D day day

Some things in life are inevitable, like Morgan Freeman playing Mandela, or Tiger Woods getting herpes, and with 400 entries behind me, this is one of them.

It’s time to put this blog to bed.

There is a little girl who joyfully consumes more time and energy than I need to maintain this place to the standard it deserves; I believe it’s been a good blog and to continue it half heartedly would be doing it a disservice. I’m not entirely at ease with leaving it behind, but watching it go to ruin with poorer and more infrequent entries would be far worse.

It has evolved naturally, along with the story it’s been telling, from one of just another idiot trying to knock up his wife, to one of grim and dark places with sadness, anxiety and uncertainty lurking in the shadows, and on to one of happiness that no words or silly phrases can convey.

You’ve giggled about the early days of trying to conceive, offered advice when things started to look off colour, and consoled us when they repeatedly went wrong.

You’ve read entries every month with the same trepidation with which I’ve read ET’s face at the same intervals. You’ve cursed when we’ve cursed, and you’ve celebrated with us from every farfetched outpost of this planet that you could imagine.

You chuckle when I admit we are paying funny money to a day care centre and all we get in return are germs. You nod your heads when I try, and fail, to articulate how staring perfection in the face every single day can be as equally unnerving and unsettling as it is calming and gratifying.

For all this, and the genuine friendships forged, I can only say thank you.

My biggest debt has to be to the poor woman who has had her intimates on display for everyone to see, both literally, and well, literally. We did it, let’s enjoy it.

As for writing, I can’t stop now. I’ll continue somewhere soon, in my own time, perhaps with another focus. When the touch paper gets lit again there’ll be no stopping me, and you’ll know where to find me. Until then, all ideas, or job offers, are welcome.

For those reading who are still on their own journey, I know how dark it can be, I can only hope along with you, wish you well, and tell you that someday it could all be very different for you. The breathing sounds from the baby monitor here on my desk tell me so.

So, for the last time I want you to get your arse off my couch and give me that mug so I can put it in the sink. I’ll ignore the mess you’ve left with those biscuit crumbs and we’ll walk you to the door. Just don’t expect Sanne to wave because she only does that cute stuff when no one is looking, you do get a huge smile though.

Thank you for calling, safe home.

Toothy opera & the novelty brunette

There she is, sitting in her chair, feet flat on the fl0or beneath her.

Her cheek and arm meet at a 45 degree angled chubby flesh sandwich. I can't tell which is resting on which.

She hums open mouthed songs to herself. The only interruption to her mini operatics comes as she stops to run her tongue forwards and backwards over the two teeth starting to jut out from the centre of her bottom gum.

Teeth!

I wonder what's going through her mind as she fingers the curls behind her ear with her free hand. Maybe she's thinking about all the little boys and girls at her new day care who stroke her arm, fascinated by her mop of dark hair, here in this land of the blonde follicles.

Day care!

Maybe she's contemplating the fact that this is our first official 'Papa dag', where my mobile can ring and ring but I don't have to pick it up.

Maybe, just maybe, this little girl, who I struggle to call a baby now, is filling her nappy.

Jaws

We hadn’t gone a mile when an unidentified individual asked me a question, ‘So, will ye have any more?’

‘Dan’ I replied to the unidentified individual, ‘that’s a tricky question’.

And it is.

From day one the plan was to have more than one, we both had different numbers in mind but one wasn’t one of them.

The thing is now, we know what can be involved, we know how hard it could be, and we know how miserable you can become when it doesn’t happen.

Those twenty-whatever months hosted some of the darkest days in our lives, and even today I still wonder how we came out of them without one of us throwing in the towel.

You can just about carry yourselves through those times, the problems and needs of anyone else come a distant second.

So how do you go back?

What makes you say ‘I know how bad it can be, but let’s try anyway’? How do you do that when today, here and now, you are more content than you ever could have imagined?

Most importantly there is the matter of what we do have, a wonderful daughter. A wonderful, healthy, happiness-exuding little girl who deserves only smiles of an unforced kind. How would the negative effects of another repeatedly failing conception attempt affect her?

