Tag: dad

Dependence on Power

Gillan DrewLeave a comment

In Praise of Mothers, Part 2, was going to arrive Thursday night, and is due to follow. However, as with anything baby related, and as I have mentioned before, the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley (whatever that means). Birthdays, flu jabs, Halloween (150-odd trick or treaters is too many!) and the final of the Rugby World Cup all managed to hinder the writing of this blog, as did a baby currently incapable of lasting five minutes without crying over her painful teething. But none were so disruptive as Thursday.

Lizzie was out shopping and I was getting Izzie ready for bed. I changed her nappy in the nursery, put her in a sleepsuit, and all that was left was a final goodnight bottle, so I started to carry her downstairs.

And halfway down, the world turned black.

We live in a village on the edge of the New Forest, so when it’s dark, it’s dark, and when there’s a power cut, it’s darker than that. I stepped on the cat (who’s black), the dog (who’s black and white), and must have bumped into every obstacle that fills a house with young children (you know the stuff – bouncers, play mats, chairs, your missing sense of sanity) before locating the carrycot so I could put Izzie down safely.

My torch lives by the back door in the kitchen, but it was hidden behind the Perfect Prep bottle-preparing machine and the steriliser, and wrapped in the wires coming out the back of them, so getting to it was a struggle. But otherwise, we were all good.

Except the baby was now crying because she wanted her bottle.

The Perfect Prep machine, as you might imagine, works on electricity. So does the kettle. But that’s okay, I figured, I’ll boil some water on the stove, because that’s gas – only the ignition button is powered by electricity, and I couldn’t find any matches (damn our non-smoking healthy living!). I could keep her warm though, because we have gas central heating – only the controller for that is electrical too, so no heating. I’d best ring my parents and tell them to expect some visitors for the night.

Thing is, we live in a mobile signal black spot so rely on the house phone to communicate. But it’s a house mobile, so when there’s no power, the handset can’t connect with the base unit and thus we can’t make any calls. In fact, the only thing that worked was Izzie’s baby monitor. I remember installing it a few weeks ago and wondering why I had to put batteries in something that was plugged into the mains. It was, clearly, for just this situation. But as Izzie was in the same room with me, it wasn’t exactly useful.

Eventually, Lizzie returned and looked after Izzie while I went up the street with the bottle machine until I found a house with lights on and borrowed a plug socket. We put a now milk-drunk baby to bed and then sat in the dark for another couple of hours, feeling surprisingly vulnerable, until the lights flicked on and Izzie started screaming, because her light was turned up full and she woke with a start.

It’s only when you have a power cut that you realise how dependant we’ve become on a single source of energy. All our gas appliances are controlled by electricity. Until I found the house that still had power, I seriously considered making a fire in the garden to boil some water – but that wouldn’t have worked either, because I had nothing to light it with!

So all parents, take note: make your home power-cut-ready. This involves:

  • Torches scattered throughout the house, especially in the nursery.
  • Matches, matches, matches. Or one of those oven-lighter things.
  • Candles.
  • A phone that plugs directly into the phone line.
  • Sterilised water – always keep a spare; don’t make it as you go.
  • A baby monitor with batteries, not just mains.
  • Plenty of blankets to keep warm.

And if the power cut comes midway through the nappy change, instead of immediately after, I have no advice to give. Just pray it never happens to you.

In Praise of Mothers, Part 1

Gillan DrewLeave a comment

This is going to sound like I’m betraying my sex, but I have to say it: I think mothers have it harder than us dads. That’s not to say that it’s easy for us, because being a parent isn’t easy for anyone, but we men have certain benefits that most women don’t.

Firstly, most men go out to work while the woman stays at home. Now, work is hardly a blast, but you get to get away from the screaming ball of snot and poop that happens to be your beloved and longed-for child. You get to have adult conversations about topics other than teething, weaning and dribble, conversations that keep you sane and allow you to acknowledge a world existing outside the insularity of child-rearing and the nuclear family. Don’t get me wrong – I love my daughter more than anything in the world – but it’s a bloody hard, unending slog, and sometimes you need a break from it. Most men get that break five days a week. Most women don’t get a break at all.

And men get to do all the cool stuff. The mum is washing clothes, changing nappies, breastfeeding or making up bottles, cleaning, sterilising, trying to soothe the screaming monkey, wiping its nose, changing every vomit-drenched outfit, and suffering under the burden of endless responsibility, every second of the day. Then dad swans in from work, to be greeted with an outlandishly huge smile from his little baby, because dad is cool and she hasn’t seen him all day and mum is boring because she’s always there. And he then bathes her (splash, splash, splash), and reads her a story, and gives her her last bottle and puts her to bed. All the pretty parts of childcare you see in TV adverts. The dad is the rock star of the parenting team; the mum’s the smelly roadie you only notice if they’re not doing their job.

