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Here’s a scary thing I found out today. After some extensive research (one branch of the Co-op) we’ve found an account to set up and keep paying in to for the bean. Good…for once we’re actually planning financially, taking this sort of thing seriously, acting like adults. Pretty good going. So there I was in my new found pride at reaching this levle of money mangement at the ripe old age of thirty two and a half when what should I spy but…

Yes, that’s right. An account that passes in to the management of a seven year old. So they can manage their finances on the Internet or using telephone banking. So they’ll outshine me in they’re financial dealings by the time they’re eight. A bit like this…

So the due date has been & gone with no sign of action. To be honest, this is far easier for me. I got my first taste of what this actually means this weekend when I too joined The Wait.

For those of you unfamiliar with The Wait…this is the point you reach when you’ve psychologically built up to a certain key date (let’s say, oooh I don’t know, the birth of a child, but it could – sort of – apply to any circumstance, like waiting to get the contract for that new job before handing in your notice etc) & when that date arrives, it doesn’t do it with a bang or a whimper. It does it with silence. Stony silence. The sort of silence that makes you really mad and guilty and inadequate all at the same time. The sort of silence that descended if you’d done something really naughty and were just about to get the “You’ve not just let me down…etc” speech from the parents. The sort of silence that (probably) would greet your three year old child deciding to do a poo in the middle of grandma’s newly carpeted front room. Or something a bit like it anyway.

So here we are on day one of The Wait, waking up a week overdue. Now the thing with The Wait is, you can’t really do anything because something could happen at any time (it doesn’t) and you could need ot dash off to the hospital (you won’t) and going too far away means you won’t make it back in time (yeah right).

So on day one of the wait you get up, not in any rush because once you’re up this is likely to start the unsolicited calls from the fellow Waitees. Now the fellow Waitees are a funny bunch. They won’t (in the main) ring up & say “have you not had it yet then? Can you get on with it? I’m a bit bored of waiting now” though you secretly hope they share this guilty little emotion with you. More likely they’ll say “just thought I’d see how you were doing” or “any news?” or “nothing happening yet then?”. But you know they all really mean “have you not had it yet then? Can you get on with it? I’m a bit bored of waiting now”. And quite right too. We’ve all been waiting nine months here. Can’t you ever be on time for anything? Well why isn’t it down to you? (Small tip here, these are better NOT said to your partner in all this…it might upset them a bit).

So morning of day one of The Wait is basically receptionist. Then we move to lunch time. Shall we go out? Yes, let’s. Where? Hmm. Not sure. Don’t want to go too far (see reasons above). Ok, how about here? No? Ok. How about there? No, I don’t either really. Hmmm? Oh, just thinking about something else…[note to self, don't say it's the baby, let's try & think about something else...we'll have nothing else for a while soon...let's enjoy this while we can...wonder how I fit that car seat?].

We’re now well in to the afternoon. And a wander round the shops seems the best entertainment. Go and take a look at some baby clothes shops. That’ll be nice. And a little look at baby books. Yeah, why not. And now some food shopping. And htere’s the afternoon gone. Now back home for a quick nap, then not much appetite for tea so a bit of telly and off to bed knackered.

Sunday – same again please.

Now this is fine for two days but when maternity leave has begun it’s ad infinitum. You’re no longer mobile enough to actually do stuff & everyone advises you to rest up. And you get worn out taking the stairs. Plus no matter whether you fight it or not, 4pm is nap time. And then when someone gets in they ask if anything’s changed, or how you are but you know they actually mean “have you not had it yet then? Can you get on with it? I’m a bit bored of waiting now”.

Bean’s fist exposure to the power of celebrity as mum-to-be got all giddy when she was given advice on her impending experience by none other than her hero one Mr Richard Hawley at an in-store appearance. Apparently the mother of his children just did it on a paracetamol and the advice was definitely against an epidural.

As a friend pointed out – easy for him to say (though this is the same friend who told his wife he could relate to her pain as he’d just eaten a whole bag of dried apricots & had indigestion).

What a way to spend a Sunday afternoon…a trip to preview the facilities at our hospital of choice. Or at least, what we thought was our hospital of choice. After our visit, we’re not so sure.

It started badly, asking directions was a bit hit & miss and it turned out to be (for someone with a well developed bump) a not insignificant walk form the nearest drop-off point to the front door. Okay, fair enough, it’s a new unit, part of a huge re-development of the whole hospital but it means the department is open and functioning in the middle of a building site which isn’t due ot complete and be fully open for a long time yet.