When failure is entrenched in their past, how do people decide when to try again?

What do you do when the desire and appreciation for the potential reward is there, but the risks are greater than ever?

When do you go back into the water?

Changes

The UK tourist board don’t mention it much, probably through fear of bigger crowds coming and spoiling it, but along the Hadrian’s Wall path there is a magic door that hurtles you many months into the future.

I came home after just one week to find the baby gone and her much older self sitting upright in her place.

The changes are remarkable.

She waits open mouthed for every spoonful of rice of carrot, and will eat it until she bursts. She will enthusiastically lick or gum attack any kind of fruit you care to present.

She sits in her activity chair, head resting on her fat old woman’s arms, jabbering doe eyed, pausing occasionally to give herself a forearm love bite.

She spots something she wants and goes into a zombie-monkey-like trance, chanting an oddly deep ‘Oooooooh, oooooooh, oooooh’, with stiffened arms outstretched, and eyes quadrupling in circumference.

She talks consistently in some undecipherable bah bah nang nang tongue, decorated with intermittent screeches and throwing back of her head.

She cackles, she covers her mouth and nose with the palms of her hands and breathes a Darth Vader line or two, she pulls her own hair, and she grins.

She grins so wide it looks like it hurts. She smiles so broadly her whole appearance is altered.

She laughs so hard it makes me jealous.

Ouch ouch ouch

Time flies when you’re having trouble standing upright.

That’s what they say, ‘they’ being me.

The last seven days seem like 100 and have me coming over quite Rip van Winkel with the realisation that only one week has gone by.

To recap the Hadrian’s walk in as much detail as anyone is really interested in, but would be afraid to admit, could be done as follows; there was walking, a lot of it, and there was pain, a lot of it.

Day 1 passed with a bit of a blur and a haze of false security, leaving me to set out on day 2 thinking this was a piece of piss. 10 and a half hours walking in the sweltering heat, 2 naps, and one serious hallucination about a talking bottle of cider later, I arrived last back at the bunk barn to find the reward for my stupidity, lack of a sense of direction, and general shocking state of fitness, was a place to sleep on the floor.

Day 3 arrived with me cursing the fact I hadn’t been killed in my sleep by a sweat-craving poisonous rat, crushed by a falling beam, or radiated to death by one of the 215 iPhones that were recharging by my head. As if to yank me back from the depths of despair, the Gods of walking took us through some of the most stunning countryside you could ever see. It was worth the risk to lift my head from watching each footfall every now and again to take in a 360 view of, well, everything. Should someone pass that Robin Hood tree in the coming weeks and find a lung, that's mine, I'd like it back. By day 4 I was a man on a mission, striding over fields, leaving everyone in my stubby-legged-oversized-backpack wake, except for those faster than me, which to be fair, was everyone. The lanky fuckers.

That afternoon things went back down the toilet once again and my knee decided to go on strike. It turned its back on its normal duties of simple things like supporting half my body, and meant that day 5 was a wash out. Disappointingly, I spent the afternoon on my bed rubbing myself and moaning, and not out walking rubbing myself and moaning. Some good did come of it though; I discovered ibuprofen gel and the magic that it weaves on human lower extremities. Thanks to this wonderful invention, I set off on day 6 as stoned as an Iranian adulteress, happy to let my new best friend in a tube lead my way on the last day. Wind and rain fought against me for every one of those last 16 miles but Mother Nature is no match for copious amounts of drugs, and sometime mid afternoon I strolled over the West end point of Hadrian’s wall path.

Like most of Angelina Jolie’s conquests might reflect after their first and final night together, I might not have finished it off, but I survived.

Despite his bewildering lack of understanding what a mile is, Dan is owed a huge thanks for putting this together over the course of the last year or more. It’s hard to source a bottle of water on parts of that path, never mind accommodation and food for 35 whingers. A big thanks to his whole family, and his old walking mates who kept wasters like me going when throwing yourself sobbing into a ditch was an attractive option. Same goes to all the other walkers too, every one of whom made me chuckle just enough to make it bearable.

