"...more than Die Hard."

I love my son.

"Well, duh" you might think, but there's more to it than that. Let me explain. 

I've loved things before, loved people before. I love my wife, I love my family, I love a good meal, a perfect cup of tea and a great [I couldn't think of a third example]. I love Die Hard. But until my son was born I didn't think it would be possible to love something or someone as much as I love him. He's increased my capacity to love something. 

He's increased it and filled it easily. 

Aaaaaand...I'm crying. 

It would be impossible for him to do anything that wouldn't make me love him with all of my heart. Not that he does anything anyway. He's just over three months old now and has almost mastered the art of rolling over. That's the extent of his abilities right now, besides pooing, peeing and smiling. Yet I don't think (although I'm sure I'll be proved wrong when he starts doing something else new) that I could love him any more than I currently do. 

As is their wont, babies tend to wake up in the middle of the night for a variety of reasons. Yet no matter how many times I'm up during the night, no matter how little sleep we get because he's yelling, no matter how long and loud he's cries for no reason we can decipher I'll not and I'll never love him any less. Yes, being a parent can be incredibly frustrating at times, but when I look at his silly little face and he looks back at me with his big blue eyes, it's all I can do not to burst into tears with happiness. Writing this now is almost pushing me over the edge if I'm honest. He's recently started laughing - or at least trying to laugh - and every time he does that, I can feel myself welling up. When I come home from work and he sees me for the first time and he smiles; it's the best part of my day. 

My hand is the one on the right. 

I'm not going to say if you don't have a child, you don't understand because horses for courses and all that, but I know in my whole life I've never experienced happiness like this. That's not to say the folks in my life pre-Isaac didn't make me happy. Of course they did. Sometimes I think I love him even more than I love my wife. Well, no, not more, but in a different way. But I think it's more that my son, our son is something no-one else had a part in creating. He literally couldn't be any more mine/ours. And that is what I think makes me so happy. We made him. I love him more than you could possibly imagine. 

I love him more than anything I've ever seen or experienced. 

I love him more than anyone I've ever known.

I love him more than Die Hard.

And I LOVE Die Hard. 

Don't cry, Bruce.

Competing Babies

Since little Isaac has been born, and especially since I’ve been back to work, I’ve been faced with a barrage of questions, similar in frequency to those I mentioned here pre-baby, but of an altogether different variety.

Everyone has been asking questions about the little dude, but in stark contrast to the ‘Before’ questions I don’t mind answering them because I love talking about the little man. I’m hugely proud and swell with paternal pride whenever I get the chance to talk about him. But I’ve noticed a trend with some of the people I’ve been talking to, in that no matter how bad your own experience with your child has been (not that mine has, he’s been pretty chilled out and easy going so far) theirs will always be infinitely worse.

So if, for example, you say that he wakes up every three hours at night time for a feed, someone will pipe up with the fact that their child was up every two hours, and that their burden was greater and although you may be tired they had it much harder than you do. And if there’s another parent in earshot they’ll no doubt chime in with even worse horror story, designed to make you - the new parent - feel like you’re getting an easy ride, when you obviously know yourself that you’re not. I’m not saying these people are lying but for the love of God, can you let me enjoy this time without chipping in with your tales of woe, that make you seem like you’re the better parent for enduring more hardship than I currently am? 

"I'm worse than you." "Am not."

The stories seems to get exponentially worse the more often these people tell them and often end up with me leaving the conversation with the idea that their baby is possibly the Antichrist.

- “Oh, he’s sleeping pretty well at nights. Sometimes in four hour stretches, so I can’t really complain too much.”

- “Well, you’re lucky, both of my two were up every two hours and needed a 6oz feed to get them back to sleep. And even then it was only for another two hours.”

- “You think that’s hard? My little girl had the worst colic you could imagine, and regularly threw up everywhere.”

- “Pfft, that’s nothing. My boy was up screaming bloody murder every night and wouldn’t go back to sleep unless he had 10oz feed every hour and a half, which I had to go and milk the cow for, just to fill the bottle.”

- “*scoffs* Well, my boy wouldn’t shut up for three months straight and eventually we had to gag him and put him in a straight jacket just so we could get some sleep.”

- “Well, my son is the reincarnated Adolf Hitler”

- “We had to get a priest in who confirmed our little bundle of joy was actually the physical earthly manifestation of Lucifer himself, born to wreck havoc on humanity and bring about the apocalypse.”

Take a goddamn chill pill, you lot. It’s not a competition, so don’t make me feel inferior by telling me I’m on easy street with my son. Please don’t diminish my own experience when I’m still experiencing it.

UPDATE

Hey folks

Sorry for the lack of updates to the blog. I know y'all love reading it. I promise there'll be more hilarious musings on the trials and tribulations of fatherhood/parenthood once I get over BEING SO GODDAMN TIRED ALL THE TIME.

Thanks for your patience.

The little man is doing fine and we're loving every second of it.

Even the 4AM feeds.

INTRODUCING. ..

Little man arrived on Friday 18th July at 11.25am.

8lbs 5oz.

Isaac Nathan Cardwell. 

Couldn't be happier.

I'm going to get a sign

I’m going to get a sign. It’s going to have about 4 statements on it that whenever anyone in work comes up to ask my about the impending birth, I’m just going to Wil E Coyote them, say nothing and raise my sign.

1. No, baby’s not here yet.
2. Jenny’s doing fine.
3. It’s just a matter of waiting now.
4. A wee bit nervous, yes.

Now, before you think I’m just being my usual dickish self – and I partly agree, I am – I get asked these questions every single day. By the same four people. I don’t mind them once or twice in a week, but five days a week, without fail is beginning to grate. 

Like this, but with "Eff aff!" on the sign.

I’ll address the points head on by giving the answers I’d actually love to give…

1. If the baby had been born between you asking me yesterday and now, do you think I’d still be in work?
2. No, she’s actually got terrible aches and pains, and is increasingly tired as she’s not getting much sleep.
3. Well, I tried shouting at the baby to come out of Jenny’s belly, but nothing happened so I guess we’ll just have to keep waiting. Bloody babies, eh? Not arriving when you want them to.
4. Of course I’m fucking nervous. What do you think?

Sometimes I hate people.

Sorry for the splurge.

....said the actress to the bishop.

I'd a load of posts saved up and not published for some reason.

So, imagine these have been trickling out over the past month.

Cheers

The Fear

I think the fear – sorry, The Fear – has finally hit me.

Last night we talked about how our due date is only 17 days away. (I originally wrote this on 19/06/2014) That’s not very long at all. This whole pregnancy, while I obviously understood that it was very real, seemed like something that was waaaaaaay in the future, and I’d almost become accustomed to Jenny being pregnant that I assumed she’d just always be walking around with the bump and that would be it.

But no, baby has to come out.

And he’s/she’s coming soon.

