Seems like a good time to come back.

Hey. I've been up since 3am with my son, now 7 months old, who has a cold which has been keeping him awake and very upset. I'm downstairs now, and he's asleep under a blanket beside me while I write this.

The past seven months have been a revelation. So much happiness mixed with so much stress and so little sleep. It's time I came back to this project and picked up where I left off. I'll take you through his life so far, month by month, in forthcoming posts.

Right now I just needed to reach out a bit and let you know that, apart from the cold tonight and some baby eczema, all is well.

That is, now that I've got used to the giant lack of rest, very little free time, the massive amount of cash being spent, the constant worry and the catalogue of unexpected bodily explosions.

But he's worth every second of it.

That's something people don't tell you when you become a parent. They tell you all about how awful you'll feel, how poor and how run-down, but the thing that 99% of people fail to mention is the fact that it's all worth it.

You change as a person. Your priorities change massively, with your child becoming the centre of your world very quickly and shoving everything else you used to do aside. But that's okay. It's fine, as instead you will raise a healthy and happy baby, rather than focussing on things that never really mattered all that much anyway.

Your social life and hobbies don't disappear completely, but they do have to take a back seat, as no matter how much they meant at one time, now there is something so much more important in your life.

I love my son more than anything, and it is a bond which continues to strengthen with the more he grows and understands.

Every day has been difficult and beautiful in almost equal measure, and once I can think straight, I'll bring you up to speed on what the hell has been going on for the past seven months.

I'm sorry I haven't written here much. I've been learning to be a first time daddy. I don't think I'll ever get the hang of it, but I'm doing my best. For him. For my boy. My beautiful boy.

He's still asleep beside me, and that look of serenity on his face after hours of being upset - that's wonderful.

I hope you first time parents are doing well.

We Could Never Be Ready Enough

Our son's arrival is getting ever closer, but are we ready? Not quite. We're getting there, but with such a momentous occasion, can you ever be ready enough? Bg things have happened in recent weeks which will make life so much better for our new family, and it feels like pieces are slotting together at a pleasant enough rate.

However, we are keeping in mind the fact that, no matter how much we plan and prepare, we'll forget something. That's how it goes. We could buy all of the baby stuff in the world and still not have the right things, depending on the individual wants and needs of our own sproglet. Such is life.

Good things have been happening though, and while they have made me feel way older than I am, they are for the best. Myself and my lady have now given up the semi-glamourous city lifestyle we had lived for the past two and a half years, left our “Professional couple” flat and have become homeowners.

In the past two weeks we (well, mostly me as I'd rather knacker myself up than my heavily pregnant lady) have been emptying boxes, arranging the house, buying and building furniture and discussing what next at great length.

The nursery is about to come to fruition, with a bedroom being planned to be repainted and modified in the coming couple of weeks, baby furniture on its way and space having to be found for the stuff we haven't unpacked yet which is still in there.

It's been chaos for weeks, but as everyone and their mothers seems to want to tell us at great length, the chaos won't stop ever again. This is it. Our lives as we knew them are over, and now we need to get ready for the next chapter. Despite the endless horror stories of delivery, sleepless nights and luminous poo, we're looking forward to our baby's arrival.

Are we ready? Not quite, but thankfully, neither is he just yet. Phew.

A Filling And A Realisation

I had my first ever filling on Friday, which is quite an achievement considering I'm 33 and consume vast quantities of carbonated soft drinks. It was a weird experience, doing something so normal that I've never needed to have done before, but it made me realise something else entirely. While my lady's baby bump continues to grow in size and our son continues to kick and wriggle and make his presence felt, we are becoming the people he will remember when he looks back at his childhood in years to come.

To him, I will always have had this filling. To him, his mummy's hair will have always been the length it is now, and not the oceans of long black tresses that greeted me when I met her for the first time. He will remember the people we are starting to become now. Both myself and my lady are dressing a little more conservative than we once did, with our days as denizens of the alternative clubbing scene and its associated fashions giving way to a somewhat more subdued (but still suitably 'us') style of attire.

To our son, we will have always written for magazines and had books out, I will always have been a grumpy sci-fi and comic geek who harps on about how good things used to be, and his mummy will always have been a columnist for a top crafting publication. My collection of vintage genre VHS tapes will become the antiques that he will have no interest in but will accept as part of what dad likes. To him, I will have always been balding.

Our whole lives up to now will become the strange netherworld that is the Pre-Child era we find so odd about our own parents. I find that very strange, but also exciting.

You see, with such a momentous occasion hurtling towards us as such an alarming speed, I am finding this final stage of my child-free life winding down in a most pleasant fashion. Big things are taking place around me and involving me that will help to define the person that my son will know me as. All I hope over everything else is that I can be a good dad for him and hope that he loves me. I worry. I'm a parent now. That's what we do, isn't it?

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.