I look like parts of my body were dipped alternately in whitewash and purple paint, my flaking sunburn has left enough of my DNA behind to convict me of every crime from Bowness to Wallsend, I ache from the waist down, and the dried and dying blisters leave the smell of rotting flesh hang in the air, but it is all worth it to see that you lot have raised £700 plus, of the almost certainly reached £20,000 target.

Now the real world is demanding my attention again in the form of a little girl who found a new voice in my absence. She is constantly grinning like a demented monkey, has put on some good weight, likes to high five at every opportunity, and regularly throws her legs back up over her head.

I love seeing her progress but that last bit she can stop immediately.

Oh well, one step at a time.

Stupid tortoises

By the time you read this, I will be dead.

Well, I won’t, but I always wanted to say that. Then again, if you are reading this for the first time sometime around 2060 I very well could be. Anyway, by the time you read this I will be on my knees under a back pack as heavy as myself and twice as big.

Today starts Hadrian’s Walk, where I will join the rest of the Dan Hughes cult in an attempt to walk across England.

It hit me yesterday how utterly stupid a man I am. I’m not fit, I’m not sporty, and I’m not entirely sure I’m in full possession of all my senses. Everything I am going to need for the next week is on my back. Unless you are a camel or a tortoise, that cannot be a good thing.

I don’t want to go, so why the idiocy? Why the happy-ending-less self abuse? Why leave my two ladies behind for a week?

It makes a difference, that’s why. Everyone that is going is each making a small difference, and as any good mathematician or corrupt banker will tell you, lots of small differences make a big difference.

It makes a big difference to families who have lost children. It helps them in a practical way when their worlds are at their lowest point. Every one of you who have donated, every one of you who has promoted the walk and the trust on blogs, twitter and facebook, every one of you who has encouraged the walkers as they prepare and fundraise, every one of you have helped us make those small differences.

Through this site you’ve raised just over £600, this is more than I expected, and I am grateful and delighted. Overall, the fundraising is currently at over £17,000 of the £20,000 target.

So this is, in effect, the last call to arms before I lose my legs, £600 is brilliant, but wouldn’t £650 be even better? If you find that you can help, please do so here.

It’s help we all hope we will never need, but some do.

Neil and Rachael's story.

The official Joseph Salmon trust site.

The Hadrian’s Walk blog.

The Hadrian’s walkers donation site.

My personal donation site for the trust.

Day One

She’s not broken.

I didn’t need the sellotape, the baby is unscarred, and the house is still standing strong. Ok, maybe the house is creaking a little but that has nothing to do with yesterday.

Yesterday, Thursday the first day of July in the two thousand and tenth year of the Gregorian calendar, we packed ET off to work and I began my first weighty and stressful day as a temporary stay-at-home father.

5 episodes of Dexter later all was still well with the world and the child. Granted her first word may turn out to be ‘disembowel’, but nobody’s perfect.

She laughed, screeched, drank, ate, and shitted with all the vigour of a drunk being beaten with a baseball bat.

Today, an action packed day lies ahead for us, oh the plans we have would make Barney’s place seem Guantanamo for infants. There’s lying in and napping, followed by world cup quarter finals, and then annual dramatic and entertaining elimination from Wimbledon of the only British man who knows what a tennis racket is.

Oh, and I think there’s some vaccination appointment or other thrown in there too. We might squeeze that in.

Jiggety jig

Home again, home again.

The silence has been thankfully shattered, and the blue-grey hue of an empty house has been replaced with a noisy technicolour racket.

My long standing belief that airplanes are several notches higher on the ‘germ spreading’ scale than say, being licked by an arse-picking tramp on the floor of a public toilet, has again been proven true. Mango’s snuffling, spluttering and coughing is evidence enough.

So while we hope it passes fast I’m just glad she came home.

Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes that blue-grey hue remains. Sometimes children leave their homes and never come back.

I was unsettled enough over three days to get an inkling of how shattering and traumatic it would be to be facing never seeing or hearing your child at home ever again.