Thus access can at best be described as restricted, and at worst, an absolute pain. Part one of the tour revealed internal politics – the main doors aren’t manned post 8pm so you have to use the emergency children’s ward entrance. Only, they don’t really like people doing that. As our guide for the afternoon helpfully pointed out “try & have your baby in opening hours”. Hmmm.

Another slight problem for us is the fact that our midwives are actually based at a different hospital. So they’ve been telling us what processes we should expect, what treatments might be needed, how the facilities are, how to get there etc etc. Only it turns out that, despite only a few miles separating them, processes differ. Bring on a number of fundamental changes to our likely treatment. Hmmm again.

Admittedly, the facilities are very new, but to the point of not actually having unpacked. And as we were told, no funding through yet for soft touches, like pictures on the walls, TVs, radios, etc etc. And while the midwife led care unit was great to see, we’re not actually able to use it. So it’s obstetrics for us.

Final straw of the day…a mother-to-be getting rushed through reception screaming the roof off (and it’s only just been put on too) while our guide makes a remark about staying at home but don;t leave it quite that late.

So what should have been a reassuring visit to the likely birthplace of our child ended up being our most traumatic experience of the whole pregnancy (and I include a Saturday evening dash to the emergency ward when some worrying signs were showing up), possibly due to the sense that we’d been let down somehow.

That said, it also tuns out the chances of the bean being born there are perhaps less than we thought – divert figures have been pretty high and judging by the size of the group doing the tour, is showing no sign of abating. Meaning we could well be on divert to our midwives’ base hospital anyway.

Will we change? I’m not sure. We’ll certainly be looking a lot more closely at our other option…not least because we could well end up there regardless of any choices we make.

So that was antenatal classes. Billed as four two hour sessions it ended up being more like five to five and a half hours total. And that’s it. We’re now fully trained and all ready to go!!

To be fair, a lot of useful information was shared with us and in the main the midwives were great. We also found some very near neighbours who are due round the same time so new friendships are forming too.

The sessions were divided into pre-admission, labour & pain relief and (the best bit by far) post-natal and bringing baby home. The fourth session was a breastfeeding workshop with the rather odd arrangement of plastic model boobs to look at & baby dolls to practice with…

Highlights – nappies filled with english mustard & black treacle to demonstrate what nappy contents look like, blowing bubbles to practice regular breathing & wiggling our hips to Flo Rida (I kid you not) to demonstrate useful pain relief techniques at home. Also a really weird Swedish (natch) video filming a newborn as it was left to find its own way to its mothers breast to feed. Strange but amazing all at the same time. It also came with the weirdest matter-of-fact voiceover I’ve ever heard. You’ve not lived until you’ve heard the phrase “this is the first and only time the baby will show an interest in the right breast”.

Lows…certainly the reasonably regular mentions of some of the possible after-effects of birth were possibly overdone…never seen so many blood drained faces and can barely bring myself to type the word ‘tearing’ even now. Also week one and the chap who first belched loudly, then yawned through the rest of it…no wonder dads get a bad name. A potential, but in our case skipped, low – the video of a birth. Our view? We’ll see it live in the not too distant future, and a live event is never quite as good on TV is it? Although most did stick around and watch it we were more than happy to retire gracefully that evening.

So that’s the training done with. Whether or not we remember it, I don’t know. Whether we could have read up on it all, maybe. But having someone to talk to about it all and ask daft questions to was great. Plus the reassurance that other people do it and get it right. Let’s hope so!

I’ve never been a big one for New Year’s Resolutions. Once or twice I may have thought “new year, a few small changes” but they’ve then dropped off over time – of ten before the end of January – and I’ve never really felt I had a whole lot I wanted to change. Sure, I could stand to lose a little weight, do more exercise, drink a bit less etc. Who couldn’t? But I’ve never been one for life changin affirmations on New Yar’s Eve.

I’ve been reading a few articles recently that suggest the male side of a soon-to-be-parents couple will go through changes akin to nesting, just more, well, butch. We’ll grow a beard (check), try and turn our hands to manual labour (not so far) and generally ‘man up’ as we face up to our responsibilites. And of course we have this time to adjust.

