Blimey! Something’s happened to Mrs C. She’s suddenly looks very pregnant. She hasn’t put any extra weight on but suddenly the baby is sticking out more. Since his head engaged, Junior must have shifted in the womb. This makes Mrs C’s pregnant belly look very, very big. And I think people have started to notice that Mrs C really doesn’t have too much longer until the B-day.

Of course, she is using this to the maximum benefit. There are certain privileges that are granted to pregnant women that must be enjoyed whilst they can be. These privileges probably can all be categorised as “People are very generous towards you” and include: being given seats whenever you need to sit, carrying things for you, and excusing you from anything that may make you tired. There are obvious reasons for this and Mrs C enjoys being treated ’special’ just as anyone else would.

I think the most impressive benefit of pregnancy that I’ve witnessed was Biblical in style. It turns out that Mrs C has become Moses-like and can now part traffic when crossing roads or car parks. The other day as we waited to cross the road on the curb, cars literally came screeching to a halt in order to allow us to cross. This is compared to cars normally speeding up to prevent me from crossing.

I can’t help but think that when the Junior is born it will be like Mrs C is leading the Jews (or Junior) out if Egypt (or the womb) into Zion (or the world), or something very similar to that at least.

I genuinely think that Mrs C is going to miss people not treating her quite a specially (I, of course, will continue to treat her in that way. All together “Aaahhhh”).

In other news, Amazon are rubbing salt into the growing wounds of this failed shop keeper:

“We noticed that you were accepted to the Amazon.com Associate Program several weeks ago but have yet to refer an order.”

Alright! Give me a break. My wives about to have a child. Seriously though, if you could all start buying thousands of dollars worth of baby gear then I’d really appreciate it. Cheers.

So this is a bit of a cheap post but it’s a post nonetheless. Here’s a few links to blogs that I read and enjoy on a regular basis. Go on, give them a click:

• Life After Birth - Oh so much more than just a clever name. Sara and Mark give a (very) new Mum and Dad view of parenting and it’s all the more interesting for it.
• Mom-101 - (Warning! A ridiculous claim follows.) Possibly the best written parenting blog on the whole internet. Mom-101 never fails to entertain with her writings and she’s not afraid to post images like this.
• Stay at Home Dad - I’m getting as many tips as I can about life as a SAHD from SAHD as one day I will be come him, oh yes, I will.
• Suburban Oblivion - I don’t always agree with what Sara at Suburban Oblivion writes but she writes really well and always keeps me coming back for more and that’s what a blog is all about.

Click away, but don’t forget to come back…

What with today being the 12th of June I think that I might have to rename this blog as the Very Expectant Father. That’s right there’s only one month to go until Mrs C’s due date, which in reality is anything between 2 and 6 weeks more waiting before Junior pops his head out.

One of the things that I found out at NCT class on Saturday was that only 5% of women actually give birth on their due date. With 30% coming early and 70% coming late. Those mathematicians out there will notice that adds up to 105% but apparently this is because the calculations were based on 1960’s thinking when everyone was off their faces on dope.

It does make you think that they should change your due date back a week or so and I know (again thanks to NCT class) that they do this in France where pregnancy is thought to last 41 weeks. Although this may be due to the French babies being on strike for the final week of pregnancy and refusing to come out (can you beat a mild bit of racism to really enhance your blog’s popularity?).

I’ve been told that the last 4 weeks feel like the longest of the pregnancy. I suspect this is because you are at your most expectant, wishing the baby to arrive every second. But it doesn’t. Your wife goes to 42 weeks, becomes increasingly irritated by the squirmy monster inside her, and threatens to kill you for over doing her toast; and there’s nothing like fearing for you life to make a day drag.

NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS A PAID REVIEW.

One of the things that never fails to amaze me as I navigate the minefield of expectant fathering is the amount of things that a baby needs on a day to day basis. If it’s not baby-grows it’s baby wipes. If it’s not baby food then its nappies. With all this baby gear, moving your baby from your house to say, the house next door is such a massive task that it would even have the planners at the MOD stumped as to how best organise it. With so much stuff you need some pretty good kit to transport it around in.

Another challenge for us young hip, down with the kids and generally happening parents is where to get quality baby gear that is neither too expensive nor is owned by every other parent down at the baby and toddler group.

Fortunately, this is where Hazel and Melvin come in. They make afford, fashionable and high-quality handmade baby products. As their products are handmade not every mum under the sun is going to have one but they’re still don’t cost the Earth to buy.

Their range of Handmade Diaper Bags is particularly fetching all of which feature large, roomy main compartment, with multiple interior pockets; internal clips for keys; and turnlock closures on external flap. Go check them out!

Today was the first of our National Childbirth Trust ante-natal classes and it went a lot better than I thought it was going to. To be honest, before we got there I had a bit of a negative attitude towards the whole thing.