That’s just one of the reasons why, in just over a week, I will join dozens of others in England to walk the width of the country along the Hadrian’s walk trail in support of the Joseph Salmon trust.
The trust offers financial support to families who have lost children, giving them a little breathing space during the lowest point imaginable.

I’m delighted with what has been raised so far, both through here, and in total. An overall target of 20,000 pounds is very achievable if people continue to give whatever they can, or spread the word in whatever way they can. A sugar daddy, or mammy, who craves a warm fuzzy feeling can get a quick fix by dropping a couple of (or twenty) grand into the pot.

It’s been nearly two weeks since I’ve raised a single penny, fancy being my hero and helping out here?

Solstice solace

June 21st was the longest day of the year, in every sense imaginable.

Yesterday was the first day that I hadn’t seen Mango from dawn till dusk. In what’s sounding a little like Alanis’ long lost verse, I left her and ET behind in Ireland the day before, father’s day.

The house is far too quiet, eerily echoing the way it was not even two years ago.

Our neighbour has been and come back from the shops, his two wee girls skipping ahead of him both ways, you notice these things when you sit on the coffee table for half an hour.

Mango’s welcome home present is lying in her playpen watching the television that’s turned on just to break the silence and I move about the house starting ten different things and completing none of them.

My little girl is back home, meeting and greeting, being passed from pillar to post, being poked and prodded with the best intentions. That’s an exhausting few days for someone so small and I want nothing more than to bring her to my shoulder so she can rest her head. Then maybe I can rest mine.

Just one more big sleep.

Squeezing

90 minutes a day, normally, 2 hours if we get lucky.

That’s less than I spend driving.

Life and work and being responsible-ish squeeze most of the life out of us before I get to see Mango.

First thing in the morning, I peek into her cot and she is stretching from head to toe with excitement, grinning so wide you can’t tell if her ears are outside or inside her mouth.

For the next 10 or 11 hours she lives out her days, her walks, her snoozes, and her finger chewing - all while I’m elsewhere behind a laptop, speaking pigeon Dutch and all too often counting to ten.

At the end of the day she is just as pleasant as she was when it started, coyer perhaps, but full of smiles and dribbles saved up for me.

With four months having already flown by, should things have to remain on the same schedule it would be a true shame. Thankfully, and luckily, they don’t. Dutch law entitles both parents to 26 weeks parental leave, to be used, within reason, in any form they wish.

Because of this, I get to spend July getting it all back. Aside from the wee bit where I abandon my family, I have the entire month free when ET goes back to work. That leaves 22 of those 26 weeks, which I get to use 1 day at a time, once a week, for the next 2 years or more.

Thanks to some sensible parental leave legislation, from August onwards I’m cutting to 4 days a week.

From then on, Donderdag is ‘Papa dag’.

From then on, I get to do some serious squeezing back.

Maybe she should learn a trade

Some people wake to trash metal stations, some to the dawn chorus, and some to the sound of rubbish bins being thrown around outside their window.

We wake to singing, in the most subjective and optimistic sense of the word.

She wakes slowly, first feasting on a breakfast in bed of fists and fingers, mumbling and babbling to herself along the way. This babbling leads her to remember she has real vocal chords and the screeching starts.

She must surely swallow all her consonants during the warm up, because by the time she’s in full flight there’s nothing to hear except for a string of vowels, randomly strung together and impossibly pronounced in the form of long screeching warbles reaching volumes that render the baby monitor redundant.

Sneaking a peek around the door at this performance I challenge anyone not to laugh. Lying there with a head of hair like a Liz Taylor wig, her sleep-suit spread around her like a 1980s wedding dress, and a face full of concentration. Her eyes rolling and tongue flapping around her chicken-like gums, arms extended straight and stiff with fists clenched while she belts out one never ending deafening note after another.

By the time she is working up a crescendo all that’s missing is strobe lighting, a key change, and a wind machine.

Les Pay-Bas, nul points.

Eviction and kumbaya

How do you celebrate the first anniversary of the fusing of a new human into existence?

You start the process of kicking them out of course.

Last night, for the first time, Mango slept in her own room.

