Getting Ready For Baby

The two of us are becoming ever more excited about the arrival of our son, which is now only a few months away. Preparations are well underway for his grand entrance, but we do have an added level of stress on top of the pregnancy. We need a new home. We're currently in a professional apartment block which doesn't take kindly to babies, and thus we are in the midst of searching for a new home, which will see us make the move into relative suburbia.

This is rather unnerving to me, as I've always wanted to live in the city and have been having a wonderful time doing so. The sudden shift to a place of less convenience is going to be a big change for me, but it is one that I await with a mixture of pleasure and excitement as well as trepidation.

Last night it really hit home how urgent our search is right now, when my lady was showing me just how visible our son's kicks now are. Her tummy now clearly pulses when he kicks, like a metronome ticking down the minutes until he's in our arms. I have been feeling galvanised into action, and we have been throwing junk out and looking for houses and viewing houses and making plans galore.

While I am very much aware that I will get no sleep once he's here (thanks to dozens upon dozens of people telling me so. I GET THE PICTURE, OKAY?), I really could do with a lie down. Getting ready for baby is more than just making sure there are nappies and talcum powder in massive quantities – it's also a case of mentally preparing yourself to take care of a small creature who has no experience of anything whatsoever in the world.

It won't have heard your jokes before, it won't have seen every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation before, it won't have heard you sing karaoke or have suffered your cooking. Yet. Getting ready to look after a small person who is essentially a blank canvas is one of the biggest challenges I'm facing right now. I'm looking forward to it all, but I'm scared too. See, kids? Grown-ups get scared too.

The People You Won't Meet

Dear son of mine,

Something that has occurred to me is that there are some wonderful people who you will sadly never be able to meet. My late aunty and my three late grandparents come to mind, as they were big influences on me and shaped the person I would become.

Not as much as my own mum and dad have (or Grandma D and Grandad M to you), but without the presence of those other people in my life I would have grown up very differently, and possibly without some very positive traits.

These are people I miss greatly, and people that I have lots of happy memories of which I will share with you once you are old enough to understand that they are no longer with us. I learned some very powerful things from these people, lessons which have stuck with me for years and which I hope will stay with me for the rest of my life.

My aunty, for example, taught me about keeping going no matter what life throws at you. Right up until she died, she was good humoured, strong and caring.

No doubt by the time you are literate enough to read this and take it in, I will have already told you many stories of her and my grandparents. It's important for them to be remembered, as they helped me become me, and thus shaped who you are too.

Love,
     Daddy

You Get Around, Kid

Dear son of mine,

I'm on a train as I type this, son. We're on our way to visit your grandad, off in the wilds of Lancashire. If I look out to my left I can see the rolling expanse of the English countryside, beautiful despite the heavy grey sky over it, and I have been thinking bout how much travelling you have already done, even before you're out here in the outside world with your mummy and myself.

Right now, mummy is six months pregnant, and the bump in her tummy which you are inside is growing at an incredible rate. She has been travelling a lot for work lately, visiting some of the biggest cities in the country in order to carry out her day-to-day tasks as someone with a lot of responsibility and an intellect that makes the sun itself seem a bit dim. She is doing all of this with you inside her, kicking her and making your presence felt on a very regular basis.

I find it quite sweet that the two of you have already seen so much of the country together, even if there was no way of getting you an ice cream on the way. Mummy and I are rather different in our origins, in that she is from a picturesque little Lancashire town while I was born and raised in a big city in South Yorkshire (which - don't tell mum I said this - is far prettier than Lancashire).

We do have a lot of common ground though, as while neither of our home towns are much to write home about, we are still proud of them. It's important to have some pride in where you're from, and while neither of us was born in the city that you will be born in, we hope you will feel the same kind of pride towards it once you are able to.

We are both very excited to show you where we grew up, and while you might not find it that interesting, you must come to understand, as we did as kids, that it's one of the weird little things parents do when the pull of nostalgia becomes to much to bear. Parents are odd like that.

Love,
     Daddy

It Seems Like Only Yesterday...

Wow, this is odd. It seems like only yesterday we were sat in the bathroom hugging each other after discovering that we were going to have a baby, and now the realization is setting in that we don't have long to go before our son is here.

My lady's bump is growing at an astonishing rate, and the little fellow is proving to be very active in there, responding to outside sounds, our voices and music with ripples of movement galore. Or, alternatively kicking my lady in the bladder, by her account.

What strikes me is just how long pregnancy seems before it happens. Once it's underway, it seems to go by in a flash. Well, it does for me as I'm not the one carrying another human around inside me. We have been keeping track of what baby is up to in there, how big he is, what he can do, and it is all speeding up and heading for a crescendo in a few months. Three and a half months or so, to be exact.

This is at once terrifying and thrilling, as there is so much to do before we're in that room, her screaming and swearing and me fiddling with a camera with one hand while having my other hand crushed by my girl. I asked the other night when would be a good time for us to start packing bags for the hospital, just in case. Now plans are being made, and a massive list of things to include in our emergency supplies is starting to make me wonder how I can find a TARDIS to fit it all into.

New Year's Day has come and gone, and it amazes me to think that this is the year it happens. This is the year I hold my son in my arms. This is the year my family begins. Here and now. Wow. What an amazing thought. This is it, he's coming soon. It seems like only yesterday we found out he was coming, but these last few months can't go fast enough for me.