When I say the fear – sorry, The Fear - I don’t mean I’m terrified. Not all the time anyway. When I properly take the time to think about the impending birth and everything afterwards, I can be pragmatic and calm and I’m fine with it. It’s those moments where I’m caught unawares – when I’m sitting in work or driving home or writing an blog post – when a thought dawns on me all of a sudden and I get that feeling in the pit of my stomach, and sometimes I make an involuntary “Guhhhh” sound.

It feels like that moment when you’re just about to go over the big drop on a roller coaster, or the fear you feel when you worry that you’ve just got your head stuck in something. That momentary panic that’s gone as quickly as it arrived. I get that twenty times a day. I don’t know how my wife is able to get through the day, with a constant reminder (one that stops her from seeing her feet) that soon she’ll have to push this little bambino out. Of her body. Through her lady parts. Frankly, if I were her I’d be a wreck, curled up in the corner, ironically, in the foetal position. That she and all pregnant women throughout the ages haven’t is a testament to her, and your, strength. Women, you are awesome.

But the truth is its not real terror. I guess calling it the fear – sorry, The Fear – is a bit much. I mean, I am scared but it’s a happy scared. I’ll have a baby soon. We’ll have a baby soon. And that’s great.

‘Nervous apprehension’ would be a better term.

But the fear – sorry, The Fear – is catchier.

“The Waiting Game sucks, let’s play Hungry Hungry Hippos”

It’s Monday the 7^th July. Our due date was yesterday.

Now I’m not saying I was expecting the little one to be born on that exact date, but after a trip to the consultant on Friday during which we were told that we were very favourable and that baby was more than likely to arrive soon, we did very little over the weekend and didn’t stray too far from home. Or from each other for that matter.

It turned the entire three day weekend into one of those lazy restless Sundays, where you’re just bumming about the house, not knowing what to do and just wiling away the hours (that go by interminably slowly) waiting for bedtime/Monday morning/something to happen.

Tick tock.

Tick tock.

Tick tock.

It’s incredibly frustrating, just waiting and waiting so over the weekend we tried a variety of different methods to ‘encourage’ the little one. Jenny had a bath with some sort of…stuff, that supposedly can kickstart labour. Didn’t work. We drove over a bumpy road, twice. Nothing. We had spicy food all three nights. Nada. Jenny bounced on the exercise ball like her life depended on it. Zip.

We haven’t tried sex yet. Mainly because a) as we noted before, pregnancy sex is all kinds of weird, and b) at the consultant appointment Jenny had a sweep, which is exactly what it sounds like. The doctor stuck two fingers up my missus, had a feel around, and told us she could feel the baby’s head. So if she can feel that with her fingers, I’ve no doubt I could feel it with my wang. Unless, as I didn’t really look at how far the doctor was all up in my wife, she was like wrist deep in my wife’s lady parts. I don’t think my manhood is that long. But still, I would be like Seth Rogen in Knocked Up, not wanting to poke my baby in the face with my dick.

So we wait.

And wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock….

Disgusting Pregnancy Thing #106 – Leaky boobs

Jenny woke up the other morning and told me that she’d sprung a leak. FROM HER BOOBS. All over her top and some of the bed. The milk had crusted over a bit.

I had to witness it, so I’m just planting that lovely visual in your head so I’m not the only one who has to think about it.

Bye.

Sensible enough?

Every so often, usually when I’m lying in bed unable to sleep, I start thinking. This, already, is a bad thing. Oft times it’s nothing of any importance or merit, but lately thoughts creep into my mind about my parental fitness, and how I don’t think I’m ready to be a father to a helpless little baby.

Now I’m sure everyone has these thoughts at some point, even whenever they’re not staring down the barrel of impending fatherhood. In fact I’ve written before about this subject. About how I feel like I should be acting my age more, even though I don’t really know what that means. Does the fact that I’m soon to become a father mean I have to become a boring old fart? I don’t feel as though I’m mature enough to be responsible for another life. I can barely take care of myself. I mean right now I’m wearing a Justice League t-shirt, Captain America socks and I’m pretty sure I have my Spiderman underoos on too. Does that sound like a man who’s only a few weeks away from fatherhood? People who are soon to be or already are parents are surely more grown up than this, right?

Once again, I’m sure everybody feels that way about other people, as if everyone else got their life together and you’re the only person in the world who hasn’t. That’s a fairly common fear that, one assumes, is completely unfounded. NO-ONE knows what they’re doing. Everyone is more or less winging it through life.

Never more so, again, one assumes, when it comes to babies. You can, and I have, read a lot of baby books, been to all the classes, discussed things at length with my wife, my parents, and my friends but still nothing will prepare you for your own baby and how it’s going to fit in to your life.

But in that previous blog I wrote about how when circumstances change I’ll no doubt have to adjust my maturity scale further, but on reflection I don’t think that’s true. Well, I do, but I don’t as well. I’ll have to change aspects of my life of course, but I’m not going to stop being who I am. The balance just has to shift a little in favour of being more grown up. I’ll not be leaving my newborn child to fend for themselves while I go off out gallivanting. At the very least, I’ll leave him/her with my wife while I go off out gallivanting.

Thing is though, everyone is sensible enough. You don’t normally enter into these things unless you mean to but even if you do your natural instincts kick in and at the very least you know the basics. Provided you’re not profoundly stupid and can take care of yourself reasonably well, you’re sensible enough to look after a baby. You’re kind of forced to be. And that’s a good thing. After all, strip away all the paraphernalia and its just common sense. Everyone has common sense.

And besides, if Billy Bob and Mary Sue who have more kids than teeth can do it, surely you can too?

Guessing Games

If you’ve hazarded a guess at what the sex of my child is going to be, why don’t you hazard a guess at the chances that I hate you?

I’ll save you the bother. 100%.

And if you also happen to be right, and say something along the lines of “Didn’t I tell you?” I’ll hate you even more. I’ll 1000% hate you. I’ll hate you ten times more than it’s actually possible to hate someone. That’s how much I’ll hate you.

Now you might say that I’m overreacting. I might tell you to fuck off. Guessing the sex of a child is hardly in the same realm as a high stakes poker game. It can literally only be one of two choices. 50/50, split straight down the middle. Mathematically speaking, there’s a 50% chance that you’re right. And you’ll act like you based that one in a million shot on some sort of old wives tale that if pregnant ladies bumps are this way so therefore it’s a boy. And if you’re right you’ll continue to perpetuate that myth until you’re proven wrong, in which case you’ll say that the baby was a fluke of nature or something.

The only time I’ll be impressed by a guess is if you think the baby will be a velociraptor, and it is.

Although if that happens that’ll be the least of my worries, one assumes.

"Pregnancy boner."

I’ve noticed an unusual side effect to my wife being pregnant. Not to her, but to me. You see, I’ve recently found myself becoming strangely attracted to pregnant women.

