent the rolling over he has recently perfected. A moment's peace as his brain once again recalibrates to his new position, then the crying is back. Was it a moment or an hour? I'm not as alert as I thought. How long have I been asleep and allowing my wife to bear the brunt of this? Too long. Now it is my turn. I pick him up, offer him what I can: the sound of my voice, my finger to chew, my arms and chest to hit in frustration.

My tired brain is convinced he has filled his nappy. We return to his room and begin the changing process. There is no poo. But while I'm changing him from one clean nappy to another he is smiling. We play a little and all seems right for a few minutes. I sense a change which could mean this part of the war is over. I reinsert him in his 2.5 TOG cocoon and lay him back in his cot. Awake but calm I leave him. He is yawning. I am yawning.

Battle recommences within an hour. Feelings of pity and concern for him mix with a notion that we must be doing something wrong. Surely we ought to be able to help him? There is some trick we are missing and we are failing him by doing so. Whatever it is, we can't work it out. So he gets our best shot: 5ml of sugary analgesia poured into his gaping, angry mouth.

I'm given the go ahead to return to sleep. I need to be able to function to some degree when I go to work tomorrow. Today. In three hours. Doggedly, my wife continues to sit with him, singing a lullaby over and over. A statement of her love for him which carries through the air and sends me to sleep.

My battle is over for tonight.

Want

Cameron wants to go to sleep. It has been two hours since his last nap. That's about the time he decides to let you know it's time for another one, in the only way a five month old can.

He's supposed to be having a nap in the car on the way to a lunch we're supposed to be going to. I want to go to the lunch, and so does my wife. No matter that we want to though, we can't. Because, like a twat, I have broken the garage door, and now it won't close.

I WANT the garage door to JUST FUCKING WORK. The garage door, apparently, WANTS to be an ill designed, badly installed, shonky piece of crap which doesn't perform its intended function, which is hardly diffucult. If I was an eight foot square piece of metal I would be an exemplary garage door. But, alas, I'm only six feet tall, a couple wide, and made of squishy flesh.

Whatever. I don't want to be a garage door anyway. But what do I want? What would I say I wanted if I wasn't inhibited by the trappings of adulthood, if I could release the same sort of guttural protest Cam does when he isn't getting what he wants? Thanks to that lovely chap @AdamPlum I now have the perfect excuse to find out. He has tagged me in a meme started by the frankly awesome Lexi over at Mammy Woo.

It's simple, a list of wants, so here's mine:

• I want to wake up without a feeling of dread in my stomach every morning. Whatever the job is that will give me that, I want to find it. Alternatively, more likely, whatever the change that has to happen in me for that feeling to go away is, I want to happen. 
• I want Cam to be happy. Simple. Whatever it takes, and whatever it means, that's what I want.
• As above, but for Mrs L.
• I want to believe that one day someone far cleverer than me will work out what the sustainable, workable alternative to capitalism is and start to convince everyone else to take it up.
• Until then, I want more money. We may be working within the rules of a broken system, but money is the cornerstone of that system for as long as it remains. More money means more freedom, more security, more options. It also, in my case, is likely to mean more bicycles and more shoes.
• I want to either be, or feel like, I'm a real person. At the moment I spend most of my time wondering when the world is going to call me out as a fraud. I'm not confident that I'm doing life right.
• I want to have less of an appetite for junk food and booze. Just a little less.
• I want there to be a Caterham in my garage.
• I want (without wishing to be all Miss World) everyone to get along. It's not that hard really. Or, if it is, just don't be a dick about not getting on with people. There's lots of other people you will get along with, so why not just leave the ones you don't alone?

There. Wants. Now, who's going to give me that Caterham so I don't have to start bawling my eyes out and thrashing around like a monkey whose tail's been set on fire? I may also need a new garage door, so it doesn't get stolen.

As this is a meme type post, there just remains the need to tag a few other bloggers to hear their own list. Here we go:

@Glosswitch, because I don't think she'll do it, but I know I'd find it interesting if she did.