I’ve also become noticeably more carpe diem…things I’ve not done are suddenly more important to me. I’m off to Reading festival having never been to a festival before…or at least not one of the ‘big’ festivals. I made a round trip from the North West to London & back to see Blur. I’ve started blogging (as you can see). I am getting through media with the sort of appetite that Goldilocks reserved for only the optimum temperature porridge – be it books, graphic novels (ok comics), albums, dvds etc etc.

All of this is transparently down to the ticking of a rather obvious clock. While I try to consume, digest and consume more, it’s my wife’s stomach that’s getting larger in some weird Dorian Gray trade-off. But here lies the issue. I’ve been given my nine months diagnosis (now down to three). So I get to plan one more big weekend (well, maybe a couple). And I can do it safe in the knowledge that it’s one of that few chances I’ll get between now and ooh 2029 by which time I’ll be far too old to be in a nightclub that isn’t called something like The Ritzy or The Coconut Grove or Duke’s.

And I don’t begrudge it for a second because I’m getting it out of my system, doing a few last things before my life changes dramatically. And changes in a way I wouldn’t swap for a thousand more nights out.

But here is the real rub – while I got notice, mummy didn’t. In fact for mum the whole stop notice was served without any soft soaping or by your leave. It arrived in the form of a positive pregnancy test and the immediate onset of morning sickness and cravings.

So it’s now also really important that we spend time together as a couple. All those things that really won’t be possible in a few months time. Lying in, going for dinner, getting coffee or lunch together. And I need to make sure the balance is right between us having our own individual space to prepare ourselves for November and doing things as a couple.

Writing about the now prominent bump reminded me of the huge minefield the size of an expanding tummy can be. While this is something we all know in everyday life, the pregnancy factor adds a whole new dimension, as we’ve been finding out.

Comments along the lines of “you don’t look pregnant” are clearly complimentary if you’re not, but cause for distress if you are. And “you don’t look five months” seems to invariably lead to the suspicion that there’s something wrong. All mentioned innocently, but for a pregnant lady with all sorts of hormones washing round, like darts to the heart.

Best advice – steer clear of any comment in earshot of the mother-to-be and go with “you look well”.

Exciting times in the development of the bean. For a little while now mum’s been feeling the little wriggler moving round inside. The books have been telling us that around now is the time for feeling first movements and like anything, you think “is it doing what it should?”.

But the magic moment arrived when movement was felt and now it’s becoming evidenced externally – both in touch and, more diconcertingly, visibly! And it’s a great spectator sport – we spent most of the evening last night looking for activity.

A quick note here – I am a massive Maltesers fan (bear with me here) and thus their ads stick in my mind more than most…

And it’s amazing how significant this all feels. While the bump has been getting slowly bigger, and is now very much in evidence, it’s the activity within that’s really starting to make the person inside ever more real to us. We’re even starting to notice cycles of activity – and probably mistakenly attributing characteristics to it…they’re definitely not a morning person but perk up of an evening and really love a little boogie over night. As a reformed clubber this is exciting news to me…all the best things happen at night!!!

Of course, I won’t be thinking that at 4am with no sleep behind me and a day of work ahead. But right now, it’s really exciting to start thinking about the personality of our offspring. I can’t wait to meet them!

Before we embarked on our particular journey a couple of people had mentioned to me how, as dads, they’d found an in-built assumption of many people in the health profession that the male half of the partnership were largely useless, uninterested and incompetent. Now, much as I’m willing to admit my faults (some more easily than others!) it has been interesting to find out just how annoying this assumption can be.

Firstly, and as mentioned in a previous post, a lot of the ‘dad to be’ books I’ve picked off shelves and seen online do it. They’re purpose seems to be to try and make the disinterested interested, to convert the unconverted to a new way of life that they’re working hard to resist. I’m sure there are dads out there to whom this applies…market forces would suggest there must be. But some of us are actually quite excited and, dare I say it, want to be involved.

So it’s been a bit of a disappointment that the assumption of most health professionals you meet is similar. There’s something nicely reassuring about the experienced, seen-it-all-before midwife that puts you at ease. But also seems to lead to a cynicism on their part about the male half of the partnership. Clearly it’s difficult for me to judge – they’ve been through far more pregnancies than I ever have done or ever plan to. And maybe geography has an influence…maybe dads round here are less interested…but it’d be a shame to work on that assumption.

Obviously the priority has to be the mum and the bean…and my reaction has simply been to ask more, chat more, and investigate more so I feel well prepared to demonstrate my interest. So maybe it’s actually a good tactic to spur me on to find out more. But it would be great to think that we’ve left behind the assumption that the man just ain’t interested…and I’m not so sure we have yet.