Now, admittedly, that sounds a bit weird and creepy. And if I’d said that whenever I was a single bachelor I think it probably would have been, but since my own lovely lady has been with child I’ve experienced so much and become accustomed to her body, complete with bump. As I said in a previous blog, if you ever get the chance to see a pregnant woman naked, you should savour the opportunity. [FYI, I don’t mean look in the bedroom window of your pregnant neighbour. Try to keep your perving to the woman you yourself have impregnated]. Because, as I also think I said, she will never look more womanly than when she’s carrying your child. I mean, yes, of course there are days where she just about resembles a human being; bedraggled, with unkempt hair and with no desire to do anything beyond sit on the sofa in baggy clothes because she’s so unbelievably exhausted, as is the norm throughout pregnancy, but then there are the other days. You know the way people say that pregnant women have a glow to them? Well, it’s absolutely true. And it’s glorious. Remember that famous Vanity Fair cover with the pregnant Demi Moore on the cover, which you never really gave a second thought to? Well, if you look at it when your missus is pregnant it’ll probably give you a pregnancy boner.

BRB.

I guarantee you that you will never be more attracted to partner than on those days. And you get to see each and every one of them.

Only it’s not just your own partner that you’ll see during those nine months. Before too long you’ll have appointments and classes and workshops to attend, each filled with couples in similar stages of pregnancy to you. We were at an active birth workshop the other night and I swear I thought every single one of the women there were gorgeous.

I didn’t tell my wife this.

I still haven’t actually.

But, and I’m trying to put this in the nicest possible way, were these women not pregnant I don’t think I would have thought the same. Now before you go all ‘every woman is beautiful in their own way, it’s not all about looks, you MASSIVE SEXIST,’ a sentiment I agree with actually (the first bit, not the MASSIVE SEXIST bit) let’s just go with they weren’t all what I would normally find attractive. But bloody hell, with a bump attached they became positively the most desirable women on the planet. There were that many of them in the one place, the room itself was almost glowing. I think the only thing that tempered my boner was the fact that the midwife was talking about vaginas.

And nobody finds them attractive.

Is this odd? Do I some sort of weird fetish? On paper the things that happen to a woman’s body during pregnancy are almost a catalogue of things that are traditionally unattractive, at least in our looks obsessed culture; the belly gets bigger, she gains weight, parts of her swell up on occasion. I mean, I still find regular, not-pregnant women attractive, but jeez, right now a pregnant woman makes me feel a bit weak at the knees. It has to be the womanly aspect of it. Maybe it’s only now since my wife has become pregnant that I’ve viewed her as a woman. I know that sounds stupid, but I still think of us (me, specifically) as the same people we were when we met (aged 21) as opposed to now (a kick in the arse away from 30), but this is like a transition period and my beautiful wife is becoming a woman before my very eyes.

And she’s fucking HOT.

As are all the other pregnant women.

I hope it’s not just me. This is bound to happen to every expectant father I reckon. And if not, I’ll be over here typing in ‘pregnant women’ into a Google Image Search.

Disgusting Pregnancy Thing #172

They bring a sieve in if you’re having a water birth.

The reason?

In case your missus poos herself during labour and you have to scoop out a floater.

They never show you that on TV.

"A Bag Full of Fannies"

We had our first Parentcraft class last Monday night, a class which details the ins and outs (mostly outs) of labour, and the days thereafter. It was all fairly informative, even if it’s nothing I haven’t already read about in the baby books, but when there’s a medical professional telling you it, it seems more real somehow. As if it’s not actually happening when you’re sat on your sofa reading a book, but when you’re sat in a stiflingly hot room in the local hospital with seven other couples watching a woman struggle to pull a baby doll out of a plastic recreation of a pelvis, it suddenly dawns on you that this is actually happening. And that it is simultaneously hilarious.

Mostly because it’s hard to listen to anyone say the word ‘vagina’ seriously, and not laugh your head off. And believe me, in one of these classes that word is bandied about a lot. Its vagina this and vagina that. You’d think this woman was obsessed with them. You’d think it was her job or something. Oh wait. Every time she said the V word, I got a case of the giggles. So if that were me I and I had to say the word that many times, I’d try to come up with all the variations I could think of - foofoo, doot, fanny, la-la - just to keep things fresh, so to speak. And those are just the most pleasant sounding ones (or the least unpleasant sounding ones) I could think of off the top of my head; I could think of a lot more that are much more vulgar but shan’t write them here.

Before long the woman produced a bag and proceeded to empty the contents on the table. Pouring out of it came various items; flip charts with pictures of fannies on them, dolls of babies which no doubt were girls and therefore had fannies, and last but not least fannies themselves, or at least the partial skeleton of the fanny area (that’s the pelvis FYI). Big ones, small ones, ones that she could push the doll through to simulate labour. This woman was carrying around a bag full of fannies. Fannies fannies fannies. All I could think of was this woman walking around town with the bag, with everyone else gleefully unaware of the contents. Imagine she got stopped in the street by a friend:

Friend: Oh, what’s in the bag? You buy yourself something nice?

Woman: Nah, it’s just a bag full of fannies.

Friend: …

I struggled to maintain my composure for the entire class. Happily, my wife was in the same boat. A boat floating on a sea of fannies on which we were hopelessly adrift, trying not to laugh our heads off. And we’re going to be parents! Surely parents shouldn’t be struggling not to laugh at the mere mention of the word ‘vagina?’ I suddenly wondered if we aren’t mature enough to be parents. Was this baby malarkey above our maturity level? I mean, I’m nearly thirty. Is there an age at which I shouldn’t find these types of things hilarious? A quick glance around the room however quelled my fears and revealed that everyone else, with the exception of an older couple, were in the same fanny boat as us. People, older than us and who frankly should know better, bravely fighting the urge to burst into laughter which suddenly made me feel a whole lot more relaxed. One fella had gone bright red with the amount of effort he was putting in trying not to spontaneously ROFL.

She did say ‘back passage’ once though, and I’m pretty sure I involuntarily snorted.

There was lots of very technical talk throughout the course of the two hours, and although as previously mentioned, if you’ve read the baby book you’ll know a lot of it already. Although there was a flip chart showing what happens from when you first start getting contractions, and the pictures showed the slow progress the baby makes; while this bursts, that thins, and the baby’s head and shoulders emerges from between the woman’s legs, culminating in a hilarious artistic rendering of the new mother holding her newborn child in a way I imagine no mother ever does while in the hospital surrounded by nurse, doctors and midwives. In fact, I’ve recreated it here:

Only instead of a cat, it was a baby. And there wasn’t a hastily drawn on MS Paint ‘umbilical cord.’ And the person was naked. And not me.

In real life, it’ll probably be Jenny asleep in her bed with baby happily asleep next to her, and me, passed out on the floor.

The Final Countdown

They say time is relative.

Well, when you’re pregnant time becomes relatively terrifying because it goes so bloody fast. We’re in the final stretch now, and every week seems to pass at a ludicrously quick rate. We were at our first parentcraft class only a few days ago (blog incoming about that). Except it wasn’t a few days ago. It was a whole week ago. We have another one to go to tonight.