Her eviction was borne from necessity rather than choice, since the wee maggot is growing like a weed and about to burst though the sides of her Moses basket.

Unfortunately she’ll have to remain in the basket in her new surroundings for a while longer until we solve a slight oversight on the part of her crib.

While she normally sleeps like a, well, baby, she occasionally needs a rocking to settle her. The crib weighs about the same as a garden shed, and is less mobile. As my first suggestion of shortening one of the legs to create rocking possibilities was shot down in a blaze of scorn and disgust, we’ll have to come up with an alternative.

Not only have we arranged for her to exit our bedroom, we’ve also put the wheels in motion for her to get out of the house completely by visiting her future daycare centre.

She sat in her sling as we walked around, giving her Princess Diana-esque bowed head coy smile to everyone who greeted her. By the time we were attacked by some strange poodle cross bred with a chicken in the garden she had nodded off and played no further part in the discussions.

She will be there 3 days a week from August onwards, enjoying life with young kids of various ages in what I can only describe as a somewhat ‘new age’ children’s haven.

It’s not quite at the level of shitting in the woods or weaving blankets from discarded pubic hair, but it was emphasized that they ‘solve everything with a hug’.

Everything except settlement of their extortionate bills no doubt, the thieving hippy bastards.

The days of the dinosaurs

It seems like a million years ago since we regularly whispered in various waiting rooms waiting for ET’s name to be called. A million years since creaky seats, season old magazines, and questionable artwork.

It seems like a million years since the big black umbrella pooled rainwater around its silver tip as we waited in the lesser seen corridor behind the heavy door. A million years since we were finally called to come further.

It seems like a million years since ET took up her, by then all too familiar, position, spread-eagled at sitting head height. A million years since the niceties and pleasantries, ‘terrible weather last night’ before ‘now I’m going to insert it’.

A million years since ‘You can lie there and relax until you’re ready to go home.’ A million years from going home. A million years since a fortnight felt like a million years away.

It seems like a million years ago that the lack of clarity about what I believed in vanished. A million years since I realised that I believe in science and what it can achieve, in biology and what it cannot, in what I can touch, see, feel or hear. A million years since I knew I believe in people, their skills, what they say and do, since I knew I’d rather have a man in a white coat than one on a white cloud every single time.

It seems like a million years ago, but it’s only been one.

IQ

I’m not the brightest.

Yes I come up with good ideas on rare occasions, but all in all I shouldn’t be allowed to do, or say, anything. Ever.

Approximately a year ago I was placed under the spell of a pied piper of podiatry punishment, and I agreed to walk across England with Dan and the rest of the children of Hamelin.

Aside from the fact it’s a rather odd idea to begin with, I have overlooked some of the more practical aspects of this endeavor.

First and foremost the fact that it will probably kill me.

84 miles across England, albeit the skinny bit, over the course of 6 days means walking about 15 miles each day. I can reasonably imagine myself walking even 20 on any given day, but I would be in need of bed rest and a bedpan for a fortnight.

Instead, after walking that on day one, I’ll have to get up and do it again on day two. And day three, day four, day five, and day six. I’m not a fit man, I really hadn’t thought this through.

As if to further illustrate my simplicity of mind, my preparation for this week of hill walking takes place here in Holland, also known as ‘the land of fuck all hills’. If you can prepare for hill walking while pushing a 12 week old in a pram, you’re doing something very wrong.

The nail in my impending coffin is said 12 week old. How can I be away from this for a whole week?

If you wish to show how sorry you feel for her, or me, or if you want to demonstrate how much you will enjoy following the details my excruciating physical pain, or if you just want to get behind the walkers in raising funds to help families who have lost children, you can do so here.

Regardless of how little or how much, every single donation is appreciated.

Neil and Rachael's story.
The official Joseph Salmon trust site.
The Hadrian’s Walk blog.
The Hadrian’s walkers donation site.
My personal donation site for the trust.

Runaway train

They were right of course, the smug bastards.

‘It will go by so fast’.

It does. It has. 40 plus weeks of pregnancy have come and gone in a ridiculous flash, Mango is here and about to turn 12 weeks old.