At the NCT classes – that’s National Childbirth Trust, for those who don’t know – the men even said they were most looking forward to ‘daddy day care’. Because men look after their babies so rarely, and for so short a time, they can compare it to a situation in which a kid gets dropped off with a carer for a few hours before it gets picked up again. Lucky fellows.

Mothers, on the other hand, are looking after the baby all day, every day. It’s not ‘mummy day care’, it’s ‘mummy constant, oh God, where’s my time off, I’m losing my identity and my soul, care’, otherwise known as, ‘this is my freaking life’. I think there’s this idea that men go out to work and work, whereas women stay at home and don’t, so their lives must be easier. Let me tell you now, as a stay-at-home dad, it’s not easy at all.

But that doesn’t change the impression. Certainly some men come home and expect to get a couple of hours on the Xbox or watching TV, because they’ve earned some down time by working all day. Well, what do they think the mum’s been doing, putting her feet up, eating chocolate and watching morning TV while picking her nose? She has earned just as much down time, if not more. After eight hours looking after a baby by yourself, you don’t care how busy your partner’s been during the day, you just want an hour where you can switch off. It’s the constant focus that’s the killer, never letting down your guard, head in the game all the time, nothing missed. You can’t be a mum and do it half-arsed – you bring your all or not at all.

Mums can’t use work as an excuse, either. I’ve known men who think that, because they go out to work and their work is so much more important than the mother’s, they can’t do any of the night feeds – they need to earn a living, after all. Now put yourself in a mum’s shoes – get up, feed baby; change baby; dress baby; dad goes to work; entertain baby while doing chores; feed baby; change baby; take baby out; try to get baby to nap; feed baby, change baby; more chores; dad comes home and enjoys giggle time; baby’s gone to bed; go to bed yourself, exhausted; get up a couple of times in the night to change and feed baby; repeat. And how can looking after the next generation, and your own flesh and blood, ever be considered less important than anything?

I really think mums deserve a bit more credit than they’re given, don’t you?

Random Thoughts

Gillan DrewLeave a comment

It’s my birthday next week. Lizzie keeps asking me what I want. Apparently ‘a day to myself’ isn’t an appropriate gift.

Whenever I sneeze, Izzie bursts into tears in absolute terror. So when she’s in her chair, cot, or with Lizzie, I rush out of the room if I feel the urge. But what do I do when she’s asleep in my lap and I feel a sneeze coming on?

Check out my new i-phone, bitches!
Check out my new i-phone, bitches!

Izzie is fascinated with my face. If she’s not twisting my ears, tugging my awesome beard, or pulling my glasses off and flinging them on the floor, she’s pushing her fingers as far up my nostrils as she can manage. As cute as she is, it’s rather unpleasant.

Izzie is so innocent and uncomplicated, her face is a succession of emoticons. When she finds something funny, she laughs; if she’s happy, she smiles; sad, her bottom lip sticks out and her eyes fill with tears; confused, she frowns and twists her mouth; tired, she yawns and rubs her eyes; surprised, her mouth falls open and her eyes go wide. They could use her on those caricature cards they give to autistic people to explain what different emotional states look like.

Where do all our muslins disappear to?

When I fart these days, it smells exactly like the baby’s poop. I know for a fact we’re not eating the same thing, so what’s that all about?

When babies cry, it’s out of need, frustration and annoyance. They’re not really sad, despite the tears. When they’re genuinely sad – like when they wake from a bad dream or their dad sneezes – their crying looks and sounds completely different.

People keep asking what Izzie’s getting for Christmas. She’ll be six months old – she can have the wrapping paper from whatever I unwrap, and the box it came in if she’s lucky.

The first song she heard after she was born, playing on the radio in the operating theatre, was Phil Collins’ Can’t Hurry Love. If they’d waited a few minutes before yanking her out, it would have been Ellie Goulding’s version of Your Song, which would probably have been more appropriate. But then, they were hurrying, love.

Why do they have radios playing in operating theatres?

Not sure how much actually made it to your stomach there.
Not sure how much actually made it to your stomach there.

All-terrain buggies should be renamed ‘heavy, big-wheeled, wide wheel-base buggies’, because other than being incredibly heavy and too wide to go down shop aisles, that seems to be the only difference. The only genuinely all-terrain buggy is called a sling.

Apparently, the middle knuckle of my right index finger is more appealing than a teething ring.

Whenever I walk down the street these days I pay inordinate amounts of attention to other people’s babies, and conclude that, yes, mine is the best. People say I’m biased, and I am. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.

She woke me up the other morning rhythmically banging her feet against the cot’s headboard. The fact she was put to bed facing the other way doesn’t seem to concern her.

Right now, when she burps, we cheer and tell her well done. In a couple of years we’ll tell her off for being so rude!

Izzie is terrified of missing things. She refuses to fall asleep in the afternoon as though worried in case something exciting is just around the corner. You can see her eyes drooping, but she refuses to give in, whereupon she goes past the point of tiredness into frenzy mode. That’s where she’s super tired, hyper alert, and has completely forgotten how to get to sleep. Tip: it’s not by pinwheeling your arms while shouting and going red in the face.