Where did those seven days go?

These weeks have been flying in since Jenny has been pregnant. The other day we ran into the nurse that took us in for our first appointment at 8 weeks, a day on which we saw our little ‘un for the first time as a speck on the scan, a day where we were incredibly happy at the joyous news, a day which feels like it was only about a month ago.

It was December. DECEMBER.

And although Jenny’s belly has gotten bigger and bigger as time has moved on, it doesn’t feel as though that much time has passed, but at the same time it feels like we’re charging ever closer to the arrival. The weeks are zooming in but the months don’t register for some reason. Maybe it’s because you deal with pregnancy in weeks and you spend so long in double figures that when you hit single figures as we have now you realise there’s not much time left. If I say two months that sounds like ages away, but if I say seven weeks that makes me start to hear the Countdown clock in my head and Europe starting their soundcheck.

And I’m suddenly worried I’ve only got a four letter word for Carol Voderman (guess which one?), and I don’t know any of the lyrics apart from ‘doodoo doo doooooo, doodoo doo doo doo, doodoo doo dooo, doodoo doo doo doo doo doo.’

It’s the final countdown.

8 Simple Things When Getting A Woman Pregnant

The man (as I think I've said before) has it easy in this pregnancy carry on. We are literally only responsible for shooting our seed in the general direction of the egg; after that we could piss off for nine months until the child is born. Of course that would make us horrible human beings and I’d like to think that most men are around for the long haul. Even at that though, it’s pretty simple going for the man in the relationship. Women, beautiful complex creatures that they are, are the ones who really shoulder the hardship that comes along with bringing a baby into this world. Here’s just a few of the things I’ve experienced, heard of, or become more accustomed to during this pregnancy:

1. Discharge

Did that word make you squirm? No? How about if I stick another word in front of it? Vaginal discharge. It made me retch just typing that. Those two words are horrible enough on their own, together they’re an amalgamation of bleurgh and yuck. At every doctor or midwife visit they’ll ask you if you’ve had any. The woman, I mean. I’d start to worry if they ask you, for a myriad of reasons. Thankfully there’s never been any of note aside from the usual apparently – I don’t even know what ‘the usual’ means and I don’t think I want to – but the fact that it’s a thing is enough to make me glad I’m not the one that’s pregnant.

2. Tenderness

According to my wife during pregnancy your boobs gets a little sore and tender, due to your pregnant body preparing them for the journey from funbags into feedbags. I’d imagine this is a little uncomfortable as they also get bigger and more engorged. Now, naturally, I’m not going to complain that my wife’s already ample bosom is getting larger but my wife will. And has. The funny thing is though every so often and completely out of the blue she pipes up with ‘my tits are sore’ which has caused me to dub her Sore Tits McGee. A name which you’d think would get less funny after (literally) dozens of instances of me saying it, but it hasn’t lost its hilarity yet.

3. Milk

Slightly related point here. When you’re close to the end of the pregnancy the engorging process begins as the breasticles start to fill up with milk. Jenny has been regaling me of tales of how sometimes a tiny drop milk will seep out of her nipples, and that sometimes she squeezes her own boob and some comes squirting out. This whole process freaks me out and seems really weird without a baby suckling on the end of her teat. But every now and again she asks me if I want to see her doing it, I - obviously - say no, she starts to do it anyway, and I run out of the room screaming like a girl while Jenny chases me, boobs in hand. [Okay, that last bit is a lie.]

4. Pee sticks

Surely we’ve evolved to a point where the best way to determine whether or not you’re pregnant is something more than peeing on a bit of glorified pH paper? Well, apparently not. Our house was coming down with these pre-bump; just sitting on bedside tables, cluttering up the shelves in the bathroom and I’m pretty sure the cat was walking around with one in his mouth for a while. It’s literally a stick that you piss on. But I can imagine it’s not the most ladylike of devices to use as the potentially pregnant woman, squatting over the toilet holding the stick in your hand, trying to pee on it without the male benefit of directing your stream and likely peeing all over your hand in the process. Although after Jenny was satisfied that she was up the duff, I used the remaining one for a laugh and apparently I’m up the duff too.

5. Peeing

Another related(ish) point here. My wife ran to the toilet quite often even when she wasn’t pregnant. She has the bladder of a small child. However now that she actually has a small child standing on her own bladder, trips to the toilet have become ever more frequent. And because being pregnant sort of hampers your mobility she has to almost anticipate when she going to need to pee so that she makes it up the stairs in time before an accident happens. I’m also reliably informed that it’s more or less the same for number two’s. There’s only so much room in a belly for a child and if he/she starts stretching something going to have to come out. And it’s not going to be baby. o

5. Internal Examinations

You know how many people have stuck things up me? Six. That’s a joke (it’s waaaay more), but I would probably need all my fingers on both my hands - I already wish that I’d used a different counting method to illustrate this point - to tally up how many people have been all up in my wife. Since she’s been pregnant, mind. Doctors, nurses, midwifes and the like. I know women have these kinds of tests done semi-regularly, but when your missus is pregnant every bugger and their dog wants a poke. In fact it seems like the only person that hasn’t been up in there of late is me.

6. Stretch marks

These are a thing, apparently. Jenny has been lucky enough not to really get any, but that’s probably because she’s been liberally applying moisturiser and baby oil to her belly region for months now. So much so that if I laid a hand on her belly I might slip off the other side and off the bed.

7. Domestic abuse

No, they don’t ask you to beat your wife, but rather on your first few visits they take the pregnant lady in a few minutes before the man and ask if this was a planned pregnancy or if I, the man, was forcing you to bear him children. Like it’s medieval times or something. Although thinking about it, it was probably for the best. If I were in there when she asked those questions I’d have probably got all uncomfortable and answered questions with a joke in a misguided attempt to break the tension.

Nurse: So, are there any problems at home? You’re not a victim of domestic abuse, are you?

Me: Only when she doesn’t do the dishes, AMIRITE? Hive five! Oh, hello there officer.

8. Offputting similarities

If you ever see a pregnant woman naked* try not a compare the mid section area to anything else, because for the life of me I can’t see anything other than a noseless Homer Simpson anymore. I’ll let you work out which bits are what.

*it is a rather glorious thing FYI. Bump and all, a woman never looks more…womanly. It’s pretty awesome. Homer aside. 

That’s all I can think of for now.

Ta-ra

This one isn't funny. Sorry about that. It's not serious either though.

I had my first freakout a few weeks back.

It was a minor one but a freakout nonetheless. Lying in bed, unable to sleep, with my wife snoring away beside me, I began to panic. She’s seven months pregnant right now. We’re in the final stage. I can hear Europe playing in the background. We’re on our way to the end of level boss, and I suddenly found myself woefully unprepared.

I was out of mana and my enchanted sword was banjacksed.