@tricky_customer, because she's ace and I'm nosey.

@jbmumofone, because she's super lovely and hasn't even shouted at me for not doing the meme she tagged me in ages ago...

@ageingmatron, because she'll make me laugh (no pressure)

Thanks for reading, if you got this far.

Re:shuffle

Dear son of mine, how nice it must be to be a baby. When you wake up singing every morning one or other parent (usually your mum, I'm not going to lie) comes into your room and is treated to a beaming smile. You are a happy little soul. Your only care in the world is the array of teeth jostling for position beneath your gums.

I envy you.

Soon enough you will wake up and watch the news. If you had done that this morning you'd have heard that a man in London, a man who shares your name but, with luck, nothing else, had made some changes to his team of Cabinet ministers which he'd be announcing later in the day.

You could have gone to work, wondering whether Mr Cameron had decided that the policies his government have pursued since their (sort of) election in 2010, the policies which caused his Chancellor to be booed by eighty thousand spectators at the London Paralympic Games last night, policies I believe are designed to alienate and demonise the disadvantaged people in our society in order to make the rest of the electorate think it's okay to remove the support the state gives them.

Deep down, you'd probably know that was unlikely. That Cameron wouldn't be changing his mind about the correctness of any of his party's policies. That the next two years will just feature more of the same.

More of DavCam's smug-faced, earnest assurances that everything they do is for the greater good. More of George Osborne's unbearable smirk in response to any questioning of his methods.

Actually, that's not strictly true. The changes to the Cabinet mean the next two years might be EVEN WORSE. Yay! The appointment of Jeremy Hunt to replace Andrew Lansley as Health Secretary could have implications for abortion rights (he doesn't like the idea of them being allowed more than twelve weeks into a pregnancy, okay ladies? I'm sure you'll understand). Not only that, Mr Hunt voted in favour of homeopathy hospitals. Maybe it's this vote that got him the job; infinitesimally small quantities of dubiously effective ingredients dissolved into lots of water are probably a cheaper treatment for cancer than the latest drugs, and we all know how important it is to reduce the deficit (it is, but is it really so hard to find some ways to do it that don't involve fucking over everyone on the way?)

There are other appointments, but, to be honest, I stopped paying too much attention. I already know I don't like the way the Tories vote on a wide range of issues. Putting a different, equally unqualified, Tory into a new role doesn't really mean anything more than a furtherance of the nastiness already happening. Same shits, different day.

The silver lining, I suppose, is that surely after another two years of this there won't be too many swing voters ticking the Tory box on their ballot? Labour may be (are) far from perfect, and I may never forgive the Liberal Democrats for looking like a real alternative and then capitulating to almost every Tory whim, but this current lot make my skin crawl. Make me want to divorce myself from the whole system, so low is my belief in it.

This isn't the first Tory government I've lived through, but it's the first I'll remember. I'm happy that you won't remember it Cam, because I want you to have whatever perfect happy thoughts are in your head now for as long as possible, and I'm pretty sure you're not dreaming about your namesake.

Naughty

That was what the person, the parent of a seven month old baby living nearby, thought it appropriate to say as Mrs L popped a dummy into The Creature’s wailing mouth.

I was not there at the time. Perhaps fortunate, as I’m fairly certain I’d have wanted to grab another dummy and use it to silence her. Possibly with a bit of duct tape for good measure.

Mrs L is a kindly soul though, and ignored the statement.

She continued to ignore it when it was followed up with “my baby has never had a dummy, she’s never needed it, she’s self soothed since she was a month old”.

Another gem: “I’m really sure that [baby] will be good at sport. Because me and her dad are both really fit and good at it”.

I checked, neither of them are in the Olympics, so they can’t be that good.

Yes, three months into parenting and we are beginning to encounter competitive parenting. I shouldn’t have been surprised, I had my warning just days after The Creature was born, courtesy of @tattooed_mummy:

“I wonder how long before you are drawn into the land of "competitive parenting" *sigh* try to ignore the "oh mine was already doing that at 3 weeks" sorts of comments.”