They need to build statues to honour whoever invented the dummy.

Now that Izzie is going to bed around 8pm, Lizzie and I keep sitting on the sofa, staring at each other, and wondering just what the hell we used to do in the evenings.

What is going on with that little cough thing that babies do for attention?

All my clothes seem to be covered in crusty white stains. It looks particularly dodgy on my black dressing gown. At least I know it’s puke, not that that makes it much better.

That stuff about having to be careful when changing a boy because they pee when the nappy comes off is only half right. If my experience with my daughter is anything to go by, all babies pee halfway through the nappy change, soaking themselves, their clothes, the clean nappy, you, and the carpet all at the same time.

Pesky bib!
Pesky bib!

How is it that dribble bibs are terrible at catching milk, milk bibs are terrible at catching dribble, and food bibs seem incapable of catching anything?

In the battle between the cot in the nursery and the Moses Basket on a rocker by the bed, the Moses Basket wins hands down because a) it’s right beside the bed, and b) it rocks. Whenever Izzie used to stir, I could lean over, pop her dummy back in, and rock her to sleep with my foot, all without getting out of bed or even really out from under the covers. Now I have to get up, go next door, put the dummy in, try to soothe her without rocking, and when she’s quiet I retreat to bed only for the monitor to kick in with grizzles around fifteen seconds later, forcing me to repeat the whole thing five or six times. And that’s a problem at three in the morning.

Izzie keeps doing phantom poops. She makes a noise, I feel the guff, the smell is awful, so I wait a couple of minutes, sniff her bottom to confirm that yes, it stinks, and pat the nappy to confirm that yes, there’s something in there, but by the time I open the nappy the poop has mysteriously vanished. Spooky.

Why, when I use the tympanic thermometer, does it always read 35.4 degrees? Am I not using it right?

And lastly, when I was doing night feeds every night around 3am, I could handle it. Now that Izzie sleeps through to around five-thirty or six in the morning two nights out of three, those 3am feeds every third night are absolute killers that I struggle to recover from. How does more sleep make you feel less awake? Or is it because I check her every couple of hours to make sure she’s still alive?

Being Silly

Gillan DrewLeave a comment

A few weeks ago when Izzie really started interacting with us and the world around her, my brother said, ‘Now’s the time they start to get interesting.’ I totally disagree. She was always interesting, but now’s the time she’s starting to get fun.

That’s not to say the first twelve weeks or so didn’t have their moments. All those firsts – first smile, first tears, first proper sad face, first time she grabbed my glasses and threw them on the floor – were exciting and revelatory. But the past few weeks she’s understood enough to be consistent in her behaviour – she’s discovered cause and effect, that a string of sounds can be funny and not just single weird noises, and she’s interested in everything. Consequently, whereas before she could be soothed by simple rocking or muttering, now she wants a whole song and dance routine.

I said a few weeks back that after colic, teething would be a breeze. Well I’m sorry to tell anyone with the same desperate hope that it’s anything but.

Colic hits in the evenings. True, the crying doesn’t stop and goes on for hours, but you can prepare for it by doing what you need to do during the day. Teething lasts all bloomin’ day, hour after hour, a constant procession of whining, grizzling, crying, chewing on everything within reach, and more crying. You have to change her outfit three times a day because she’s soaked with drool from her neck to her belly button, and that’s with the dribble bib in place. Feeding becomes a nightmare because she just wants to chew on the teat instead of suck, and getting her to sleep is impossible without teething gel, dummy and plenty of rocking.

But unlike colic, with teething you can sort of distract them from it. And that’s where the fun comes in.

If, every time she cries, you think, ‘Sheesh, not again,’ then it’s going to be a very long teething time. I made that mistake. Six hours is a killer with a baby that won’t settle, won’t rest, won’t sleep, won’t soothe. So you have to change your thinking. A lot of books tell you to embrace your silly side, and they’re right – when else are we going to have a legitimate excuse to act like a hyperactive eight-year-old?

Crying is not the enemy, just your reaction to it. Instead of thinking it a chore every time she cries and you have to comfort her, you have to think of it as an opportunity. ‘Yes! I get to act like a lunatic again!’ And how far you take it is up to you.

The past few days, in order to soothe Izzie I’ve been a human beat box – ‘wickedy, wickedy, wah, wickedy, zoop zoop, pow’ – turned her into an aeroplane, a spaceship and a pterosaur, reenacted the ‘Hot Stuff’ dole queue scene from the Full Monty, used more funny voices than Seth MacFarlane, sung a million-and-one half-remembered nursery rhymes, dusted off my guitar, made up all kinds of pretend languages, jumped around doing my Gollum impression, done peekaboo by holding up the muslin, my T-shirt and the dog, blown raspberries on her belly, read to her from a geology textbook (which she strangely enjoyed) and changed the lyrics to around two-dozen popular songs. For example, her afternoon lullaby, to the tune of In the Bleak Midwinter, goes:

Sleepy time, my baby,

Sleepy time for you,

Sleepy time, my baby,

Time to have a snooze.

