Just Bouncing Along On a Swiss Ball

For some reason Sophie has no intention of letting anyone be comfortable while they are holding her, When I walk in the door, all I want to do is give my daughter a cuddle and sit down.

Not an unreasonable wish, you'd think, but she gives me a choice, sit down with and hear her cry or stand up and hear her coo. Somehow she can tell whether I'm standing or sitting - it must be some sort of sixth sense because I've got my wife to measure the angles and nothing changes. Short of having an altimeter there can be no way she can tell the difference whether I'm up or down, especially with her eyes closed. Heck, sometimes late at night I'm not even sure if I'm standing or sitting. Even so, with some spooky sort of baby ESP, she knows.

But the other night while cleaning out some cupboards I came across an old inflatable Swiss Ball (a relic from the time I read in a magazine about the virtues of throwing away my office chair and using one of these instead. At the time I had delusions of increasing my core stability and decreasing my waistline).

A blinding flash of inspiration had me dust it off the Swiss Ball and blow it up - maybe it would give her the rocking movement of standing and me the comfort of sitting. Maybe I could bring my 30 plus years of experience in negotiation to bear on my 11 week old daughter. Maybe we could cut a deal.

So I picked her up, got her happy, then slowly sat down.

And stopped.

Silence.

Ding ding. A rare round goes to Dad.

Our house is now a happy one again. Dad can come home from work and sit down. Daughter can get her evening cuddle. Oh, and Mum can watch my progress towards core stability and a healthy waistline.

Good Times, Bad Times

Having a daughter has brought some of the strongest feelings in my life, and as an INTJ, feelings are not something I usually pay much attention to.

In the days of my youth
I was told what it was to be a man,
Now I've reached the age
I've tried to do all those things the best I can

Led Zep lyrics are great in that they can be bent to fit any situation. There been no brown eyed man stealing my wife away (that I know of anyway) and it been a long long time since I had any dealings with a sixteen year old girl. But what I 've found is true as a Dad is that all the things I was told "in my youth" have stared to float back. I've posted before about how everyone has advice for new Dads, but I think it's the advice people give you before you are a Dad, before you're even thinking about becoming a Dad, that is the most important.

In those days of innocence, when meeting people and discovering girls is a new adventure, fathers are people who are there in the background for most, who come home at night and watch TV. I was lucky enough to have a great Dad, but silly enough not to know it, or rather to take it for granted. After all, didn't everyone's Dad take them to tennis, to rugby, help coach their teams? The simple answer is "no".

I went down to Streatham Common last Saturday and there was lots of football training, some coaches were out there giving it everything, encouraging the kids to run up the hill, to chase the ball and do the drills. But what struck me was that there weren't many parents there. I guess sport has become a sort of a babysitting service. These kids grow up thinking that it's normal for someone else to take care of them, that parents are not for learning from, that parents are what you have when something isn't so important.

So perhaps it's not something that's said aloud, and it's defintely not politically correct to talk about how someone else is raising their children, but letting someone else bring up your kids and get the best out of them is an option. But taking it is not what I think it is to be a man.

Have Baby, Get Ladies

Many years ago, when I was young and single, I used to diligently read all the articles on "how to pick up women" that I could find. Hours of research didn't help much, all the advice was much too contrived and desparate, but one of the most common themes was getting a wingman.

When going out at night, by necessity, that wingman would be a friend, willing to fake interest in the girl's less attractive friend for long enough to get a phone number or to crash and burn completely. But there were some other wingman options for the daylight hours.

One of the most popular was getting a small animal. Puppies are great, no girl, the theory goes, can resist stopping to pat a puppy. Use the animal to draw them into conversation. By having a puppy you are automatically seen as sensitive and caring, willing to show your vulnerable side exactly the type of man that's most attractive to women.

These articles usually had a sidenote along the lines of even better than a puppy was a baby. Preferably not your own, just one you could borrow and take for a walk in the park for a couple of hours (after all, having your own baby so you could pull women was sort of defeating the point!).

Anyway, the point I was trying to make was that babies are great, and they do work, at least to get attention. the first time I took my daughter out strapped in to my chest in the Baby Bourne, I got so many glances from women that it took me a long time to realise that it was not my fly that was open, but my daughter, attracting women like flies.

There's something about a man on his own carrying a baby that gets coos - I think my record is 7 in 60 seconds, not that I would be so shallow as to count them! It's typical, all that time and effort spent trying to attract women and when you don't need them, there is all the attention in the world just out there waiting. Right, I'm off to eBay, I'm sure there must be a niche for a baby rental scheme out there somewhere and it's about time the daughter started to pay her bills!

