Who you calling Mr. Mom?

Am I a stay at home dad?

Yes. Well, no. Well, yes, sort of.

On Thursdays I am at least. Thursday is the day I swap a temperamental manager, functional design documents, and seven pre-lunch gut eroding cups of coffee, for an appeasable infant, sheep and clown combination patterns, and two dirty nappies before breakfast.

My daughter was already 5 months old when I started using my parental leave to have one day a week at home, so in that respect there were no surprises. I knew what had to be wiped, how often, how hot, how cold, how loud, and how quiet. I knew what she liked and didn’t like, I knew she couldn’t keep her eyes open when listening to ‘Iron & wine’, she would have a grin like a sedated Jimmy Carr when she heard any opening chords from Tracy Chapman, and the very sight of Bono would bring her to tears.

In fairness, that last one may actually be me, but either way I felt I would have this under complete control. I was wrong.

The biggest mistake I made was thinking this was an extra day off. It wasn’t. A couple of post-work hours with my daughter in the evening, or weekends of tag team child care with my wife didn’t prepare me for full days of looking after her. There was constantly some end of her that needed attending to, and this simply wasn’t fitting in well with my attempts to use Thursdays to catch up on my ‘Sopranos’ and ‘The wire’ box sets.

It took several weeks of disastrous Thursdays for me to realise I was approaching it all wrong. She was never going to simply fit in with whatever plan I had for my day. She was my day, and all the other stuff just had to fit in where it could.

While the weather allowed, we got out as much as possible. I don’t play Mr. Mom, I haven’t succumbed to the world of coffee mornings or play groups, and as delightful as they may be, my interest in other people’s babies has a limit somewhere just north of ‘does she sleep through the night?’. That aside, my daughter gets more than enough exposure to other children’s mucous, hair tugging, and eye poking during her three days at crèche. No, we use our time wisely; in her ten short months so far she has brought the car for a service, helped me shop for a Smartphone, and barked instructions at men with chainsaws out in the back garden.

I’ve made sure that all the trappings for a trip out with baby are as manly as is humanly possible. Our stroller is the Land Rover of the infant transportation industry. It made better headway through the recent snowfalls than most Audis, is big enough that I could probably catch forty winks in it myself, and it cost more than my first car. Neither Porsche nor penis extension are required while directing this beast (the stroller, not the child) from the bank to the butchers.

The television doesn’t get a look in on Thursdays now, and while the recent weather has kept us mostly indoors, the radio has become a great substitute with every current affairs and talk show getting an airing. So much so that now, at ten months old, while she can’t tell the difference between a Liga biscuit and a Lego block, leading to many a nappy changing surprise, she can probably babble the finer distinctions between subordinated debt and bond holding better than most.

The other side of the coin is the breaking up of my working week. As passionate as I may be about moving 1s and 0s from one database to another for forty hours a week, a change of pace and scenery is very welcome.

All office jobs have their irritations, and mine is no different. The upside to having a midweek break is that the urges to break a keyboard across a colleague’s face or to snap a ring binder shut on my manager’s windpipe have somewhat abated. Should the truth be reluctantly told, I’m probably just as productive in four days at work as I ever was in five. The extra day away from work leaves me more focused and happier when I am there.

Now that Christmas and all its disruption has passed, I’m looking forward to getting back into our Thursday routine. In January she will be introduced to a few DIY stores, where she can give her opinion on which of the four hundred shades of white will suit the landing, and what’s the best spade for digging up the lawn. I can’t wait for the Summer as she’s starting to become much more mobile and by then she’ll be trotting around by herself, getting us both into trouble.

I don’t know how much use any of this will be to any fathers considering mixing their week between work and staying at home, all I know for sure is that it’s not what I expected. It’s much harder and much more enjoyable once you get the swing of it.

If I were to give a tip, I’d say find a good chiropractor, you are going to spend half of your day bending over.

Oh, and don’t bother ordering that box set, it’ll be cheaper by the time they go to school anyway.

'Who you calling Mr. Mom?' was originally published by Dad.ie in January 2011.

Going Dutch

‘Who are you?’

That’s not normally a question that would send beads of sweat trickling down my back, but when that information was requested from me in Dutch by a snotty nosed 2 and a half year old it was ridiculously unsettling.

Having spent the best part of ten years in the Netherlands, my grasp of the language is enough to keep most managers and customers happy, but not it seems, curious toddlers acting as crèche-bouncers and demanding to know what I am doing in their territory.