Why oh why won’t you just sleep?

You’ve been up for hours,

So sleepy time, my baby,

Dad’s mood is turning sour.

She loves it, and it keeps her quiet. It doesn’t actually send her to sleep, but it stops her crying, and changing the words to the second four lines is always fun:

Come on baby, go to sleep,

The hour is getting late,

If you don’t close your eyes right now

I’ll roll you out the gate.

That sort of thing.

She also enjoyed this morning’s rendition of Voodoo Child by Jimi Hendrix – a duet that alternated between Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy. Admittedly, a passive-aggressive amphibian and his physically-abusive spouse might not be ideal role models, but right now she has no idea who they are, so all’s good.

Unfortunately, acting like Jim Carrey all day is incredibly draining – not even Jim Carrey likes to be himself. I’m not going to lie to you – looking after a baby of this age is bloody hard work. But it can also be surprisingly fun, and kind of therapeutic, if you allow yourself to be a little silly. And the rewards – your child’s laughter, smiles and bemused silence instead of tears, tantrums and burst eardrums – are well worth the effort.

Travels With Baby, Part 1: Facilities

Gillan DrewLeave a comment

The main thing I’ve learned from taking Izzie on holiday to the Isle of Wight is how baby-unfriendly the world can be. And that’s not just the occasional person muttering, ‘F**king babies,’ as you squeeze the pushchair past their rotund frame on the pavement – it’s the facilities, or lack thereof. If you’re a parent in general, or a dad in particular, they sure don’t make it easy.

Arreton Barns, for example. I asked about baby change facilities in the pub. They had them, but only in the lady’s. So can I go in? No. They brought out the changing mat and I was obliged to take it into the men’s loo and change her on the floor of a cubicle. Not the cleanest or most hygienic place to put my knees, or, for that matter, my baby.

Cowes: the baby change was in the public disabled toilet, which was locked with one of those special keys disabled people have, but that parents don’t have. Not overly helpful. So I went to the nearest pub, which didn’t have baby changing facilities but allowed me to change her on a bench out the back. Very good of them.

And Sandown is clearly still stuck in the 1960s since there are no baby changing stations in the men’s loos, forcing me to change her on the passenger seat in the car in the rain – not much of a problem except the seat slopes towards the rear of the car, meaning she keeps face-planting into the upright. But that’s better than Whitecliff Bay, which has no toilet facilities whatsoever, and doesn’t seem to mind you getting sand in your baby’s bits.

I’m starting to sound like a bit of a moaner, but in addition to the above, in the past week I’ve changed my daughter’s nappy in a doorway down an alleyway, in a lady’s toilet, in the boot of the car, on a grass verge beside a car park, and on the floor of a tent – though the latter was admittedly kind of unavoidable since we were camping. It’s not so much that I mind  changing Izzie in random places – after three months you’re a dab hand at changing a nappy – it’s that if people object to something as discrete and inoffensive as breastfeeding in public then how will the crowds of shoppers and tourists react when I pop her down on a bench in the High Street, whip off her clothes and proceed to wipe oodles of smelly green and yellow poo out of her creases? I’m going for ‘unsupportive’ at the very least.

I know there are people out there who’ll say, ‘There weren’t changing stations in my day, we had to make do with broken glass and rusty nails,’ but just because they suffered doesn’t mean everyone has to or the situation can’t be improved. Sometimes you’re quite a distance from the car with the baby in a sling when she drops a bucket of gloop in her nappy that starts to spill out and soak through her clothes and you just can’t wait. And it’s incredibly awkward trying to change a baby when you’re on a slope and it’s blowing a hoolie, with one hand holding her ankles, a second cleaning her up, a third hand trying to keep leaf matter out of her bottom, a fourth preventing her from sliding off the changing mat and rolling down the hill into a ditch where she’ll never be seen again – you get the picture.

So top marks to Osborne House for having an entire room in which to change your baby, and a large one at that, without a toilet in the corner and piss on the floor. Unfortunately, they lose points for their dashedly rubbish bottle-warming arrangements.

For those of you that don’t know, you make a baby’s bottle by mixing cooled boiled water (boiled water that has been cooled, yo) with some scoops of formula (powder) and either heating or cooling the resulting liquid to body temperature, since we’re trying to fool kids into thinking the milk comes from a breast and not an udder with additives.

But here’s the rub – the mixture is apparently only safe to drink for two hours and it’s impossible to keep stuff at the right temperature until you need it. So before heading out for the day you boil the kettle, fill a bunch of bottles with water, pack the powder and leave the house weighed down like a freighter. When little one needs a drink, you take a bottle of water, pour in the powder, shake vigorously and ask a nice waitress or waiter to bring you a small jug of hot water into which you can place the bottle until the formula is the right temperature. Simple.