One of the really fun bits of having our first child, we thought, would be the name. It says so much in two, three or maybe slightly more small words. It says things about them (how many times has a name evoked what someone will be like before you’ve met them?) and about you…your influences, tastes, heroes and heroines. It is one of the few things you actually feel in control of about the whole thing. It’s also a really lovely time – sitting down and picking out the name that perfectly sums up you and your partners shared view of the world – how you want to the fruits of your relationship to be labelled.

And there’s a lot to think about…we wanted something you could shorten (for the perverse reason that we could then lengthen it for moments of authority), one that was safe from classmate japes, didn’t rhyme with anything insulting, wasn’t going to be shared by twenty others in the class, wasn’t going to wear it’s influence on its’ sleeve etc etc.

So it was with some excitement and a strong sense of duty that we started thinking about names. We’d already decided we didn’t want to know the gender of our baby (a strangely easy decision for us both…perhaps we just thought we had enough to worry about!!) so we knew we needed to draw up options for boys’ and for girls’ names. We also decided we wanted a forename and middle name which gave us more scope to reach agreement.

Neither of us are particular planners. We’re organized and fairly sensible in most ways, but we’ve never had a ‘plan’ as such, so it actually struck me as pretty impressive how early we started to think about names. Part of it I’m sure was down to bringing the little bean more alive in our minds…something you tend to do with a mixture of excitement and trepidation, the more superstitious amongst us genuinely fearful of putting a jinx on things.

But yes, we thought, a name is a good thing to start thinking about. And what sort of absurd decision might be made without that sort of forward planning? A spontaneous naming. What would we base it on. A song on the radio? The name of the nurse (we’ve all seen ‘Meet the Parents’)? The curry we had in a bid to finally coax them out? Or if not a rush decision then worse – a prolonged discussion with at least one of us drugged up to the eyeballs and no name for a few hours as you hum and ha and then feel you’ve reached a totally inadequate decision in your sleep deprived state.

So no, spontaneous wasn’t going to be us for this one. (In fact, although we’re not meticulous planners, we’re not overly spontaneous either…and that seems to have seen us right so far…so why change now?!!).

It was therefore time to call upon probably the most ridiculous concept in all this baby malarkey thus far – the themed name book. Now I clearly understand that there are a lot of names out there. And that a book of names is probably useful – at least as inspiration. Though it does seem to me that perhaps any name you feel you like enough to pass on to your offspring maybe shouldn’t be one you found on page 357 of the Big Book of Baby Names…or at least that wasn’t the only reason for choosing it.

But the really scary one I was first presented with (Celtic Names I believe) really was one of the funniest books I ever read. Much as I’m a fan of epic poetry, ‘Beowulf’ really ain’t for me, ‘Myfannwy’ has been rendered unusable by Little Britain…but the list didn’t get any better. So maybe this wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought.

The next thing we had to think about was the fact that my wife has some names on her side that are traditional within the family. A nice touch but one that immediately raises issues – are they unisex? Should we also consider taking something from my side (name of a grandparent perhaps…but which one, why not the other three etc etc). And if we do all that, plus a little of our own influence, will two forenames become six or twelve or twenty-four. The poor thing wouldn’t have enough room on their biometric ID card to fit it all and would never be able to leave their home for fear of being stopped without it.

We also started to think about how it would sound in the variety of regions it would be visiting on a fairly regular basis. Hampshire, Merseyside, Manchester. Then there was London, Cornwall, Newcastle…and we wanted a name that would sound okay in at least the main three.

Ultimately of course, and something we’re determined not to lose sight of, we want a name that sounds nice. Sometimes in all the other bluster I think that can get missed. But surely the best thing about a name is how it sounds when it’s spoken. Something that tingles on the tongue or rolls out of the mouth in a pleasing way. Something that isn’t stumbled over, something that can be shouted out with pride, something that you hear and makes you you. Something that your loved ones say with affection, something that you spend hours perfecting in a signature, something that works.

I don’t know if we’ll get it 100% right. I think we will for us, I really hope we will for them – we certainly haven’t omitted that from what we’ve decided. And I really love the names we have in our shortlist. I hope when you hear them you will too. For now, they remain a shared little secret between us as parents to be…getting ready to launch the names and the person they accompany on the world.