It wasn’t the raising of the child that was freaking me out though. I’m still pretty confident I can do that and do it well. No, it was more the fact that it suddenly twigged in my brain that at any moment the baby could arrive. I’ve been, wrongly - stupidly - working on the assumption that babies somehow know their own due date and arrive perfectly on time with no mess and no fuss. Obviously I knew this wasn’t the case, but when you give a man a date, he’ll work to that date. And I have been. So when it - finally - dawned on me that this little ‘un could potentially arrive at any minute…it unnerved me. Mainly because we still have so much stuff left to do, preparation wise.

As I lay there in the dark, when I should have been sleeping, I was running through all the things we/I had to do. Most of it involved decorating the baby’s room, but when I listed them in my mind it seemed somewhat insurmountable. Carpeting, painting, getting new doors put on, buying various things from IKEA. All these things are fairly simple and don’t take that much time to do, but the ‘could happen at any time’ aspect reared its head for the first time and I flipped.

Very quietly and without waking my wife, but still…I flipped and couldn’t sleep for a while.

I explained my freakout to Jenny the following morning and she calmed me down, in much the same way I have done for her before. It’s never happened this way though and I think the worrying has somehow, maybe through osmosis, passed to me instead, because she’s as cool and calm as you like at the minute. She informed me that she’s had all her major freakouts already, some in front of me, some in work and some on her own.

It’s all fairly normal though. I think now that we’re in this stage of the whole pregnancy thing, both of you are living in a perpetual state of fear. Ordinarily in everyday life you’ll have no worries, but currently when you factor in that this baby could potentially drop at any moment you tend to sit on a permanent fear level, never quite relaxing. If 1 isn’t scared at all, and ten is too terrified to leave you house for fear of something horrible happening, I think we both rank at about a 3 or 4.

Which is good in a way. It spurs you into doing the stuff that you’ve not been doing or putting off, and in the weeks since my freakout we’ve actually completed all the things that I was freaking out about. It puts you in a state of continual awareness and readiness, like a cat ready to pounce; I’m ready at a moments notice to spring into action when the waters break.

 Which is when you move up to a whole new level of fear.

Shit.

Skydiving Babies

I started this wee blog off as a sort of chronicle of all the happenings that happen before, during and – maybe – after a pregnancy, but I figure I should probably try and dispense some advice in these entries as well. Not that I have any great advice to give or anything, but maybe for first time parents, like myself, it’d be good to know that you’ll likely go through much the same stuff as I’m going through. At least the man’s side of the whole shebang.

Because let’s face it; the man is the most important person in this pregnancy after all.

That is, of course, a joke.

You’ll automatically become the last person on the list you’ll be worrying about behind wife/partner and child. Which is ok. In fact, it’s exactly where you should be. And if you can’t handle that, I suggest you man up. You got us into this mess, what with your dirty man sperm and all, so you damn well better pick up the slack whenever your wife/partner isn’t able to do all the things she did before. And then some.

Because when your wife gets pregnant [I’m going to just use ‘wife’ because I’m a married man and mainly because I can’t be bothered typing ‘wife/partner’ every time] the tendency is to break the news by saying ‘we’re having a baby’ or ‘we’re pregnant.’ Which in reality is complete bollocks. You may both have a child in 9 months but the only person ‘having a baby’ is your wife. Men can literally do nothing until the child is born, which would make you a horrible person, but the fact is that only person completely involved in growing a human being inside their stomach is your wife. It’s your job to make those 9 months run as smoothly as humanly possible for her; to nod at the right times, to comfort when needed, to drive anywhere and everywhere on request and go get whatever she’s craving no matter what time it is, day or night.

Now I’m not pretending I’m great at all or even any of these things. I’m as new to this baby/parenting thing as it comes, but I’m trying my damnedest to be and do the best I can be and can do. Some of these points will obviously come off as ‘well, duh’ pieces of advice, but as I’ve noticed sometimes even the most basic common sense falls by the wayside in the run up to impending birth…

1.      Be attentive.

Basically, be there for your partner throughout the entire time. Obviously, provided you’re not a complete asshole, you will be, but just make sure you’re never too far away should they urgently need anything. In this age of mobiles it’s never been easier to stay in contact. Be ready to drop everything at a moment’s notice for your wife.

2.      …but not too attentive. 

Yes, she may be pregnant. She is not, however, helpless. Don’t wrap her up in bubble wrap and guard her 24/7. She’s still a person, not a fragile container, so don’t treat her like one. Hopefully she’s wise enough to know her own body and knows how much she’s able to do and what she can’t do. And if/when she can’t do something, that’s where you step in.

3.      Carry on as normal, as much as possible.

You’re having a baby and that’s great. It’ll change your life. I’ve no doubt it’ll dramatically change mine. However, until then you’ve got nine months to keep having your own lives. Naturally the bump will change a few things in your social lives, but don’t just stop doing everything and go into full on baby mode. Do the things you would normally have done and fit the baby stuff around it. Although if you were an avid skydiver before, I’d recommend giving that up.

4.      Be sympathetic

Now that my good lady wife is expecting and can’t drink or smoke (not that she did either anyway) I can’t in good conscience continue doing the same. Although I’ve never smoked I do enjoy the odd drink, for me to suddenly rejoice that I now have a designated driver for the next few months wouldn’t be the nicest thing to do. Your wife is being forced to sacrifice some things – including her body - because of the coming child (even if she never partook in the first place), you should too.

5.      Don’t do too much internetting

Seriously. The internet is great for a multitude of things. What it’s not good for is calming you down during a pregnancy. If your wife has an ache or pain or is feeling unwell, don’t go online to diagnose her. You come out the other side convinced she has somehow contracted The Black Death or leprosy or something. And don’t let her do it too much either. Again most of the symptoms and sicknesses during pregnancy are just the norm and will sort themselves out. If it’s something that looks like it might be more serious, go to your doctor. They’ll know more about it than Barbara, 32, from Stoke who had a really bad experience once and has been terrifying everyone since.

6.      Do read the baby books

If they give you one, which I think they have to, read the book the hospital gives you. It covers all the basics, it’s written in plain English and you’ll understand everything in it. Trust me, if I could make sense of it, you can. There are plenty of other books available of course which cover things in way more detail as well as very specific topics (we have What To Expect When You’re Expecting in the house, which is grand but it’s about the size of an Argos catalogue, and twice as confusing) but the one you get from your maternity unit contains everything you’ll need to know without insulting your intelligence – “Don’t pick the baby up by it’s ears” for example.

7.      Be a team, against the world

When you tell people you’re pregnant the battering ram of advice starts. Advice is great and all and I welcome it, but don’t let anyone convince you that what you want to do is wrong somehow. Unless it’s a proper mental idea. You should probably listen to them then. But it’s your baby and you should be allowed to do what you want with him/her. Within reason, obviously.  And as great as advice from grandparents, friends and total strangers is (because believe me, you will get it whether you want it or not) don’t let anyone tell you how to raise your child, what to name your child, what colour the child’s nursery should be, what buggy you should buy etc. Oh, and people guessing the sex can fuck right off.