Except when I asked for a jug of hot water, the man at Osborne House looked at me like I’d asked him for a mug of pure, unfiltered urine. He went away, came back and told me he couldn’t bring me hot water because of ‘health and safety reasons’. But he offered to take the bottle out the back and heat it up for me.

Now, the reason you see us splashing milk on our wrists is not because we like the smell of dairy – it’s to check it’s not too hot and going to scald her, or too cold and going to make her gripe. While there’s no real evidence that cold milk is necessarily bad for a baby, their digestive systems are still developing, and if from an evolutionary viewpoint we’ve evolved to drink milk at body temperature, at least for the first few months, then why mess with nature?

Yes, daddy, why?
Yes, daddy, why?

So how on earth was Mr Waiter Man going to get my baby’s bottle to the right temperature? Splashing it on his wrist? No thank you, sir, she’ll just have to drink it cold.

He then proceeded to serve us our teapots of boiling water without a trace of irony. Health and safety, my ass!

But then, perhaps he had a point. Two other places gave us boiling water in wine coolers. Great for the heating, but when it comes to getting the bottle out, it bobs up and down like a fishing float and burns your fingertips while red hot steam scalds your hand. But even that was preferable to the place that gave us a cup of hot water – a cup that was smaller than the bottle!

So, restaurateurs and city planners: you have the power to make the world a much easier place for us parents. A plastic changing table that folds down from the toilet wall, and half a jug of hot water – not a cup, not a wine cooler, a jug. That’s not asking too much, is it? Is it?

Night Feeds

Gillan DrewLeave a comment

Since around about the second or third week of her life, I have looked after Izzie overnight (my halo is in the post – I had to send back the original as it was too small!). But much as I complain about it, moan about how tired I am, and use it as leverage during the day (‘Can you sterilise the bottles? I was up three hours in the night.’), I must confess that I love my daddy-daughter time.

As part of my PADI training in a picturesque town called Kaikoura, I did a night dive. Kitting up on a long-abandoned wooden wharf on the headland, the van’s headlights pointed out to sea, snow-capped mountains silhouetted against the stars and the barking of seals resounding from the cliffs, it’s undoubtedly one of the most evocative things I’ve done. It was just me and my female dive instructor, no backup, nobody else to get in the way.

Linking arms so we didn’t lose one another, we stepped off the end of the wharf and descended into the inky black water. With your torches, all you can see is whatever comes into the ball of yellow light that extends a couple of metres around you. The whole world shrinks to the size of that bubble – all beyond, hidden in the cimmerian depths, ceases to exist. We became the only two people in the world as we swam along the seabed, alone but for each other.

We surfaced a couple of hundred metres out, the headlights mere pinpricks in a vast unlit universe. It’s weird being out in the water in the dark. You feel primitive somehow, in touch with your instinctive animal nature, experiencing the world through touch. And the person beside you is an extension of your own body. Night diving is the most intimate thing you can do with your clothes on – well, a neoprene wetsuit, BCD, air tank, regulator, weight belt, mask and fins, in any case. I’ve never felt anything like it.

Except when I’m doing night feeds.

At first, Izzie would go down around midnight and be up at half two and half five. Heading down to the lounge, Lizzie fast asleep, the dog snoring on the sofa and the cat purring on the bed, we were the only two beings in the world, daddy and his daughter.

Of course, feeding a baby isn’t exactly thrilling entertainment, so the first couple of weeks I’d switch on the TV and watch whatever was on – a documentary about a jaguar hunting a crocodile, perhaps, or how an American detective solved a murder case from the 1980s. After that, I started watching Monk  and Castle, half an episode at the first feed and the remainder during the second.

As time’s gone on, Izzie drinks larger amounts less often, so it takes a whole episode to satisfy her, but only once a night, around five am.

Now, every third night she sleeps right through from half eleven to seven in the morning. Of course, I wake up much more often than that, checking on her about every two hours – if she stretches, groans, breathes differently, I wake up in an instant. But our exclusive daddy-daughter night feeds look to be coming to an end.

I never thought that I’d miss getting up in the middle of the night, the broken sleep, the days when your eyes hurt from forcing them open. But it’s our special time, when it’s just us and the rest of the world have no claim on anything we are. At night, things seem bigger, and more important, than they do during the day, and I wouldn’t trade this time for the world.

Parents moan about the night feeds, the tiredness and the broken sleep, but it’s actually one of the best parts of being a parent. There is no better way of bonding with your child than holding them in the night when you’re the only two people awake in the world. I say that I do the night feeds to help Lizzie get a good night’s sleep, but really I do them for me, for my daddy-daughter time. Because every time I feed her, I’m night diving off Kaikoura again. And that’s worth a lifetime of broken sleep.