Obviously we’re all proud of our offspring. I get that. But why do so many parents feel the need to operate as their child’s personal PR machine? Cam smiled somewhere between six and eight weeks. I forget exactly when. I know I loved it. I know I blogged about it. But I didn’t make a point of asking every other parent how long it had taken their own child to smile.

I don’t care.

Just like I don’t care if your baby never needs to have his bowel movements helped out with laxatives, or that your baby could recite the alphabet (backwards and in German) when he was just hours old. It makes no difference to me or my baby.

What it does make me want to do is tell you to SHUT YOUR SMUG FACE.

Instead, I’m going to start making wild claims of developmental excellence on the part of my baby. What can I say to the competitive parents to wipe that smug expression from their face?

It needs to be good.

“Cameron was watching Question Time with me the other night, and he just couldn’t believe how the panellists were competing over which drugs they’d done. He thought it highly immature”.

Or.

“Cameron got a call from George Osborne today, asking for some input on a revised fiscal policy. Of course he had to say he couldn’t help out, he was too busy trying to work out how to hold his head up off the floor”.

Those are rubbish. Maybe I’ll just go for some one-upmanship.

“Oh, your baby is walking already? At nine months? Amazing! Cam moonwalked out of the womb, singing Billie Jean”.

Or perhaps I’ll just carry on as I have been, ignoring them and hoping they’ll go away.

Men and Babies

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a question for you: how do you feel and react when a man looks at your child/ren and smiles?

You can leave me your answer, along with any related musings, in the comment box at the bottom of this here page.

Here is why I ask:

Every weekday at lunch time I leave my office and I walk to ASDA to buy a banana. I have to go every day to buy my banana, because I’m extremely picky about the ripeness of the bananas I eat. Unless they’re just past the point of being green they make me feel physically sick.

But this is not a post about my banana based foibles.

This is a post about me being made to feel awkward on a regular basis.

Recently, on my trip to ASDA, I smiled at a baby in a trolley. I did this because I like babies. You may have noticed this. I am the son of a broody mother and a broody father. Broody is bred into me like respiratory problems are bred into English Bulldogs.



Inhalers are just out of shot.

When I see a baby (unless it’s an ugly one) I go all mushy like an over-ripe banana. I want to say hello. I want to hold it and cuddle it and look after it. I want to tell its parents how beautiful it is and how lucky they are.

I don’t actually DO any of that. I smile as I walk past and that’s it. I have a concept of personal space and parental fears over child safety and I respect that.

Apparently, for some people, that’s not good enough. Judging by the frequency with which I have glances directed at me which could pierce the armour plating of a tank it is definitely NOT OKAY for a man to smile at a baby or young child.

Whenever it happens I feel immediately like I need to run away and hide. Needless to say, I don’t much want accusations of paedophilia being thrown my way while I’m out shopping. Nor do I want anyone thinking I’m a potential kidnapper.

The glances don’t just make me feel awkward. They make me feel sad. Sad that the first thought in a lot of people’s heads is not “oh, he thinks my baby is cute”, it is “oh, that man means some harm to my baby”.

I’m not a woman, so I don’t know whether this happens to women. Maybe it does. But I wonder whether this is actually one of the few occasions where men are on the receiving end of gender discrimination.

So what’s the deal? Do I need to stop smiling at babies, reign in my natural gooey tendencies? I certainly don’t want everybody to stop smiling at Cam. He seems to like it, and it makes me feel proud of having a lovely little boy.

Thanks for reading.

Wedding

Weddings. They're nice aren't they?

All pretty and full of lovely foods and brimming with people you like. There's always plenty of booze, and plenty of dancing. The people getting married are having the best day of their lives, and they usually let everyone else ride on their coat tails for the day.

I've got a lot of love for weddings.

But weddings are different now.

Weddings used to go: dress up smart, enjoy ceremony, eat nice food, laugh at speeches, get drunk, have great chat with other guests, get a bit more drunk, do some dancing, have plentiful hugs, maybe fall over a bit, go home, wake up with hangover but feeling like you've had an awesome time getting it.