Won't Someone Shut that Baby Up? 5 Ways to Stop the Crying

There's only one thing worse than being on public transport when there's a baby crying, and that's when the crying baby belongs to you.
When my daughter decides to cry, there is absolutely nothing I can do to make her stop straight away, there's no "off button" or mute, and abandoning her on a brick path, or on the side of the road, while tempting on occcasions, is definitely not an option.

Also, if wishing a baby would be quiet worked, then I don't think there would be such a thing as a crying baby, except maybe as a curiosity in the odd exibition at the Tate. So for that reason, a baby crying in public shouldn't be any more stressful than one crying in private at home.

Of course knowing that and acting on it are two very different things. I've made a list of 5 common reasons for crying below, and written down it seems nice and easy to identify and deal with, and most important, to understand. Now I don't recommend printing these out and passing them to the people who give out disapproving looks and expect them to nod in as understanding way and accept you as the owner of a crying baby, but sometimes it helps get things in perspective.

1. Hungry - babies cry when they're hungry. This is usually pretty easy to identify, even for novice fathers like me. Our daughter gives it away when she starts headbutting and sucking things. The solution for this is easy, just give her a feed.
   
2. Full Nappy - babies don't like having a wet nappy, and it leads to horrible things like nappy rash. Having overcome some initial reservations about how to identify it, this Dad now knows that the easiest way is giving the offending area a quick sniff. Not always pleasant, but definitely effective. The solution for this one isn't too hard either - remove old nappy, dry the area and throw on a fresh one.
   
3. Hot or Cold - babies don't like being too hot or cold and let it be known by, you guessed it, crying. Being winter in London, we don't have too much experience with the too hot part, but definitely cold hands, feet, and especially noses. The solution for a cold baby? Again, this is not rocket science, give her heat (body heat is the most effective, but like all the best solutions for babies is definitely the most labour intensive).
4. Tired - for our daughter, sleep time is one of the hardest times. We can watch her eyes start to droop, then she likes to scream, then droop, then scream. The solution? Time and lots of jiggling. Our daughter has decided only the left shoulder will do. And Mum or Dad must be standing up. And usually one other requirement that can change daily.
   
5. No Real Reason - some days, it seems, are just better than others and our daughter lets us know which is which by the simple but very efective method of crying. The solution? Not much you can do about this one, just hold her close and rock, joggle, tickle, sing, be quiet, stand up, sit down, go for a walk (I would say go for a drive, but we don't have a car, and as per my notes above, public transport is not the best option for a crying baby!). The best thing is that it stops, but as any parent knows, time slows down when your baby is upset.
   

This is not the most comprehensive list, and the remedies aren't too exhaustive, but are a starting point. I think I just have to realise that my baby. like all babies, is going to cry and that accepting it and loving her is part of parenting.

Two final thoughts that migth help you make it through the next tantrum on public transport.

1. While the buses are carrying signs about not eating smelly food or playing loud music because it disturbs other passengers, at least they haven't outlawed crying babies.
   
2. One of the perks of parenting is that you can always get your own back. Babies don't know what's happening, so can be put in the funniest outfit and positions and are powerless to stop it happening. These can make for great blackmail photos when they get older.
   

Bonding with Baby

Families are all about bonding and mother and daughter have definitely bonded. But is there such a thing as too much bonding?

Spending so much time together is great for them, but it makes life hard when I come home and want some time with my daughter. She just can't stand to be without Mum, and after a few minutes starts looking around more and more frantically.

After the weekend, when I've had the chance to spend lots of time with her, things are fine again with us and she no longer looks for Mum. It worries me that they can be too close, there must be a line where they have a happy medium, but because we have no family over here and because I work during the day, there's no one else either of them can spend much time with.

It leads to jealousy on both sides, my wife says she doesn't like being in different rooms from her daughter for more than a few minutes, andwhile she claims it's ok that I can play with my daughter, she hates even the thought of anyone else touching her.

It works both ways, my wife said she was holding our daughter a few days ago when they caught sight of their reflection in the mirror, My wife carried her closer so my daughter could see herself better. Closer. Closer. Then our lovely, peaceful daughter pounced! She hit the mirror a couple of times in a rage (luckily there were no sharp objects around). How dare another baby take her place with Mum!