The Small Things

Gillan DrewLeave a comment

A few days ago my life was a movie in which I played myself while my partner Lizzie was played by the Devil. Actually, that’s a little harsh. She was more like Kathy Bates in Misery. Now, things are a little better: she’s become Kathy Bates in Titanic – happier, jokier, with a trifle more backbone. And I’ve gone from Jack Nicholson in The Shining to Jack Nicholson in…actually, he’s pretty crazy in most things. Maybe that’s a bad analogy.

Putting aside which Hollywood characters we most resemble, I said that I’d keep this blog positive, and I’ve noticed my posts have become rather whiny and self-pitying of late. So here’s to all the small and wonderful things that make this endeavour memorable and worthwhile, the kinds of things you’d forget if they weren’t written down, divided into four categories: the physical, behavioural, developmental, and simply gross.

I want to remember the little physical things that might disappear as Izzie gets older. Like the uncatchable bogies that yo-yo in and out of her nostrils when she breathes, or the slimy green sleepy dust that collects in her left eye but never her right. How her strawberry birthmark, which looks like a strawberry to me, is more like a Rorschach inkblot test, since others have variously described it as a tomato, an apple, a pineapple and a maple leaf. Her belly button that can’t decide whether it wants to be an inny or an outy, and her snowplough penguin feet. Enough wax in her ears to make a candle. And she’s strong, too, like a baby Wonder Woman. A couple of years, she’ll be kicking my arse!

And I want to remember the behavioural things, like the way she somehow removes her shoes, socks and trousers no matter how high you pull them up or how tightly they’re attached. How she rather creepily smiles at me when I put Vaseline on her bottom, or chirps like a bird and kicks her legs if you lie her on her back without a nappy. The way she dances and sings to Smells Like Teen Spirit (or ‘writhes’ and ‘screams’ according to Lizzie) and chuckles at me when I sing My Girl complete with bass line (‘I got sunshine – bom-bom-bom-bom-bom, burm, on a cloudy day’). How she falls asleep with her mouth wide open like she’s catching flies, and screws the backs of her fists into her eyes when she’s tired. And she watches everything that’s going on, strives to stay awake in case she misses something – she’s more alert than I am half the time.

Then there are the developmental things that need to be recorded for this stage because they change so quickly. Like how at ten weeks Izzie is trying to sit up (my brother took nine months!), how she can stand if you help her balance, and with both as soon as she’s upright she beams with pride as if to say, ‘Look, daddy, I did it! I’m a big girl!’ How she can’t take her eyes off the TV if it’s on. The way she keeps trying to hold her own bottle while we’re feeding her, but given her poor motor control skills succeeds only in pushing it out of her mouth and then punching herself in the head. Give it another few years, she’ll be reading War and Peace and standing for public office – it’s scary how early she’s developing.

Which leaves the simply gross stuff, the anecdotes that are awful at the time but leave you laughing. Like how we have a vibrating poo chair – if she hasn’t gone yet in a day, we put her in her bouncy chair, turn on the vibration and within ten minutes she’s filled her nappy. Every single time. It never fails. Or how when I changed her the other day the inside of her nappy was entirely orange, except for two perfectly elliptical white ovals where her butt cheeks had been. How her grandmother spent ages dressing her in a pretty yellow vest, yellow trousers, yellow dress, yellow cardigan and yellow socks, only for me to remove them ten minutes later covered in sopping yellow poo. And how the other night while I was feeding her she did a massively warm, squelchy fart; I thought I’d change her after she’d finished her milk when I suddenly felt my leg grow wet, picked her up, and lo, my shorts had a large wet yellow patch of poo all over them. Yay.

These are the things that make up a life. Not whose turn is it sterilise the bottles again, where did that sock go, you forgot to buy nappies, and oh my God how can you sleep through all of this screaming? It’s about the little smiles, the laughs and the oddities. These are the things we want to remember in years to come, and the only things Izzie will care about. It’s easy to forget that the little things are by far the most important.

Asking For Help

Gillan Drew1 Comment

Despite what you may have been told by a song from the brownest decade of the Twentieth Century, sorry is not the hardest word. A side-effect of Western culture’s emphasis on individuality and personal freedom in the economic, familial, artistic, political and social spheres has been to make a sacred cow of independence. Since Victorian times, society has treated the nuclear family as the model for civilisation – autonomous units comprising a father, a mother, and children. And a proper man looks after his family alone. A proper man makes his own way in the world. A proper man does it by himself.

These days, the hardest word is ‘help’. It’s an admission that you’re weak; it means you’re not a proper man; it means you can’t look after your family. Men are trained from birth to hide their weakness. Women are bombarded with images of the ideal mother. And people with Asperger’s Syndrome are confronted with what it is to be normal. We spend our lives fighting to meet an unachievable ideal. Deep down, we know these images are utter rubbish, because everyone needs help from time to time, and despite what they like to pretend, most self-made men have had help from family, friends, and the special lady who hides behind the scenes. But even so, we act as though it’s true.

This doesn’t seem to be such a problem in the East. Over there, families comprise grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, and various hangers-on in addition to fathers, mothers and children. There’s no arbitrary age at which people should leave home, cut the apron strings and become independent.