We took Cam to a wedding reception on Saturday. We'd have been going to the ceremony before we had him, but we didn't want a grumpy baby (or grumpy parents).

Saturday's wedding went like this: dress up less scruffy than usual, but not smart because it'll only get puked on, miss ceremony, soothe baby while wife eats nice food, eat food while wife soothes baby, position self near exit of marquee during speeches, in case of tantrum, stare at wine on table longingly, chat about babies with other guests, stare at pints in people's hands longingly, dance with the baby in a quiet corner away from the dancefloor, have far less hugs than usual, go home, wake up feeling like you have a hangover you don't deserve.

Don't mistake the above for not having a good time. A wedding with a baby is still lovely. I am incredibly pleased that I was able to be there to share such a special occasion with two of my favourite people. They had the happiest day of their lives and that's the most important thing.

We enjoyed the day, but it's a world away from how we'd have enjoyed it a year ago.

We have five more weddings to go to this year. What are your top tips?

Thanks for reading :-)

Lifts and Toilets

Earlier this week I went out for a bit, on my own, with The Creature.

We went to meet @Motherventing for some tea and cake, then to do a bit of shopping.

I learnt a lesson on that trip: shopping centres are crap for a lone parent with a big pram/buggy thing.

As an able bodied, reasonably fit, reasonably young person, I do not use lifts. I use stairs. There are many reasons for this: lifts contain lift music. Lift music is not actual music, and should be banned. Lifts also contain other people, squished together into a small space. On occasion, one of those other people will fart. Unpleasant.

My final reason for not using lifts is that I don’t know where they are. Lifts (with their terrible music and farting) are like the dirty secret which shops don’t want you to know about, so they’re hidden away. The signs that say “lifts this way” are actually a cunning ruse, and take you further from the lift.

But as a parent with a child in a pram I need to use the lift.

I lost fifteen minutes of my life looking for the lift in Marks & Spencer. I will never get that back, and I could have been using it to do something important, like eating a nice piece of cake. Or anything that wasn’t looking for a lift.

Worse still was House of Fraser. Their lifts weren’t signposted at all. I still don’t know whether there is a lift there or not, I gave up after I’d done a few laps of the floor I came in on. Well played House of Fraser, quite a subtle way of making me feel unwelcome.

Now I think of it, I don’t remember seeing any other people pushing a buggy in there. Perhaps I missed the sign saying I should shop elsewhere.

Once I’d finished the exciting business of looking for lifts the tea I had consumed earlier had made its way through the system and wanted out. The Creature was also in need of a change.

I made a discovery: changing facilities are quite often in the ladies toilets. When they are not in the ladies toilets, they are often a standalone room, without a toilet. Ha fucking ha. At least the baby got a change.

I will share something with you here. My bladder is RUBBISH. It is made more rubbish when my brain gets the opportunity to tell it that there are no toilet facilities available to it.

Question for my male readers: it’s okay to take your baby into the men’s toilets, yes? Have him next to you at the urinal? It didn’t feel like it ought to be okay, I don’t recall EVER seeing another man doing it (although my toiletiquette is perfect, so I don’t look around more than is absolutely necessary). So I thought dry thoughts and made my way back to the car.

What I wonder is how dads on their own are supposed to cope with situations where there is no baby change option outside of the women’s toilet. I suppose you can change a baby anywhere really.

Tits

Somewhat inevitable this, I suppose. A post about boobs is surely high upon the checklist of “must writes” for any parenting blog.

Well, here’s mine. I’m not sure if it’s really about boobs at all, but it seemed a shame to miss the opportunity to have that as a title.

What it definitely IS about, is breastfeeding. Even more accurately, it’s about stopping breast feeding, something my son did nearly two weeks ago.

He’s a bottle baby now, and he seems to be loving it.