So now we have another rule added to our list, this one to keep baby facing away from the mirror. This is not something we can explain to her, no matter how patient we are. It's just a matter of time before she works out the truth, that she is the most loved baby ever and that no one is going to take her place. I think she knows this is the truth with Mum, as a London Dad, I just have to work out the best way to convince my daughter that Dad really wants to bond too.

Immunisation - The First Rite of Passage

Just put my daughter to bed after a long day. She is now the not so proud owner of two immunisation jabs, apparently proof against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), polio and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), and the worst thing she has ever been through.

My wife decided to breastfeed while she got the jabs, it worked for the first one, she took it with just a whimper, but nothing was going to distract her from the second one, so Mum was in the bad books all day.

When I got home from work I've never had a daughter as glad to see me. She hadn't slept since the immunisation jabs, but about 5 minutes after I held her she was fast asleep, opening an eye occasionally to make sure Mum wasn't getting too close.

Of course, hunger won out in the end and the ban on Mum came to a finish. She's still getting suspicious looks though, and it's going to take a while to rebuild that trust.

It's a shame these things hurt so much, we thought alot about it before booking her in as there's so much in the media about links with autism and other problems. She certainly came down with a fever and spent an unhappy afternoon, but it's nothing compared to what could happen if she wasn't protected. We keep telling our daughter, "Welcome to the real world" (we didn't have the nerve to try, "This hurts us more than it hurts me", though to be honest, I think it did).

Here's hoping she'll be right again in the morning. I've got a game of paper, rock, sicissors to win against my wife to see who will take her in for the next round, a second rite of passage - it could be the most important game of my life!

Family Overseas (Tyranny of Distance)

Being a new Dad with a family overseas is both great (because of the distance) and terrible (because of the distance).

Great because my wife and I get to do things almost completely our own way and amke all our mistakes with no pressure - there's no Mum or Mum-in-Law standing over us saying "don't do it like that". On the other hand we don't have ready-made baby-sitters (!) and, because we don't speak absolutely every day, it also magnifies everything that happens. This means a joke we make about bottle feeding or giving a dummy, or an email with a funny photo can get completely misconstrued.

I'm now being extra careful with the photos, I've learnt to use The GIMP, a free image editor, which lest you paste in fake backgrounds and make things look much more exciting and dangerous than they really are. While I don't think they believed the one with the shark about to bite, the ones with her sitting alone in the log didn't go down too well. Dad was about a yard away, I promise!

There's a great "Split Enz" song (Six Months in a Leaky Boat) that talks about the "tryanny of distance":

"Aotearoa, rugged individual,
Glisten like a pearl,
At the bottom of the world.
The tyranny of distance,
Didn't stop the cavalier,
So why should it stop me,
I'll conquer and stay free."

Not quite sure what that means, but for me it means that Aotearoa (the Maori word for New Zealand) is a long way away from London and of course London is a long way from New Zealand too. As much as we share photos and the hours we spend on the web cam, it's not the same as having family there. I can see Mum wince over the web cam if she thinks I'm holding my daughter the wrong way, she's wonderful and doesn't say anything, but I know.

Still, I think we're doing ok, and are going to make the trip back in a couple of months to show the results of all our parenting. Not entirely looking forward to the flight (over 30 hours), so will be looking for some advice on flying with a new child. It's going to be an interesting time and I think we'll spend the flight back here relieved, but also wiser because we've got a lot to learn and a lot of people willing to give advice. That old selective hearing might just come in handy once again!

New Dads - Everyone's Got Some Advice

One thing I've noticed is that everyone is full of advice for me as a new Dad. While this can be useful, I like the chance to make my own mistakes. Actually, while I like accidently doing the right thing (then I can call it natural talent), I hate making mistakes. Mistakes usally mean jiggling a crying baby at some crazy hour of the morning, or smearing on nappy rash cream and praying the redness goes away before Mum sees.

So I'm not a naturally talented Dad, but I am a tryer and I think I'm doing ok. I won't admit it, but it makes me feel great when my wife says I did well, or at least when she doens't roll her eyes. I try to do my share with our daughter, jiggling her and trying to get her to sleep. One thing I still can't do though is breastfeed (in one of our early attempts to bond I did have a "skin to skin" session with my daughter that lead to a painful yelp from me and a confused crying session from her - I've tended to keep a t-shirt on ever since!).

Not sure where this post is going now, but in spite of the above I am open to advice. It's great when people take the time and care enough to pass something on. So please, keep the advice coming - but remember, this not-so-perfect Dad has selective, not-so-perfect hearing!