8.      Be enthusiastic about baby stuff

This is one I have trouble with. Not because I don’t care, but because I’m stupid, especially when it comes to baby stuff. My wife somehow has a working knowledge of most of the paraphernalia involved whereas I have none. I’m literally coming into this cold. And while I don’t want to leave every decision up to my wife, when it’s comes to the features of buggies or car seats I just don’t know enough to give an informed opinion. As long as I can wheel it around comfortably or fit it easily enough, I’m happy. But since my wife will be the one doing most of the baby-looking-after while on maternity leave, as long as it works as smoothly as possible for her, I can make it work for me.

9.      Communicate

This is another one I have problems with. I’m not exactly the most talkative of folks, despite what the blog might suggest and I just tend to just go with the flow and agree with whatever my wife suggests [interesting sidenote: my wife told me that were it not for my previous blog entry about baby names, she’d never have known how I felt about the naming of our future child. Which was simultaneously funny and made me feel bad]. I mean, I’ll disagree if I strongly feel the opposite but more often than not, I’ll agree with her because we have fairly similar opinions on this whole baby adventure. But I have had to, and you’ll have to as well, open up a bit more and get into the nitty gritty when it comes to your newborn; you’ll have to ask and answer a multitude of questions and you’ll have a better chance of understanding it all if you communicate with each other. In my case, it’s usually asking my wife ‘what does this word mean?’ It’s almost always something horrible.

10.  Try to enjoy it

This is the most important one. It shouldn’t be a time of worrying and fear, and although there is that aspect to it, it should also be a joyous occasion. You’re having a baby. That’s fricking awesome. That’s really the overriding emotion I’ve had all throughout these past few months. Yes, sometimes the terror of the impending situation hits me a smack in the face, but the thought of a little bambino running about the places smacks it right back. Enjoy the scans, the kicks, your wife’s belly getting massive. Talk to the bump, silly as it seems. Sing to it if you like. I’ve rubbed my wife’s belly more times in the past week than I’ve rubbed my own in my whole life. It’s a special time. Enjoy it as much as you can. I’m planning to. 

Right, that’s enough advice for now.

"Firmly regimented procreation passion..."

[NOTE: This entry (ha!) is about shagging. Parents, siblings and family members, read on at your own discretion.]

Now I don’t know if you know this but to make a baby you have to have sex.

As in, sexual intercourse.

I am a man, and as such I like the odd bout of the aforementioned intercourse. However after all the intercourse involved in making a baby, I think I’d be perfectly happy never having sex again.

Because I feel like I’ve had enough to last me a lifetime.

When you start officially trying for a baby – we filled out the forms and everything – what you aren’t told is that everything after that becomes firmly regimented and organised. Nothing more so than sexy time. And because women are confusing creatures, biologically speaking, their periods of maximum ovulation can be guestimated at by, er…peeing on a stick, which is basically like a red rag to a bull. As soon as a woman works out when her ovulation window is it appears to give her free reign to demand sex, at any time or place, in a way that would get me a look of death if I tried it.

So there I am sitting on the sofa, relaxing after a hard day’s work on a Tuesday afternoon, watching the TV and waiting on the oven to beep to tell me that my dinner is ready when from upstairs Jenny yells, “JONNNNNNNNYYYYYYYYY.” That, for weeks, was my cue to go upstairs and perform my husbandly duty, preferably in less time than it takes for whatever was in the oven to finish cooking. No romance, no foreplay, no nothing. Tool, get over here and impregnate me.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t like it was a horrible experience or anything. As previously mentioned, I am a man, and if sexy time is offered on a plate, who am I to refuse? I mean, sex is sex, right? It was, as it always is, fun.

Well, the first few times were anyway.

Because before long, my beautiful wife morphed into some sort of terminator, but instead of trying to kill John Connor, she was trying to kill Jon(athan) Cardwell by sexing me to the point of exhaustion. She was a Sex Terminator. A Sperminator: “Listen, and understand. That sperminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop until your testicles are reduced to shrivelled raisins.”

It was relentless. In the morning. Straight after work. Before dinner. Just after dinner. At bed time. To the window, to the walls, til sweat drips down my…well, you know the rest. Anytime we had a spare few minutes, we were at it like rabbits. It takes its toll, believe me. If you’re doing the horizontal naked dance that often you barely resemble a human being by the end of the week, just a hollowed out husk of what was once a formerly functioning member of society. After a while you start to feel like you’re a cow that’s hooked up to a milking machine*, going through the motions to achieve the desired result. The odd time after, er…finishing(?) once, the missus, still clearly keen to make the most of being in the ovulation window asked if I wanted to go again, mere minutes after I’d just ‘gone’ once. “A second time?” I would incredulously exclaim. “I’m not 17 anymore, love. If you want to go again, you’ll have to wait at least half an hour and bring me a sugary cup of tea before we start round two. And even then, I’m making no promises.’ For as everyone knows, a second time is a lot more work for a lot less return. 

*I don’t know who should be more offended here, my wife for being compared to a milking machine, or me for comparing myself to a cow.

However, our hard arduous work paid off. Which is great but thank the Lord that since becoming pregnant the desire for and frequency of sexy time has diminished. Not due, necessarily, to not wanting to, but rather Jenny has become so tired throughout the whole business of, y’know, carrying another human being in her stomach not to mention the fact that she was hideously ill for a while there that often by the time we get home from work, naked fun time is the furthest thing from both of our minds. Also, now that she’s gotten quite big in the belly region and baby has begun kicking and I’ve seen a scan (see previous entry) of the little person with distinguishable features and everything, I wouldn’t be entirely comfortable putting another appendage up in that already crowded location. Well, that and if I’m in the middle of it all and all of a sudden see a ripple on my wife’s belly from my future son or daughter kicking out in retaliation at me invading his/her space, I’m pretty sure I’d either be too terrified or too busy laughing to continue.

The logistics of pregnancy sex are just mind boggling.

So we’ve found it best just to abstain.

Well, now that I’ve made you all suitably uncomfortable with the thought of me in the throes of firmly regimented procreation passion, I think that’s as good a place as any to stop.

"WTF is a foot muff?"

You know the way people who after having one child decide they want another? I think I’ve worked out why.

It’s not because a child is a bundle of joy, and it’s made them gloriously happy; so much so that they want another in their household. It’s not because they want to give their current progeny a brother or sister so he/she doesn’t get lonely. It’s not even because they even really actually want another child.

No.

Not at all.

I’ve come to the conclusion, after traipsing round God knows how many baby shops, that the only reason to have more than one child is to get the best value for money for the extortionate prices that baby paraphernalia sells for.