Tricky topic, breastfeeding, I feel like I probably need to tread carefully (especially as a man…)

I’ll start by saying this: both me and Mrs L considered breastfeeding a Good Thing. We would have loved Cam to continue exclusively with breast milk for the six months that the government suggests. But it didn’t work out that way.

Right from the start, every feed was a battle. Mrs L had support from midwives in the hospital (more on that further on), support from the midwife at home (who was truly fantastic and a credit to the profession), support from the health visitor, support from relatives, support from other mums, support from people on my Twitter timeline, support from websites, from books, from left, right and centre. None of it made much difference.

Almost every feed I watched was an ordeal. Mrs L trying different positions, different techniques, different pieces of equipment designed to help.

By the time she made the final decision to call time at the milk bar, Mrs L’s nipples were cracked and sore. Two weeks on and they’ve not yet fully recovered. She was tired, she was wracked with guilt at the prospect of turning to the bottle. I shared that guilt, but I’m no fool, I know the majority of the burden was with Mrs L.

Physical aspects aside, I have some thoughts on breastfeeding which may not be all that popular. So, I’ll don my flameproof suit and continue.

We were told throughout the pregnancy that breast is best. I agree with this statement. What I’m not so keen on is the implication that formula is bad. It’s unspoken, but the persistent promotion of breast feeding by NHS staff, though well intentioned, breeds a feeling of inferiority in people who can not breastfeed. I don’t think that’s fair.

If a mum is feeling stressed out, losing confidence in her parenting ability and being caused a lot of physical pain by breastfeeding, she needs to be able to stop it without feeling like a failure. I don’t know how that can be done without weakening the breastfeeding message. Tricky.

But by far my biggest gripe with the whole breastfeeding thing is this: everyone tells you something different.

Mrs L was visited in hospital by at least four different midwives. All were supportive, helpful, friendly. All had COMPLETELY different advice on how to breastfeed.

This, frankly, is fucking stupid.

The advice given needs to be consistent. I appreciate it’s an organic, natural process and that there will be variation in the best approach from person to person. But when a new mum, fresh out of labour, tired and likely a smidge mental with hormones is being given conflicting advice every few hours it doesn’t make her life easy.

I was glad when Mrs L took the decision to drop breastfeeding. Cam is obviously one of the most important things in my life, but Mrs L is the other one. Watching her wince in pain as he tried to latch on, watching him work himself into a screaming frenzy, was horrible for me as well.

What’s better for all concerned, a breastfed but angry baby with a mum rendered fragile and unwell by the experience, or a bottle fed but happy baby with a mum better able to enjoy him?

Before anyone unleashes a torrent of fury in my direction via the comments box, please note that when breastfeeding works for all parties it is bloody great. I just don’t think it was right for us.

Thanks for reading.

Travel

Not long after you have a baby you will need to take it somewhere. If nothing else, you will need to take the baby from the hospital it was born in and transport it to wherever you live.

I chose to do this using my car.

It’s a reasonable size vehicle. It’s made by Skoda, which in the old days would have meant it being hewn from pure iron in a former communist factory fuelled by sweat and woe. Nowadays it means it’s a Volkswagen, but with less impressive residuals. It is large of boot and copious of airbag, it is the sort of car which a dad should own. Which (as well as a need to ferry bikes around) is why I bought it.

Before the baby arrived I posted about the joy of installing an Isofix car seat here. When I set off to bring The Creature and his mother home the car was as ready as it would ever be to receive its precious cargo.

I, on the other hand, was a wreck.

In case you’ve never done it, or been in the car when someone else was doing it, here’s how it goes: you open the door and lift the car seat onto the Isofix base, bumping it on every part of the car it passes en route. You sit in your seat and notice you’re sweating profusely. You start the engine and enter into a state of hyper awareness.

Suddenly, every other car on the road seems like it’s being driven by a lunatic. A drunk lunatic. A drunk lunatic with an intense dislike for children. To ensure no harm comes to the baby (who is blissfully unaware, sleeping and emitting the occasional squeak) you drive ten to fifteen miles per hour slower everywhere. Of course, this makes the drunk lunatics angry.

