“Have you seen Jacob’s umbilical cord anywhere?”
Louise was asking me, quite casually, a week after we’d brought our baby home. Unfortunately, I couldn’t help. It had looked to be living on borrowed time last time I’d changed his nappy, but I hadn’t seen it drop off. We spent a token few minutes scouring the living room, looking under the coffee table (Louise) and rummaging through the bin (me), before giving up. It was as though we’d lost the TV remote.
“Oh well, I’m sure it will show up,” Louise said, settling down to watch Loose Women.
Jacob is our second son and I’m pleased to report things have been much more relaxed this time around. With Joshua, who’s now two, we spent the first few months of his life out of our minds with worry, sleep deprivation, and the underlying sense that we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. We were checking his breathing every five minutes, changing his nappy twenty-three times a day, and shouting at each other when we couldn’t figure out why he was crying. This, oddly, didn’t help to soothe him.
I went back to work last week, and my colleague looked surprised.
“You actually don’t look too bad, Andy,” she said. “Last time you got back from paternity leave, you looked absolutely awful.”
“Oh, thanks?”
She had a point though. I’m aware that women arguably have a tougher time in the whole pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding stuff, but I did find the introduction to parenthood difficult. Obviously, the birth of your first child is wonderful, but it’s hard work and it takes a while to accept that your life has irreversibly changed. As a man, you have just become the third most important person in the house by a distance, you can no longer justify sitting around doing nothing (something I was previously excellent at) and gone are the days when you can go for a pint after work. If I told Louise I’d be home by 6 pm and got in at 6.07 pm, there’d be hell to pay.
“Where on earth have you been?!”
“There was traffic on Kirkstall Road.”
“I hate Kirkstall Road!”
I mean, everyone hates Kirkstall Road, don’t they? I’m not sure there’s too much I can do about traffic flow in Leeds but never dared mention this. A few months in, after being lured into the false sense of security of a few good nights’ sleep, a horrendous sleep regression smacked and I started to lose the plot, feeling as though I was living in a cloud of stress and exhaustion. I hoped a good tonic would be to jump on the mindfulness bandwagon, and subscribed to the popular Headspace app. Finding a time to do this at home was tricky; while Louise carried the baby under one arm, a pile of washing under the other and planned dinner, it didn’t feel reasonable to sit on the floor with my eyes closed listening to a Buddhist from Bristol’s soothing tones.
I decided, then, to Take 10 (for the uninitiated, this is the name of one of the Headspace meditations) on my morning commute one day and opted for the carpark at the Hollies as a suitably discreet location. Three minutes into the meditation, as the man was telling me to “breathe in through the nose, and out through the mouth” I was getting well into it. My heartrate had reduced, and I was undoubtedly feeling calmer. Suddenly I was snapped out of my blissful state by the sound of a vehicle pulling up next to me. Shit, what if it’s someone I know? How do I explain myself? What if they think I’m a dogger? I half-opened an eye and saw a bunch of tree surgeons in hi-vis gear clambering out of a large van. One of them looked straight at me and I could no longer relax.
I turned the engine on and got the hell out of there, wheel-spinning through a puddle, narrowly avoiding a second van that was pulling in, not looking back. I left the carpark with my heart pounding, feeling considerably more stressed than when I’d arrived. It took me weeks to figure out how to cancel the HeadSpace app, so I ended up paying about £40 for those three minutes of mindfulness.
Shortly after this low ebb, things started to improve. From the 8-month stage, we stuck Joshua in his own room and everyone’s sleep vastly improved. Also, he began actually doing things – sitting up, smiling, giggling – and the relationship didn’t seem quite so one-sided. The big milestones are just as incredible as they are cracked up to be and, having previously been cynical about people sharing their baby’s every move on Facebook, I can now see the appeal. That said, I still think baby posts should be capped at three per week. Absolute maximum.
Despite our experience and more laidback approach with Jacob, it has not all been plain sailing. Last night, Joshua decided he wanted to take his tricycle in the bath with him. I couldn’t see the merits of this and suggested it might be a better idea to, perhaps, leave the tricycle in the living room. What followed was an on-stairs, arms-in-the-air, kicking legs, bawling tantrum. Louise was upstairs with Jacob and came over to placate matters. Unfortunately, the excitement tipped Jacob over the edge and he projectile vomited on my head. It was one of those situations where I genuinely had no idea what to do next. Here are some other examples of non-plain sailing:
For the entirety of the second half, when Louise was putting Joshua to bed, Jacob cried uncontrollably.
Despite the new challenges presented by having twice as many children, it’s not twice as hard. Maybe 1.4 times? You’ve already long left your old life behind, the sleep deprivation doesn’t seem as bad (Louise might say differently), you can successfully fold up a pram and install a car seat without wanting to tear chunks of your hair out, and crucially you’ve learned that, when you have children, a hangover is never worth it. It’s early days but things are going well and, for the most part, we are enjoying the ride. No more though. Two and out. Definitely.
Oh, and the umbilical cord eventually showed up. It was under the sofa.
*Andrew Carter is a 33-year-old author from Headingley. His book, The Thing Is, a collection of anecdotal tales (about everything that went on before having children) is out now published by Proverse. You can buy it here: Thing-Andrew-Carter/dp