Twelve bloody weeks old, in no time at all we’ve gone from measuring her existence in minutes, hours, or even days, to dozens of weeks. Months.

She still stares exactly as she did that very first time, that kind of unwavering, uncompromising stare that actors try to perfect in order to be dubbed 'the new Pacino'. For the rest, she’s constantly changing, evolving.

What strikes me most is her independence. That may sound ridiculous of someone who needs changing and feeding, but it’s her spark that’s independent, her spirit.

As long as someone is there to tend to her, she’s fine, she’s happy. She doesn’t need us, yet we couldn’t live without her, and my adult brain can’t quite get itself around that infant inspired realisation.

It comes down to this, she doesn’t know or care about what it took to get her here, she owes us nothing, and neither should she. The weight of what went before is for us to carry, not her.

At 12 weeks old she has probably already needed us as much as she ever will as a child. Depressingly, but rightly, as it should be.

It goes by so fast.

Smug bastards.

Babelfish

‘Haaai’ she says, if you haven’t shoved your face in front of hers in a while.

That’s ‘Hello’ to you and me. Not so much a welcoming hello but edging more towards that sarcastic fake teeth filled smiley hello that groups of girls use amongst themselves on a night out.

‘Eh’ is her ‘Meh’. She usually rolls this one off in conjunction with a sigh and a scornful glance before turning her head in the opposite direction. To be interpreted in no other way than ‘you haven’t amused me with that sound or stupid face, so piss off’.

A very pitiful sounding ‘Mmmboo’ means she’s knackered. Stop trying to keep her awake as she’s flat out exhausted and things will only deteriorate rapidly until you ensure that she finds herself in a prime position to have an uninterrupted snooze. ‘Mmmboo’ is often joined by sad baby face.

Like many Dutch words, her ‘Ngong’ has a couple of meanings. Namely ‘give me a bottle now’ and ‘I’m about to scream my head off through starvation’. Take the bottle from her mouth mid-feed and you are likely to be bombarded with a string of ‘Ngong ngong ngong’s.

'Nnngh, nnngh, nnngh’ is especially for me. When it is accompanied with a frown and a reddening face literally translates to ‘Daddy quick! Make an excuse to leave me with Mammy because I’m in the process of filling this nappy with something that will turn you off your lunch.’

‘Gaaaaaaah ef ef ef muhm muhm aaaheeuw’ highlighted with two big headlamp eyes almost certainly means, ‘Please go read this. Please, please, please help daddy help that big sweaty Englishman raise funds for a trust that helps families who have lost children. Normal families just like yours, or your neighbour’s, or your friends, who face financial difficulties during the darkest times they are likely to face. You can help someone simply by donating any amount at all here.’

She may sound a wee bit pushy, but she has a point.

Neil and Rachael's story.

The official Joseph Salmon trust site.

The Hadrian’s Walk blog.

The Hadrian’s walkers donation site.

My personal donation site for the trust.

The Nederlander

I’ve had ten of them.

Friday was the tenth ‘Koninginnedag’ I’ve had the dubious pleasure of experiencing.

Ten times I’ve seen the Dutch national holiday come and go in its usual sea of orange clothing, odd songs, and untimely downpours. Yet not once have I ever particularly enjoyed it, other than as an excuse to imbibe that little bit extra. Not a surprise I suppose, being a foreigner.

I wonder about Mango though, technically she is Irish, despite her birthplace, but for all intents and purposes she’s going to have her early years surrounded by the same things that every other little Dutch girl has.

Her Irish passport is winging its way to us as we speak, albeit probably via the hands of an Israeli assassin, or first being used as an incentive for an Arab billionaire to invest in some Galway based businesses. Should it eventually arrive in one piece it will be the only thing to set her aside from all her peers at school or daycare.

She will be sung Dutch songs, will be told Dutch fairy tales, and will play Dutch games with her little Dutch friends.

She’ll be cycling before she can walk, having cheese for breakfast, and talking with a funny accent.

We’re raising a foreigner.