Your own driving turns to shit. Changing gear goes from being as smooth as a baby’s bottom, the product of years of repetition and consideration for both the car and passengers, to a grinding, jerky affair. You wonder whether purchasing a neck brace may be a good idea.

When you finally arrive home, with self inflicted whiplash, you breath a sigh of relief and resolve never to take your baby anywhere you can’t walk to ever again.

Then you remember your brother’s wedding is in six weeks and is one hundred and fifty miles away.

Six weeks is a long time though, so I’m pleased to say that I didn’t have to drive all the way to Nottingham at fifty miles per hour. I’m even more pleased to say that The Creature was a model passenger, sleeping for the entire journey in both directions.

Best of all, I only had to change out of sweaty clothes at journey’s end because the weather was so hot, not because of all the nervous energy.

Tell me your tales of child travel hell. What do I have to look forward to? Will I regret the fact my car has white seats?

Dreams

Once, when I was little, my mum was watching me sleep. While she watched, I sat bolt upright in bed, eyes closed, clearly still in the grip of slumber and announced “hooray! But I wanted the toffee one!”

Then I put my head back down and continued my snooze.

I’d love to know what I was dreaming about that night. Sometimes I worry it was a nightmare; that I’d been playing Revels Roulette and my next turn would land me in a coffee flavoured hell.

I obviously didn’t get the toffee one, but was still pretty excited, so what would have happened if I HAD got the toffee one? I used to sleep in a cabin bed, six feet off a floor covered in hard plastic action figures. Getting the toffee one could have left me writhing on the floor, impaled on Lion-o’s Sword of Omens. Doesn’t bear thinking about.

My dad has a recurring dream, where he revisits a childhood accident. He fell down a flight of stairs. He was fine, but it obviously left an impression on him. Fifty years on, when he has the dream about it, you can see the jolt go through his body as he hits each step in the dream.

I love the feeling of waking from a bizarre dream and trying to piece it back together: why did my brain think I’d like to be at a party with Boris Johnson and the Dingle family from Emmerdale? Why was everyone telling me we were in Rio de Janeiro when the venue was clearly a dingy rock club in Cardiff? Most importantly, why was I not me, but Hulk Hogan, in full WWF attire?

The nightly brain defrag is a magical, mystical thing for me.

I saw a thing on Twitter the other day, it was one of those accounts which spews out facts to its followers and is presumably run by someone who just loves flicking to random pages in encyclopaedias. It said: “babies dream even before they are born”.

WHAT?

What do they dream of? Dark? Muffled voices?

It may be true, but I just don’t get it.

A baby has no experiences to draw on for dreams, no visual experience more exciting than a bit of light, no concept of what will happen once they’re born. Their brain has nothing to sort through and file away at the end of each day. They haven’t watched Homes Under the Hammer or Neighbours, so where are they getting their material?

So, I’ve concluded, baby dreams must be really boring. Until they get out of the womb. Imagine that! Going from the barest of sensory input for months on end, to a sudden EXPLOSION of stuff, attacking you from every angle.

Sights. Sounds. Smells. Tastes. Textures.

All day every day. No wonder they cry a lot, daytime TV is shit.

I spend quite a bit of time watching The Creature when he’s asleep (I feel I should savour it) and I’ve noticed something. He hasn’t sat up and proclaimed his excitement at not getting something he wanted yet, but I can quite often tell what he’s dreaming about.

Boobs.

Typical man.

Tell me your funny dream stories and I PROMISE I won’t recount them to all my friends. Go on…

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.

Drop

No.  I haven't dropped the baby.

But since we've had the baby, I've pretty much dropped everything else I lay my hands on.  Seriously.  

Today, I have dropped: my phone (I was surprised to find it still works), my keys, a VERY sharp knife millimetres from my foot, a box of teabags and then lots of individual teabags while trying to pick them up to put back in the box.

I'm usually not a complete butterfingers, although I will freely admit that I couldn't reliably catch a tennis ball until I was about to attend secondary school.  Catching's different though, you don't choose when the thing enters your hands.  Under normal circumstances my dexterity does extend to hold things.