Not to get ahead of myself here, but after this illuminating trip I’m currently planning on having approximately 18 children and they’ll all use the same buggy so as I get my money’s worth. Because if you just have the one child most of this stuff is literally only good for a year at most.

Take car seats for example. There are many many MANY varieties of car seat. Each one more amazing than the last. One’s the clip in kind, one’s the slide in kind, there’s one with super adjustable padded straps, there’s the one with a swivel base that looked like something you’d see on the Starship Enterprise, there’s another with a built in poo catching tray (there’s not, but I wouldn’t have been surprised). So many different shapes, sizes and designs, yet some of them have the audacity to be so ludicrously expensive yet say on the tag, 0-9 months. NINE MONTHS!

And then you’ve got all the extras that the salespeople all but insist you need. Not want. Not would be nice to have. Need.  Blankets? Fair enough. Toys that dangle from the handlebars? O...kay. A foot muff. What the fuck is a foot muff?

So if I’m spending this much on a seat and all the “optional” extras it better be ready to hold my (or anyone’s) ass for a lot longer than nine poxy months. And then when said child gets older and larger, you have to buy another seat to fit their expanding frame. Which is dearer still. And then the child has the audacity to outgrow that one as well.

Kids, eh?

I haven’t even got one yet and it’s costing me an arm and a leg.

And there are the actual sales staff themselves, who in my very limited experience with them have overtaken car salesmen as the Most Annoying Salespeople In The Universe. At least when car salesmen give you the hard sell on the all singing all dancing features of a car, you can politely refuse the special edition of the car of your choice; they’ll be annoyed but once you’ve definitively said ‘no’ there isn’t much else they can do. Baby stuff salespeople have leverage over you. Leverage in the shape of your future son or daughter. And no matter how much you tell them you don’t want the carry cot they can whip out the it’s-better-for-the-baby card and try their hardest to fucking guilt you into buying it. And you will, because you’re a new parent and you obviously want the best for your first child. They’ve got you by the balls, and they bloody know it. The bastards. It goes something like this:

- “Now, I know you say you don’t want the carry cot, but do you want me to show you it anyway?”

 - “No, no, you’re alright. We’re happy enough.”

 - “Are you sure? Because when you take into account the benefits of the carr…”

 - “Seriously mate, we don’t want one.”

 - “But this one is better for the baby’s posture and will protect from the rain, sun and will convert into a makeshift bomb shelter once the nuclear apocalypse comes.”

 - “Look, seriously, we don’t want the…wait, did you say nuclear apocalypse?”

 - *nods*

- “Hmmm, well I don’t want to be that parent whose baby isn’t prepared for inevitable nuclear holocaust. (pause) We’ll take the carrycot.”

Fuck. The fucker guilted me good.

"Huge salty man tears"

We had our 20 week scan earlier this week. The big scan as they call it.

After a couple of tries because baby was in the wrong position and wasn’t co-operating, and after lot of the goo was emptied onto Jenny’s belly, the doctor was able to check everything, and we got a good view of the little ‘un along with a few pictures to show around family and friends, over which they’ll no doubt make predictions on the sex of the child.

But we got to see everything. Body parts that are more or less fully formed. Little feet. Little hands too. A little nose. A little spine. A little stomach. A little bladder. A little brain. A little heart. And a little face. A little human being that we made.

And he/she did a little dance as well that we could see.

And I cried.

SHUT UP! You’ll cry too. I’d put money on that.

A little background first though: I rarely cry. I’m not saying that to sound all macho and manly. It’s just a fact. Well, a fact and a lie, because I also cry all the time.

Let me explain.

Things in real life rarely make me cry. Sad events that normally make people blub don’t usually have an effect on me. I’ve had relatives die, gone to funerals, and stubbed my toe on the edge of the bath, all without a hint of a tear. The same goes for happy things: I didn’t cry at my own wedding for instance*. All of which makes me sound like a cold, emotionless robot, but believe me I’m not. I think I’ve just sort of steeled myself against things that happen in real life. Because I’m almost expected to cry, I brace myself and end up not letting the tears roll.

*A fact my wife reminded me of on the occasion that I done a happy cry when Didier Drogba won the Champions League for us with his last kick of the ball in a Chelsea shirt. That still gets me emotional to be honest.

Yet when it comes to fictional things, I will cry, ironically, like a baby. I tear up incredibly easily watching something – anything – in TV or film. The bit when Buzz doesn’t make the window in Toy Story? Floods. When Jessie sings about her former owner in Toy Story 2? Buckets. When the toys are inching ever closer to the furnace in Toy Story 3? Streams down my face. Maybe I should just stop watching Toy Story films.

Point is: real life? No tears. Film and TV? Full on gurning.

Until now…

Now I didn’t do an ugly cry while we were in the room, mid-goo, but rather when we went back out to the waiting room to wait to see the midwife to get some more information on parenting classes and further appointments and the like. I was already on the edge during the scan, but being the manly man I am I held off on crying until we were alone again. But once we were…boy, did I ever? Jenny didn’t, but her hormones are up the left anyways at the minute, and sometimes she cries just for a laugh so who knows…maybe she cried later. Although immediately post scan she rushed to the toilet to empty her bladder (they advise you to drink loads beforehand to get a better scan picture) so maybe there was no more liquid left in her body after that. Or perhaps more likely she was just relieved and didn’t have the energy to cry*. It’d been a while since our first scan at 9 weeks when Jenny was in the hospital boking and getting put on a drip, and while there was a little baby in there, the scan picture then wasn’t really much to go on. Seeing the actual outline, hands, feet and all was a huge relief for the both of us.

*She might well have been crying herself, but I didn’t notice through my own tear streaked face.

Maybe I’d just been keeping everything bottled up – I’ve been told I do that – over the past 11 weeks since then and the relief I felt came out a huge salty man tears. Maybe The Fear that I’m going to be a dad hit me and I broke down there and then. Or maybe it was just an emotional moment.

And you know what? I’m happy that I did. It was a supremely joyous occasion and the first time I’ve experienced it. Who knows if it’ll ever happen again? I hope that if it does I’ll have the same kind of reaction. I’m absolutely 100% glad I cried.

Just don’t tell anyone, k?

Baby Names.

Names, eh?

Happily, I like my name.

Maybe I just grew to like it, but there was never a time that I can remember where I didn’t like it. I know folks whose name, and by extension their parents, they hate a little bit. I knew a chap called Francis back in school who hated his name with a passion; he goes by Frank now though. The only gripe I’ve ever had with my own is the fact that my given name is actually technically my middle name on my birth certificate - Samuel Jonathan Cardwell - and whenever people found out I’d have to explain the situation, which I’ve done countless times, or whenever you went into a new school year and the teacher called out Samuel Cardwell, and I’d have to explain it all over again. Also, to this day, when people find out they think it hilarious to call me ‘Sammy’ until I explain the situation once more, and they get bored.

Or I punch them in the throat.