And why should there be? We never stop learning in life, and we never stop meeting situations we don’t know how to deal with. Each generation helps and teaches the next, but they don’t suddenly stop after eighteen years and now you’re on your own. I’ve never had children before, but my parents have, so they can guide me. Then, when my kids have children, I can guide them, and so on and so forth.

Help is not a dirty word. A dirtier word is ‘I got so overwhelmed that I climbed onto the roof, stripped naked and started throwing tiles at passersby while chanting nursery rhymes and calling myself Cthulhu.’ Which is a distinct possibility at the moment because we need help.

Before the baby’s born you think you’ll take it all in your stride, and you do, for a few weeks. In weeks 1-6, the moment the baby blinks you leap up and deal with her. And then the adrenalin wears off. Week 8, you see movement in the pram – a foot comes into view, an arm suddenly darts into the air – and you freeze. Don’t make a sound: she might settle. A gurgle in her throat: don’t cry, don’t cry, please don’t cry. Waaaaaah! Damn it.

Izzie has entered a phase called ‘making mum and dad’s lives a misery.’ It consists of crying and grizzling all the time, except when she’s screaming. Not charming, melt-your-heart screams like you hear in supermarkets, but nerve-shattering end-of-the-world screams, with crimson cheeks and floods of tears, and nothing you do can stop it. We’ve spent an arm and a leg on anti-colic bottles, anti-colic formula, anti-colic beanbags, a vibrating anti-colic chair, but all to no avail. She screams in the car; she screams in the pram; she screams in the garden and the kitchen and the woods. She screams in my lap, over my shoulder, lying across my thighs, cuddled in my arms. She screams when she’s feeding, for crying out loud, suck, scream, suck, scream, suck, scream.

And sleep during the day is a thing of the past. The other morning she started at six a.m. and we finally managed to settle her at midnight. Yesterday she went from five a.m. to eight p.m. She’s so tired she rubs her face with the backs of her hands, screws her fists into her eyes, lolls from side to side, and the bags grow black under her eyes, but still she won’t close them. It’s as though she’s afraid she might miss something, or if she falls asleep she’ll wake to find we’ve grabbed our passports and run away to Acapulco without her – and she’s right to worry, because that last one was a serious possibility yesterday afternoon. I love her to bits but good gosh I wish she’d shut up for five minutes. I don’t think I’m asking a lot.

The past three days in picture form!
The past three days in picture form!

And so yesterday, reaching deep, we asked for help. My mum came over and babysat for two hours while Lizzie and I went out for a coffee. It’s normal and natural – it’s the first time we’ve left Izzie since she was in ICU, the first time off in seven weeks – but boy did we feel like we were failing as parents. Because parents are meant to cope without any help. Because parents are meant to love their children so much they never need a break from them.

Help is not a dirty word. But it sure does feel like it.

Going Out

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I’m going out for an hour. Phone, keys, wallet: check. Watch so I always know the time. Oven off, windows shut, door closed and locked. Route planned? Of course. Painkillers and diarrhoea medication just in case. Excuses ready so if someone invites me somewhere I can politely decline. Topics of conversation prepared: lovely weather we’re having; have you heard about the situation in wherever; I’m a new dad so forgive the stutter, it’s just tiredness. St. Christopher medallion, rosary and crucifix because they make me feel better even though I’m not religious. Smooth pebble in my pocket so I have something tactile I can fiddle with if I get stressed. Hat to hide beneath, beard to hide behind. I don’t need to wear glasses per se but it’s another barrier against the world so on they go. Hard-soled shoes because they make a reassuringly grown-up clip-clop sound when I walk. Shirt with collar so my neck doesn’t burn and my hairy back doesn’t show. Long sleeves rolled up so I can adjust the length to cover my wrists if I feel vulnerable. A Sheriff’s badge in my pocket so I can pretend like I’m a cowboy, and a lawman, and a thousand times more confident than I actually am.

Right, I’m ready to go.

As someone with Asperger’s Syndrome, I find going out incredibly stressful. Even if I’ve done something a thousand times, and know somewhere like the back of my hand, I am always anxious about what might happen, and if I’ll be able to cope with it, and how long before I can return to the safety of my home. I don’t know exactly what it is that I’m afraid of – I’m pretty sure aliens aren’t going to choose the New Forest as the spearhead of their invasion of Earth – but it never gets any easier. No matter where I go, it’s like I’m heading to the dentist for root canal surgery, even if it’s to buy a chocolate bar. Which, to be honest, happens so often it increases the frequency of my dental visits.

Not that you’d know that I struggle – they don’t call it the ‘hidden disability’ for nothing. John Lennon said, ‘Act the way you want to be and soon you are the way you act.’ Wise words, utter rubbish. I always act like I know what I’m doing. I never do.

But I don’t allow it to stop me. My motto has always been, ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway.’ So I do. But if I had a choice, I’d be a recluse and never go out.

I don’t have a choice. I have a baby.