But not now.  I am the newly crowned King of Letting Go.  Lord of Lost Grip.

Has having a baby meant that ALL of my fingers' reserves of grip are being used up on The Creature?  I don't walk around with him in some vice grip, knuckles whitened at the effort of holding his increasingly squirmy little body.  Of course, I don't want to drop him (although, after reading @TomBriggs79's post about his paternity leave, I have wanted to check his Moro Reflex, which would require dropping him) but I really didn't think I was trying THAT hard not to.

I really don't know why I'm doing such a good job of losing my grip just now.  But I do know it has brought into sharp focus exactly how scared I am of doing anything to hurt this little tiny person who lives in my house now.

As I type, he's lying on my lap (refusing to acknowledge the existence of night time, looking all cute and squishy, aaaaawwwwwww!) and I'm terrified. Mrs L is in bed, tired from a day of looking exactly like she knows what she's doing, handling the baby with confidence and skill, while I spend every moment with him in my arms wondering when my newfound penchant for dropping things will extend to letting him fall.

Terrifying, parenting.

First Night

First Night at home.  Third night in total.

3:40am

He is asleep.  Finally.  She is asleep.  Finally.  I am watching them both sleep and hoping it can last more than the five minutes it already has.  It is the one thing in the world that I want more than anything at this precise moment.

Everything everyone has ever told me about this is true.  I have already felt wracked with guilt for sleeping while she does not, for not having the physical means to feed this tiny person who I am so utterly fascinated by.

Over ten minutes now.  The most sleep my wife has had in over 24 hours.  Her soft snores are music to my ears, with my son's short, tiny breaths adding a second track to the mix.

He looks grumpy even when he's asleep.  He is almost too cute to bear.  It still hasn't all sunk in yet. 

Fifteen minutes.  Thank you little man, not just for doing it, but for proving that you can do it, and for saving your mum's sanity in the process.  Maybe she'll stop hallucinating for a little while now, and have a little respite from the raging headache she's been enduring.

Me, I am the lucky one.  Tonight my prize is watching my two sleeping beauties.  I've also grabbed more sleep already than the other two combined.

4:00am

He's stirring now.  But I feel like I'm already winning.

Disclaimer: typed on a phone, any and all spelling or typing errors are its fault, not my tired brain's.

Dawn of the Dad

I didn't Google it, but I bet that's one of the least original blog post titles going.

You know what though?  I don't care.

Oh my days, it's finally happened.  I have a baby.  I have a son.  I am a dad.  *does dance of ecstatic joy*

This post isn't going to be a birth story or anything as deep and meaningful as that.  I may do one some time, I may not, I'll see how I feel.

Right now, I'm sat at home on my own, for the second night, while my baby boy and my amazing wife remain at the hospital.  Hopefully they're doing well.  Maybe they're not.  I have no way of knowing.  But this post also isn't about not being able to stay at the hospital.

This post is to say that I feel a new understanding, respect and connection to all those other dads out there.  And all the mums too.  I thought I got it before our baby was born.  But I was wrong.  I didn't get it when I was a broody young man.  I didn't get it when my wife was pregnant.  I didn't get it during my wife's labour.

I got it when that tiny little fragile body made its exit from the womb.  I got it when he was placed, still covered in all manner of goo and stuff, on to my wife's body moments later.  I got it when my face contorted into a display of emotion which I had no hope of controlling, of tears and sobs and snotty sniffles of pure, joyous happiness.

Even our first day as a family has shown me that there will be challenges.  That all the talk of how difficult it is to have a child is true.  But it has also shown me that there is a whole world of support out there for new parents, a world of experience and knowledge that we will be able to draw from to help us, to pick us up when we are down, to cry on, to complain to.

Cute, but with a penchant for pissing up your arm.  I don't mind though,  because I'm a dad.

This is the dawn of a new era then, an era where my BabberBlog actually has a babber to blog about.  I can't wait.

