There’s a lot to look back on when you are a parent – carefree holidays, dinners out, trips to the cinema and boozy nights out to name but a few. But this post will be looking at a bit closer to home – at when our little one was a teeny tiny baby.
The day that we initially went to hospital wasn’t particularly smooth to be fair, in no small part because we I had managed to lock ourselves out of our house!
Our lovely shiny blue front door was still quite new at the time and it had numerous security features to prevent break ins – not really what you want when you’ve left the keys in the lock inside the door and need to break into your own house! So as Sarah was timing contractions in the driveway I was tarting around with a coat hanger and bits of bent copper pipe trying to fish the keys out of the lock so I could grab them through the letter box!
Strangely locking yourself out of your house and breaking back in was not covered as part of the birthing journey on our NCT classes. Clearly an oversight on their part.
I guess when they make a Hollywood blockbuster out of our story in years to come (when I have become famous through this blog and its 2 followers) they will cast Mila Kunis as Sarah and she would give birth in the driveway assisted by Brad Pitt, whilst I heroicly break down our front door with an axe to get to our hospital bag. But in reality it wasn’t quite that thrilling and Joshua was still a good few hours away from making his appearance!
I won’t go into the ‘magical’ details of Joshua’s birth, because Spielberg will probably want exclusive rights, but I do remember thinking 3 things immediately as Joshua entered the world.
1. Bollocks!! We had both decided not to find out the sex of the baby in advance, but had both pretty much decided it was going to be a girl. So the first thing I noticed was that our little girl had testicles, which I had read was quite unusual for a girl.
2. Massive hands!! Once I’d realised that our girl with testicles was actually more likely a boy, I then noticed how big and purple his hands were! Bizarre things raced through my head like whether he would now grow up to be a goalkeeper and how I was worried that he might get bullied at school because of his massive hands! Spoiler alert – by day 2 they were a perfectly normal size!!
3. What the hell do I do with this baby?! No matter how many books you read and how many NCT classes you go to, when there is a real life, actual baby handed to you, shit gets real pretty quickly!!
Two hours later at 3am I drove home, built a pram (in the dark as there was a power cut!), had a stiff drink, a couple of hours kip and back to hospital! Nothing was ever quite the same since…
When we were finally given the all clear to escape depart from maximum security prison the Royal Berkshire Hospital, our exit was mildly delayed by my complete inability to operate the car seat. First off I couldn’t get the bastard thing out of the car, having to resort to a YouTube video to find the right technique.
Then, having finally dragged it into the ward we couldn’t work out how to adjust the pissy straps – they were so loose that they had the protective qualities of a chocolate fire guard. But after one further trawl through YouTube we nailed it and headed home! By the time we finally arrived home, Sarah’s dad had already been waiting for us in the driveway for about 3 hours.
So my advice to new dads would be to practice using the car seat before taking it to the hospital like a muppet. And of course to always allow an extra few hours to be discharged from hospital, given that 1 nurse will generally be responsible for discharging the entire hospital single-handedly. And not to lock yourselves out of the house. And to expect testicles and large purple hands. I should write a book…