But recently Jenny has come up with a few baby names and asked me to think of some as well. It’s a fairly big task for anyone; naming another human being. And although you say ‘baby names’ that’s not what you’re doing at all; you’re deciding on what they will be known as for their entire life.

That’s a pretty big thing if you ask me.

There are various factors one has to…um, factor in when naming your unborn.

1. You have to agree on the name with your partner.

This is the big one in my opinion. You can’t just acquiesce to whatever name the other person picks. You can’t call your child a name that you don’t like. Every time you do so, you’ll be reminded of how you were overruled in the naming of someone you helped create, breeding animosity and eventually murder.

Maybe. Probably not.

But I still feel a bit bad that I named our cat Oscar without fully consulting the wife over what she wanted to call him.

2. It can’t be a weird name.

Weird names are alright for celebrity kids. They’re expected to have weird names. It’s like a right of passage. They send their kids to expensive private schools with other odd named kids and therefore their own child’s name seems normal by comparison. Not in the real world, sweetheart. If you name your child ‘Fuchsia’ or ‘Marigold’ your child is going to be mercilessly mocked in school, at work and by everyone, none more so than by her/his own father. Basically, if it sounds like it could a stripper name, don’t call your child that. I think that’s one of Ten Commandments or something.

3. Famous people/fictional characters

This sort of ties in with the above point, but the amount of times I’ve cringed after hearing a mum calling her child and screaming ‘Rhianna’ or ‘Britney’ in a thick Belfast brogue is probably in triple figures. Just because you like said singers and/or their names doesn’t mean it sounds good shouting it up the stairs when it’s dinner time. And more often than not it doesn’t fit in with your surname; Rhianna sounds all exotic and mysterious, but if your surname is Smith it sort of shatters the illusion a bit, doesn’t it? As for fictional characters, we all want to call our kids after a character that we like from literature, or film and TV (don’t we?) but very few have the balls to, because the names that stick out are usually the weird ones, and as we learned from point 2 they’re a big no-no. And as much as I think it’d be cool to call our first born Dean and any potential future child Sam (even if they’re girls. Ha!), there’s no way I ever would because it’s just…wrong. Clementine is out as well to my chagrin, even if it was myself that vetoed it.

4. Classical, yet modern.

Names, apparently, go in and out of fashion. And when I heard this I started thinking about the names of my chums and people my own age and it’s true; there are a lot of people named Adam, David, Christopher and a hell of a lot of folks called Jonathan, let me tell you. So maybe those names were an 80’s thing. Yet now, they don’t seem to be as prominent. The done thing now appears to be going for more classical sounding names, yet not ones that are so old that you feel like you’ve just given birth to a pensioner. I don’t want to give out the list of the names we’ve already thought of but they’re all ones that sound like “older” names yet we haven’t gone so far as to be condemning our child to being called Mavis or Archibald. Who knows, maybe there’ll be loads of Mavis’ and Archibald’s running about in 40 years when those names come back into fashion, but right now I’m not going to lumber my son or daughter with a name out of World War 1 that sounds like they should be born with a monocle.

5. Reverence.

My sister’s name is the same as mine. No, not Jonathan. But her given name is also technically her middle name. Her first name on her birth certificate is not what she goes by as is mine. My name is the same as my dad’s and his dad’s (my grandfather) and maybe even further back than that while my sister’s is the name of my maternal grandmother. We haven’t discussed this with any of our parents about whether this is a thing, but it’s something to consider. It’s not a tradition as such (as far as I’m aware) and it’s a nice gesture but I don’t think we’re beholden to call our son (if it’s a boy) Samuel _______ Cardwell, or our daughter Hannah _____ Cardwell. Sorry, this wasn’t a funny point, but a point nonetheless. And I got to use the word ‘beholden.’

6. Originality

You want the name to have some semblance of individuality and John or Jane isn’t really going to cut it, is it? Unless your surname is Doe, in which case you absolutely should, if just for the lols. So you need to think of something suitably different so that there aren’t 14 kids in your child’s preschool group with the same name, yet not so different it contravenes points 2, 3 and 4. Although don’t go too far off the other end and call the child Adolf or Kim Jong or something, hilarious as that might/would be.

7. Uncertain about sex

No, I don’t mean about what goes where. We’re already pregnant, so I’ve worked that out, thanks. I mean because we don’t yet know, and likely won’t until baby is born, whether there’s a boy or a girl in there you have to come up with a list of names for both genders. Which is fine, but as we’ve discovered, sometimes you can come up with girls names quicker than boys ones. We have a list of seven or eight names should it be a girl, with only two boys’ names. Now, we’ll have to come up with some quick-sharpish because if baby’s a he and we don’t have enough names, I probably will end up calling him Adolf Kim Jong Cardwell in a blind panic.

8. Phonetics

The name has to sound right. It has to roll off the tongue. This is where it gets slightly more complicated as you have to take into account the syllables involved and the sounds they make when spoken aloud. It’s all very well having a lot of middle names or double-barrelled monikers but if you sound like you’ve got a mouthful of marbles or have to take a breath halfway through giving your name, then something’s gone wrong. This is another thing you have to take into account when your daughter gets a serious boyfriend; if it’s looking like they might get married and his surname would cause embarrassment (to her, but mostly you), it’s your responsibility to end that shit as quickly as possible, or else you’ll end up like a teacher I had at school called Lynn Lynn. In fact, I met a guy the other day called Andrew Andrews. Seriously. That’s just cruel.  

9. Names of friends/families kids

This is the most annoying one. You find a name that works, that you and your partner have spent ages thinking about and actually agree on, that adheres to all the rules laid out above, it’s not too weird but it’s different enough to stand out and it sounds right spoken aloud, only to find that some other bastard parents have decided on the exact same name. And because their baby has pipped yours to the post by having the gall to be born first it forces you to come up with another less good name. And it’s always someone who’s close enough to your own family/circle of friends to have it be annoying. It’s never the second cousin of a relative you’ve never heard of. It’s always your bloody brother or sister or cousin or uncle or close friend or SOMEONE. The assholes. Anyway, the point is it’s always someone who, if you proceed with your perfect name, you’ll look like you were copying even when you weren’t or worse, that you couldn’t think of a name yourself and just went for the easiest solution, copying the name of the most recent child to be born.

Parents are dicks.

And finally…

10. The Homer Test

Marge: Homer, if the baby's a boy, what do you think about the name Larry?
Homer: Marge, we can't do that. All the kids will call him Larry Fairy.
Marge: How about Louie?
Homer: They'll call him Screwy Louie.
Marge: Bob?
Homer: Slob.
Marge: Luke?
Homer: Puke.
Marge: Marcus?
Homer: Mucus.
Marge: What about Bart?
Homer: Hmm, let's see. Bart, Cart, Dart, E-art... nope, can't see any problem with that

Works every time.  

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So yeah, we’re still no closer to choosing a name, but its early days yet, right?

RIGHT???