False Alarm

Two nights ago, at about 1am, I was woken by the following word from my wife:

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk!!"

It took my sleep addled brain a few dozy moments to process that.  Then, assuming that the baby had decided it was time to make an entrance, I did the natural thing.  Panicked.  A thousand thoughts went through my mind.  Well, a couple at least.  They were: "ohmygodshittingshitit'sfinallyhappeningthebaby'scoming" and then: "calm down, calm down, find out what's going on".

My mouth hadn't quite finished booting up yet, so I said something like "nnngggghhhmmmddight?"

Luckily, Mrs L is good at deciphering my incoherent mumblings.

"It's cramp, really bad cramp in my legs".

I asked whether she was sure, because, y'know, I'd imagine cramp in your legs feels pretty similar to contractions.  I blame the fact I was barely awake.  Pretty soon I was back to sleep.  An hour later it happened again.

Since that night, I've been on code red, Defcon 1 (or 5, I forget which way round that works), super-alert-phone-checking mode.  Because it could happen any time now.  I might have to exercise the full accelerative ferocity of the almighty Skoda to get to the hospital at the drop of a hat.  I've started fending off new pieces of work which people try to give me (to be honest, I do that anyway) and trying to wrap up outstanding bits and pieces.  I'm ready for the call, whenever that call may come.

Every single thing we do I find myself thinking "this is probably the last time we'll [insert activity] before the baby arrives".

We're in a period of lasts.  Last restaurant meal.  Last visit to the cinema.  Last game of basketball.  Last trip to the supermarket.

It's harder for Mrs L, having to ferry the baby around within her, but the uncertainty is having an affect on me too.  I'm not sleeping well (and not just because my Mrs L has developed a very impressive talent for snoring in recent weeks) and I feel a bit fuzzy around the edges.  I got all snappy at someone in the office the other day, which is not at all like me.  It's quite stressful, having a baby, and we don't even have ours yet.

So come on baby, get a wriggle on.  We want to meet you, and I want to stop feeling a compulsion to check my phone every thirty seconds.

Toys

We had some friends over at the weekend, to drink tea and eat cake in celebration of Mrs L's birthday.  The tea was nice, and so was the cake, but the star attraction was the nine month old not-quite-toddler son of one couple.

From the moment he arrived to the moment he left he was the focus of everyone's attention.  Rightly so, because he's a fab little man, smiley and engaging, with a definite cheeky edge.

I learnt something in that hour of toddler time: to a toddler, EVERYTHING is a toy.  Specifically, the things which were not designed to be toys.  Even more specifically, the most expensive things in the room which were not designed to be toys.  To take it one step further, he was fascinated by the TV.  He also quite liked the laptop, but we hid that.  There's nowhere in our house that you could hide a reasonable sized flat screen TV, not if you ever wanted to watch it.

Not a toy.

Little man's mum was alert to this, and had him under close surveillance at all times.  A fact I am grateful for.  She also managed to prevent him from eating my car keys, which was nice too.  For him and me.

A toy.

So how do they know?  It's not unique to this baby, I've see other ones drawn like a magnet to iron when they're placed within sight of some expensive item.  I don't think we did anything to highlight the value of any specific items to him ("hello baby, listen carefully, these are the ten most expensive things in the room, please feel free to destroy them as you see fit") and we certainly didn't make the mistake of refusing him access to the TV.  Innate ability?  Some kind of genetic affinity with the magpie?  I don't know.

The nice thing was that he wasn't actually interested in mauling the screen itself, it was the faux-carbon fibre weave on the stand he liked; running his tiny nails over the texture over and over again, making the sort of scratching noise usually reserved for sound effects in bad horror films.  I suppose that's it really, it wasn't some unfathomable addiction to the pricey he was displaying, but an entirely fathomable desire to do something interesting.  Nothing else in the room made that noise, or had that feeling.  Maybe he'd never heard that noise before in his short life.  He was exploring the world, the world where almost everything is still new to him, and that's a lovely thing to watch in someone else's child, so I'm really looking forward to watching it in my own.