I have vowed not to let my social anxieties get in the way of me being a dad and a partner, and that means going to parenting classes and baby groups, meeting other parents with infants, going out for coffee with family and friends, seeing midwives and health visitors, picnics, parties, and the endless rushing about to find the unexpected necessities of child care: bepanthem, infacol, fenugreek, variflow teats, and all kinds of other weird and wonderful things I’d never heard of six weeks ago.

Unfortunately, since I compensate for my social deficits, convoluted thought processes and sensory abnormalities by using my intellect, going out exhausts me. To make things worse, since having a breakdown in late 2006 my brain shuts down when stressed, leaving me drowsy and unable to see my way out of a glass corridor. And in addition, having spent the past fifteen years on antidepressants – my entire adult life – I spend every day fighting against the lethargy that comes as a side-effect of chemically damping down your central nervous system. I therefore have to manage my energy use, pace myself to keep mind and body functional – or at least, as functional as they ever get – and try to take on one stressful task a day.

At least, that was how I used to manage. Now when I hit the wall, I just have to keep running. And going out now is so much harder.

We’re going out for an hour. Baby? Check. Is she wearing enough clothing? Probably, but we’ll bring extras in case she gets cold. A sun hat and woolly hat for the vagaries of the weather. A blanket. And a backup sleepsuit for if she soils herself. And another backup sleepsuit for if she soils the backup. Dummy, dummy case, spare dummy in case she loses her dummy. That’s her sorted.

When did she last feed? Just now? Better make up a bottle of sterilised water to take, even though she’s not due a feed for three hours. And maybe a second bottle for if we’re unaccountably delayed. And two lots of formula. Plus some infacol. And three muslins: you can never have too many muslins.

How about nappies? Three, just in case. So let’s take five. Changing mat, baby wipes, bottom cream, Vaseline, kitchen roll, nappy bags and hand sanitising gel. Enough to cope with the worst explosion she could possibly manage.

Let’s add one more nappy, just in case.

Car seat, travel system base, carrycot and sling, so we have a choice as to how to move her. And another blanket. Rain cover, insect net, parasol. Now are we ready?

Let’s take the puppy – collar, harness, lead, whistle, treats, poo bags, water, bowl. All of this is in addition to the worries I have about going out anyway. So as you can see, my mind is a whirl of worries and problems and contingencies.

But you’d never know it.

Now where did I put my keys?

Out and About With Baby

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TV and movies lie. I always knew their depictions of birth and infancy were inaccurate and/or exaggerated – the first sign of labour is the waters suddenly breaking, women return to their pre-pregnancy weight the second they leave the hospital, and if you have a penis, you are utterly clueless about childcare – but there was one thing I accepted as the truth: new dads are the sexiest beings on the planet.

I’m perfectly happy with my partner Lizzie, of course. But there’s no harm in basking in the adoration of scores of single women drawn to your self-evident paternal prowess. If TV and movies are to be believed, as a guy, you can’t leave the house with your baby without sexy twenty-somethings swooning at your feet.

And I was kind of looking forward to that. As a balding thirty-five-year-old who can no longer tick the 25-34 box on forms (I’m lumped in with 44-year-olds now, and that feels ancient!), I wanted to feel attractive again, even it wasn’t actually me they cared about but the baby girl strapped to my chest.

It’s not true. At all. It doesn’t matter where I take Izzie – round the village, into town, down to the beach, through the forest – these broody nubile sex-goddesses are nowhere to be found.

But that’s not to say that I go unnoticed.

I’m quite a hit with grandmothers. In fact, I can’t go out without some slightly overweight old lady with blue rinse or a horribly off-putting wig standing too close and reaching a wrinkled, liver-spotted hand towards my baby while telling me about her grandchild’s chickenpox. It’s hardly reassuring me that I can still kick it with the youngsters.

The content of these encounters is equally disappointing. If I’m on my own, they coo and ah over Izzie and then look at me and say, ‘Tell her mother well done for having such a beautiful baby.’ If it’s someone we know they ask how Lizzie is feeling, how she’s coping, and tell me to congratulate her on doing such a wonderful job.

Er, don’t you want to tell me I have a beautiful baby, or ask me how I’m coping? No? Ah, I see, I’m just the dad.

It’s worse when Lizzie’s with me. Strangers and friends alike address all their questions and compliments to her, while I stand there with the baby in the sling and the changing bag over my shoulder like an overburdened caddie whose only job is transporting Izzie and her accoutrements from A to B. Because, of course, the mum does all the real work – the dad’s just decorative.

I take the puppy with me these days to see if that’ll add to my allure, but all that manages to do is interest eight-year-old girls. From this I have to conclude that sexy twenty-somethings aren’t interested in babies, while thirty-somethings and forty-somethings are so up to their eyeballs in their own kids that they don’t care one jot about anyone else’s.

Either that, or I have to accept that as a dad, I’m no longer attractive to young people. But at least the grannies like me.