That was my first notable challenge of raising a child in a foreign country, the language, I simply didn’t have the vocabulary that goes with conversing with, or about children. I could order a round of drinks, get my trousers taken up at the tailors, even talk my way out of a parking ticket, but I didn’t know the words for ‘nappy’ or ‘buggy’.

When faced with anyone under two feet tall, I was a mute.

Often, life as an expatriate heightens your sense of being Irish, throw a child into the mix and that sense becomes magnified. The urge to make our home that little bit more Irish is strong, I’ve had the sounds of Sharon Shannon and Christy Moore filling the kitchen on Saturday mornings far more often than I would have if I lived in Cork or Galway or Wicklow.

Our daughter physically stands out here. Dark hair, blue grey eyes and sallow skin are not traits that would make a child conspicuous at home, but when she’s sitting among taller, blonder, more sun-kissed children she becomes quite the novelty.

Here she is ‘the Irish girl’.

Most of the differences between raising a child here or at home are intangible, surrounding social, familial, or general attitudes, making the easiest to identify differences the financial ones.

Before the Irish ‘budget of doom’ of 2010, children’s allowance in Ireland stood at €1,800 a year, while here in the Netherlands it’s equivalent doesn’t even even amount to €780.

Interestingly, that figure is unofficially tied to the cost of 3rd level education. Saving the 2009 amount in a long term savings account for 18 years is calculated to precisely meet the average cost of a 5 year 3rd level education.

While it may seem paltry in comparison to its Irish variant, the simple truth is that ‘children’s allowance’ doesn’t need to be any higher. Forking out €50, or anything for that matter, for a GP visit is unheard of, and all health services for children are automatically covered under the mandatory polices of their parents.

Childcare expenses are offset by tax refunds of anywhere from one third to two thirds of the cost, dependent on your income. Although in great demand and following national guidelines, the crèches are privately run and plentiful, so you are more than able to shop around for the one that suits you best.

Governmental support for families doesn’t just come in the form of tax reliefs or allowance payments. The strongest show of genuine concern for the welfare of families as important cogs in society comes in the form of the 26 weeks unpaid leave each parent can take for every child they have.

This leave, which can be taken in any manner you wish in agreement with your employer, meant I was able to take a month off when my daughter was just a few months old. I also get to use a day’s leave each week to be at home with her, as does my wife, allowing us to provide a healthy mix of time with other children at crèche and time at home with her mam and dad, without having to worry about it affecting our job security.

Practicalities aside, it allows my daughter and myself the time and space to build up a priceless relationship. The only way I could envisage this in Ireland, a lotto win aside, is if I were unemployed.

Men using the leave in this way has become known as ‘Papa dag’, or ‘Daddy day’, and is a common feature of professional life here. I work in a team that consists a dozen or so men ranging from 22 to 52 years of age, with not one of them finding it unusual that I would reduce my hours to be at home with my daughter.

On the rare mornings I take her to the crèche I see significantly more fathers dropping of children than mothers. Parenting here is a mix of mothers and fathers, both working, and both staying at home.

There would of course be advantages to raising our daughter in Ireland. It would be great for her to see all her cousins more often, grandparents would be able to spoil her, and there would be family support always readily available when needed.

Unfortunately, being a father means having to make hard decisions for the welfare of your family. It simply would be at best - too uncertain, and at worst - too unwise a move to return now.

Even assuming that we could find the jobs needed to house and feed ourselves, the idea of playing prefab roulette with our daughter’s primary school education just doesn’t sit well with me.

The uncertainty over the future provision of quality education and health services in Ireland is too great for us to risk the relative certainty of what we can provide for our daughter here.

As sad as that may be, it means that for the time being, she will just have to remain ‘the Irish girl’.

'Going Dutch' was original published by Dad.ie in December 2010.

If at first you don't conceive...

My wife and I have a story. It’s a common one unfortunately, infertility.

Normally it falls upon the fairer sex to discuss it, but I have a big mouth, and I don’t really need to be asked twice.

It’s two years since my wife and I decided to start a family. Where the decision came from I have no idea, but once we both said it aloud there was absolutely no doubt that this was right. In fact, we wondered why we hadn’t thought of it before.

We dove straight in, eager and naïve. Thanks to the combined educations furnished by the Sisters of Mercy and the Christian Brothers, we had no idea just how naïve we really were. Once we’d established that we couldn’t actually get pregnant by watching English television channels or by holding hands outside the newsagents, we soon worked out what would work and what wouldn’t.

The early months were great fun; the honeymoon period of trying to conceive is every man’s dream. Dragged by the belt buckle into the bedroom at every opportunity and pounced upon by a fine specimen of womanhood. The disappointments each time we failed were sharp, but the desire and the excitement carried us forward easily into each following month.

