Mark Woods - Babies and Toddlers for Men: From Newborn to Nursery

Babies &
Toddlers

F OR M EN

From Newborn to Nursery

Mark Woods

Babies and Toddlers for Men

Mark Woods

This epub edition is published in 2012 by Crimson Publishing

Crimson Publishing, Westminster House, Kew Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 2ND

Crimson Publishing, 2012

Epub edition 2012 ISBN: 978 1 90828 134 0

The author has asserted his moral rights to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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To Sarah, Stan and little Louis, with all my love

Contents

Mark Woods has covered national and international stories for the UKs premier news agency, the Press Association; helped to bring a multimillion pound TV company to its knees and is now a writer for the charity Comic Relief.

He lives in south west London with his wife Sarah and sons Stanley and Louis.

Thanks and brotherly love to all the fathers who took the time to contribute to this book, your wit and wisdom put my witterings to shame.

Thanks also to the team at Crimson, especially my editor Beth Bishop, who played a huge part in helping to capture three years in 10 chapters, and much gratitude to Rebecca Winfield for the invaluable guiding hand.

Most of all, thank you to my wonderful wife Sarah, not only for the research and re-reading, but also for doing everything else when all I did was write.

L ets not beat about the bush: being a father is the best, most important, most profound thing youll ever do during your time on the planet.

Yes you might be a big achiever at work, you might be a formidable competitor on the sports field, or you may even consider yourself pretty special when it comes to sudoku.

Laudable and impressive achievements one and all.

But when it comes to making a difference, to leaving your mark during your relatively brief sojourn on our green and pleasant planet, there can be only one show in town. Thats your responsibility to and influence on the little people you help to bring into being.

As befits something of such magnitude and gravitas, fatherhood comes with a complete working set of highs and lows, triumphs and tragedies, and moments of illumination and despair.

You see, being a father is many things, but anticlimactic isnt one of them.

You can feel intense irritation and impatience before breakfast, frustration and despondency by lunch and an acute sense that you need to earn 37 times more than you do now just after tea.

Threading through all this high emotion will be a sense of fatigue which would be impressive in its tenacity, if it didnt make you feel so utterly wretched.

After the passionate intensity of the conception, the taut anticipation of the pregnancy and the all-round gobsmackingness of the birth, youd think that with the hard work over you and your partner could settle down to bringing up junior in an idyllic domestic setting.

But even before we join the dad club we are well aware thats garbage.

Weve heard the rowing parents in Sainsburys; weve seen the new dads at work, dragging themselves in like the living dead with a tie on. Weve even endured meals while our friends, our once placid and composed friends, have conducted a frantic debate over a nappy full of green poo.

All that and much more will happen to you too guaranteed.

But its the things you werent expecting about parenthood that really take your breath away. Your moments of joy, pride and unbridled love for your little boy or girl go completely unnoticed by the outside world, because they take place in the very deepest part of your chest.

My eldest son saw me coming down the stairs one morning wearing the same blue checked shirt Ive been trying to pass off as smart for almost a decade. He looked up and said You look nice, Daddy before skipping off into the kitchen on the hunt for more Marmite on toast.

It doesnt sound much, I know, but it did me all ends up, just like it did the last time he said it. Thats not because I knew hed probably have the last of the Marmite. Its because the minute he and every other child on the planet is born they have their parents in such an emotional half-nelson that at any moment they can render you emotionally incapacitated in quite spectacular fashion.

And that is whats at the heart of all thats great about being a parent in general and a father in particular. No matter how busy, how stressed, or how uptight you might be, you cant fail to have your emotions yanked to the surface at regular intervals. Your child will remind you that youre not only well and truly alive, but that a part of you is alive in someone else now, too.

Its not always lovely, fluffy, gooey emotion thats invoked. When your new-born baby gets her first cold youll be gripped by a fear the like of which youve yet to experience. Shell snuffle and snort her way through the night, seeming to struggle for each breath.

When your toddler almost wanders out of your momentarily open front door, you will scream like a big girls blouse before running after them at light speed. Then you will also play the moment over in your head a million times later that night, envisaging the horrors that could have occurred had they taken a few steps more.

Then, when you refuse a request to build the fourth den of the day because you have to check your BlackBerry, you can taste the guilt in the roof of your mouth.

And if you lose sight of your little one in a park or shop, even for no more than a second, you will feel every single organ in your body forming orderly queues and preparing to evacuate using both your major orifices.

Its like being possessed.

In a good way.

They dont know or care they are just kids, playing and being and doing. The only time they will truly know is when they have children of their own and the whole thing will start all over again.

You might not be bitten by this virulent bug straight away, mind you. It may take a little while for evolution to do its thing and turn you into a protector, a provider and a nurturer. But once you are, you are in for life, so you might as well throw yourself at it and enjoy it. Youll never feel as important, as worthwhile and as uplifted.

Helping you enjoy your newly found fatherhood is essentially what this book, in its own small way, is trying to do.

There are peaks and troughs aplenty awaiting you over the next few years. Through a combination of research, personal experience (also known as mistakes) and speaking to a whole army of new dads I hope to arm you with a decent smattering of information and intelligence on what to expect and what to do when it happens.

The first chapter looks at the time your new little family will spend in hospital before coming home. From then on, each section focusses on a period in your childs life, from the moment shes born to her third birthday.

Sprinkled throughout will be words of wisdom, wonderment and woeful cock-ups from dads who have been there before and lived to tell the tale.

The fact that you are interested enough to read this book means that you want to be a dad who takes an active role in the upbringing of your children. This is a decision that will reward you hugely in the years to come. It can help you to become more empathetic, emotionally literate and even-handed, as you learn from your offspring as much as they learn from you.