My reasons were simple. I was of the opinion that women having been given birth for hundreds of thousands of years without ante-natal classes and we all still got to be born OK, so do we really need to go? If we’re worried about what’s going to happen we can check in books, on the internet or with the sister-in-law (she of the “new mother and doctor” combo). We had to pay for these things (£120 no less) and, worst of all, the classes were on a Saturday morning (no more lie-ins) for 3 hours! On top of this, as a rule, I don’t like talking to strangers. I’m fairly miserable when it comes to this, but I just don’t like meeting new people.

So, in summary, I really didn’t think that I was going to get anything out of it and, to be honest, I didn’t want to go.

The one good thing about the class is that it’s being run at the Samuel Johnson hospital. It’s brand new (opened in January this year), it’s where Mrs C is going to give birth (as long as there’s no complications) and it’s only 10 minutes round the corner (on foot). As we walked down there I told Mrs C to imagine that she’s in terrible pain to see if she could walk there when she goes into labour to save on the car parking costs. I’m not sure she really tried very hard at imagining.

As we walked into the maternity wing, the course leader spotted us and shepherded us into the “conferencing room”. 3 of the other couples had already arrived and were sat patiently in silence. Ah, there really is nothing to set your mind at rest like a room full of silent strangers.

Once everyone had arrived, on to the dreaded, yet obligatory *ice breaker*. “Men, you tell us your name, when your baby is due, and why you’ve come on this course”. Oh God no, this wasn’t starting well for me plus I had the misfortune of being the 2nd man to introduce myself and for the life of me I couldn’t think of why I was on the course. I think I managed to come up with “I can’t really remember why we’re here. Something to do with having a baby…” or something equally amusing.

From there we were asked to split into “Mums” and “Dads” and write down what we want to get from the classes so the course leader could work it into future weeks. As I mentioned above, I genuinely couldn’t think what I want from the course but after 30 seconds silence amongst the Dads, someone finally said “I’d like to know what we need to know”. Another Dad had to write that down on a big bit of paper. From then all I could think was please don’t make me explain these to the rest of the group.

Once the class actually got running it was fairly interesting. The course leader is a volunteer and, apart from a pretty patronising basic female anatomy lesson, everything was informative and very relaxed. The other expectant parents seemed like a pretty nice bunch too.

We were told about the stages of labour (who knew there were so many?), when you know whether to go to hospital during labour, how to deal with a screaming baby (not Social Services apparently) and how to relax. Oh yes, there was also a fairly confusing recurring cheese metaphor during the 3hrs: “It’s the size of a Dairylea lid” (I leave you in suspense as to what actually was that size!).

There’s another 4 weeks to go on the course, which I’m no longer dreading quite so much. I just wish it weren’t on a Saturday morning; I like my lie ins!

This I Wish I’d Known entry has very kindly been written for me by Mark White. Apart from spending his time being a new father (his son Daniel was born in March) Mark also finds the time to run Better Business Blogging. Here’s what Mark has to say:

“One element that I was very much focused on was the Birth Plan - we’d had lots of discussions about what the Birth Plan should contain, how it should be used, what should or shouldn’t be done when. The planning process really helped focus the mind on what was likely to happen in the delivery room but other than that, it bore very little resemblance to what actually occurred on the day.

It’s like trying to write the storyboard in the calm before the storm, all well and good but theoretical at best. The trouble is that when it comes to the time, the midwife may be aware of what is expected, mother and partner are on the ball, but I can assure you that baby works to its own agenda! And it’s clear from that moment on who is in control!

As for things that I wish I had known then - well, where do I begin? I think something that has been somewhat of a surprise has been the intensity of everything in the days and weeks following the birth - it seems that everything is permanently switched to “Full On” with baby very much dictating the pattern of every part of the day, 24 hours a day. While not a problem, it has been unexpected, at least for me, that slipping away for a quiet read or 5 minutes peace is done only at the discretion of baby. Wouldn’t change it though! :)”

It’s funny that Mark has written this because only today Mrs C came back from an ante-natal appointment, where the midwife said “I can never believe how relaxed you seem about all this”. Mrs C explained that she had decided not to read any more baby books so didn’t no what to worry about and she didn’t have a birth plan at all. The mere mention of the words “birth” and “plan” made the midwife roll her eyes. It seems that a lot of people spend a lot of time on their plans which, as Mark points out above, bare little resemblance to actual events. Mrs C and I start our NCT classes on Saturday and I’m sure at some point we’ll draw up a birth plan.

Marks experience with his son dictating what goes on is something my brother-in-law has mentioned (aside from the poo’s). His words of warning were very similar to Marks: “Forget about reading the Sunday paper.”

I’d like to say thank you very much to Mark for his time helping me on my little project, it’s much appreciated.