So, as I write this, my wife and I are about to announce to our family and friends that we are expecting our first child.
[Pauses for applause and cooing noises]
Interesting times! I’m still not sure it feels real yet…
Anyway, there’s quite a lot of information and advice out there, most of which is – quite rightly – intended for expectant mothers. However, there doesn’t seem to be as much stuff aimed at fathers-to-be, so I thought I’d throw my digital ink into the mix. My plan is to chronicle what it is like to be a nerdy millennial on the road to fatherhood.
The plan with this blog is to talk about our experience and to share any useful bits of information that I pick up along the way. This will be aimed mainly at new fathers, but will include stuff we both learned along the way, which might be useful if you are thinking about having a child of your own.
I want this to be a frank but light-hearted blog. I hope to share some interesting facts and funny stories, but I’m going to try to be as brutally honest as possible about everything that happens. Everyone’s experience will be different, but I hope that sharing mine will give you some idea of what it is like, particularly if – like me – you don’t have lots of experience with babies and pregnancies and stuff. Finally, I want to make it clear that my wife has read this, and I have given her power of veto over any information that I share.
The Story So Far
It is currently Week 12 (everything in our life is going to be measured in weeks for the foreseeable future), and we’ll be having our first scan soon. At this point, other than the fact that the baby is already the size of a lime, there is not a lot to report. So, here’s a bit of background information: my wife (30) and I (32) have been together for six years, and we got married in October last year (2018).
In case you are wondering, this was all totally planned. We actually came off birth control in July last year, after learning that it can take up to a year for the effect of the pill to fully leave your system (there is your first ‘fact I didn’t know’!). We started trying for a baby around Christmas
M’wife and I work opposite shifts. So, one day in August, I was awoken at some ungodly hour of the morning to discover that she had managed to successfully pee on a stick. It didn’t feel real at first, and it probably wasn’t the reaction she was expecting. But in my defence, I wasn’t fully conscious! When the reality finally sank in, that was when the nerves and excitement started!
Keeping Secrets
The main feature of the pregnancy so far has been the difficult task of keeping The Secret. You’d be surprised how many conversations about children, as well as general discussions about family and the future, have taken place around us over the last few months! The challenge is trying to take part in these conversations without letting anything slip, while also not being too quiet or trying too hard to change the subject in case you give anything away!
I felt a small surge of emotion and nerves when I spoke to my boss, to explain that I might miss a couple of meetings to attend various appointments. I probably needn’t have bothered telling him, as it turned out that there was only the initial midwife appointment and The Scan before we made the information public. But I thought it was only fair that my boss knew what was going on. At time of writing, he is the only person who knows, besides ourselves and a handful of medical professionals.
Meeting the Midwife
It was over a month from when m’wife bfroke the news that we had our first appointment with the midwife (around eight weeks in). It wasn’t really necessary for me to be there, but I wanted to be. It mainly features a big medical questionnaire and some blood samples. Annoyingly, they ask you lots of questions about your family’s medical history that you can’t answer until you’ve told your family, but never mind. Presumably, we can go back and fill in any blanks later on, if we need to.
We were also told that our due date was two weeks ahead of the date that my wife had estimated. It’ll be interesting to see whether motherly intuition or the opinion of trained medical professionals turns out to be correct!
Useful/Funny Advice
Each time I do one of these posts, I will try to link to something amusing or useful that we have discovered.
The link I want to share in this post is this hilarious advice for new fathers; ‘50 Things Every Guy Should Know About Pregnancy and Parenthood’. This is advice from two dads, which includes such gems as:
- From the very moment she announces her pregnancy, she’ll be the center of attention — not you. Get used to it.
- When the baby comes, they’ll both be the center of attention — not you. Aren’t you glad you had nine months to practice going unnoticed?
This isn’t particularly news for me, I feel like I’ve been in training for this all my life! But there is some good info and funny comments in that post (if you can get past all the Americanisms!), so it’s well worth a read.
Final Thoughts
So, that’s it for now. Not much to report at this point, but hopefully I’ll have more funny stories and interesting facts to share as we go on. As I said, I’m still not sure it feels real for us yet!
I’ll check back in with updates after we’ve had the first scan in a few weeks’ time.
You can keep up with our adventures here: mdsimpson.co.uk/i-am-your-father.