A cute one though.

Blue and grey

They really should be brown.

Even today I look at her and still expect them to be brown.

Her skin is sallow, and the mop of dark hair frames her chubby face like an ill fitting Elizabeth Taylor wig. They themselves are huge. Wide open, full of magnetic focus, as if she were some sort of floppy hypnotist.

Nevertheless, they should be brown.

Instead, I see them sparkle out bright blue in the sharp sunlight of these Spring weekend mornings, turning metallic grey as the days turn into evenings.

They live and breathe with her, they dance on their tip-toes when she laughs or screeches, limbs flying in every direction. They hold themselves focused and sure as she takes you in, her whole body stiff as she examines your change of expression.

They hold their gaze until she has passed her judgement, a return to the dancing orbs and smiles, akin to a Roman thumbs-up. A full face frown the thumbs-down, the sentencing to death of he or she who fails to entertain her.

They should be brown, but surprisingly and wonderfully, they are not.

Coronary π

It has been threatened for a while.

She was always ready with huge tongue lolling smiles, arms and legs pumping like crazy, breathing rapidly, all the while urging her vocal chords to join in.

Tuesday night I held her in her bath, and gently pushed waves of warm water up her chest to right under her soft chin.

That was the trigger.

‘Keeeh hee hee hee.’

Over and over again. ‘Keeeh hee hee hee.’

A rolling hearty laugh that made her wobble and shake. The kind of laughter I’m certain neither you nor I have laughed in many, many years. From the very balls of her feet up to her throat, causing it's own little baby bath tsunami.

A perfectly scaled down version of the rasping laugh of a two pack a day 60 year old smoker, albeit with a head full of shampoo, sopping wet, and stark naked.

We could do no more than stand, gaping like idiots, laughing right back at her.

She was most likely oblivious to the risks she was running in choosing that particular moment to debut her laughing abilities, the combination of me struggling to hold her through my own laughter, and us leaving her submerged to the point of the onset of pneumonia in the hope of a repeat performance, may result in her never daring to try it again.

She did duly piss all over me shortly afterwards, so who knows.

We’ve had the ultrasound heartbeat, we’ve had the 3D video, we’ve had her first screeches and her babbles, but in truth none of it comes remotely close to this. None of it.

The difference between her not existing, from being the stuff of daydreams, something always just out of reach, to lying there laughing heartily up at the both of us is beyond calculation.

Long may the difference continue to grow, immeasurably. Unquantifiably.

Infinitely.



If you haven’t read about the Hadrian's walk already, please do here, and if you can help somehow, regardless of how small, please do.

Oblivious

I have often wondered about the various people on the periphery of this 3 year long mental massacre. I wonder do any of them think of us now.

From the GP I visited wearing the Abbott and Costello of the footwear world, to the head-bandaged IUI assistant who stood frowning at ET’s vagina like it were a set of dodgy spark plugs, to the croc footed fertility clinic employees who silently hovered around the premises whispering at everyone.

From the nurse who ran out of fingers on which to count the( ever so slightly more than the expected three) follicles during our first IUI attempt, to all the brave souls who handled with such care the fruit of my self-abuse, to the ultrasound technician that first pointed Mango out to us in her tiniest form.

From any one of the dozen dildo-cam wizards who impaled my fair lady on an almost daily basis, to the (figuratively speaking) faceless Canadians packing our online orders for hundreds of ovulation tests, to the shop assistant down the road bagging up our bizarre purchases of pampers and durex.

I wonder do they ever cast a thought to that short foreign couple who kept badgering them for tests and appointments. Each one of them contributed, by their own hooks and crooks, to Mango being here today, chubby and sallow, with a head of insane black hair complete with fair streaks, feeding like a demon and sleeping through the night.

Some have made it their profession, but others remain clueless as to how they helped this family.

Walking around every day is an oblivious army of heroes; remarkable if you just stop to think.

Thanks a million to everyone who have already helped other families by supporting Hadrian’s Walk through donating or spreading the word. If you haven’t read about it already, please do here, and if you can help somehow, regardless of how small, please do.