Two months became six, which became nine, which became twelve. Something wasn’t quite right. We started absorbing more information from books and websites, using ovulation prediction kits, and charting body temperature. We applied potential solutions to unknown problems. We called in the big guns and headed for our GP.

The first steps were to be the least invasive ones, which meant I was in the spotlight.

Bear in mind that a man’s role in trying to conceive is basic at best. It includes nothing more than fundamental caveman activity. Climb on board, grunt a little, send her into rapturous ecstasy, deposit man milk, and roll over snoring. Actually, the snoring is optional and the rapturous ecstasy is, well, a long shot.

A man’s role in trying to conceive in combination with fertility testing and examination is a whole other beast. A bizarre, often comical, and anxiety-fuelled beast over which you have absolutely no control. You do stupid things, say stupid things, and without beating around the bush, you have to, in fact, beat around the bush. Right into a little pot.

I became so flustered on the morning I had to first speak to the doctor about providing a sample for a semen analysis I forgot how to dress myself. I sat in front of him with one black and one brown shoe on, he certainly wasn’t holding out much hope in my ability to procreate if I was struggling with coordinating footwear. We both coughed every time we used words like ‘semen’, ‘sperm’, or ‘sample’, but I managed to get the general idea, and left.

What was to follow was just ridiculous. Thankfully in matching shoes this time, but red as a beetroot and sinking fast into humiliation, I stood outside the locked office door with my own semen in my pocket.

After what seemed to be no less than six weeks waiting for it to open, it eventually did and I was beckoned inside. I handed the nurse the fruit of my loins in a plastic pot and answered her list of questions in the calmest post-self-pleasuring voice I could manage.

We waited two weeks for the results of the tests, I took them home and hit the internet for an interpretation. My motility score was dreadful. Not just poor or having some room for improvement, but more like a pair of Nokias had been super glued to my testicles. They were that zapped.

I pushed back my keyboard, put my elbows on the desk, and for the first time in years, I cried.

My wife could have finished me off that night, with the wrong word or look, or with any hint of blame in her voice, but there was none. She squeezed my hand tightly, reassured me, and we arranged a second test.

I repeated my duty, brave soul that I am. I was still mortified when I delivered the product of yet another solo sex act into the hands of a stranger, but any shame was instantly forgotten when two weeks later the results were back showing a huge improvement. The first test had been an off day, my swimmers were back. The focus turned to my wife.

We waited months for a specialist appointment, who told us to just go home and keep trying. So we did, every way possible. Each month we tried something different, sex daily, sex every second day, or saved up sex. Sex while suffering with a cold or flu is romantic kryptonite. More months passed and with life now on pause, we went back to the specialist on our knees.

They offered to monitor her menstrual cycle, where we learned that she’s an egg producing superstar, firing out big juicy follicles as regular as clockwork.

Importantly, I learned where you should not sit, and definitely not look, when your wife is in stirrups and a doctor is inserting camera equipment that would be the envy of RTE, inside her.

Indeed, I learned many things I never imagined I could.

I know my vitamins and supplements, I can tell what will have your sperm pulling handbrake turns. I know when a cervix is in the mood to slip into something a little more comfortable, or has a headache. I recognise enough about the ideal consistency of cervical fluid to never want to break an egg again, and with an ultrasound, I can identify a ripe follicle faster than I could a tomato in Tesco.

It’s possible I may already be a qualified gynecologist in fourteen Eastern European countries.

With us both having the all clear, and more months passing us by, the only option left was for my wife to have a laparoscopy. She would go under general anesthetic and through small incisions they would check her ovaries and uterus, and making sure her fallopian tubes had no blockages. We wanted it over and done with, wanted answers, but my wife was terrified.

I can honestly say watching her being taken into surgery in tears was the lowest moment of these two years. We had started out normal, light hearted and giddy with excitement. We only wanted normal things, happy things, and here we were a million miles away from anything resembling normal or happy. My wife was putting herself though hell for that normal.

I was helpless, or more accurately, useless.

The dust settled, and after all the embarrassment, the intrusion on our personal lives, and all the physical discomforts, we had a diagnosis.

We have “unexplained sub-fertility”, a diagnosis, but not an answer. The advice, go home and keep trying. The next step is hopefully a shot at intrauterine insemination before the summer. Meaning more stirrups, more cameras, and more orgasms in a pot.

I’d love being a dad, I think I could be a good one. I love to laugh, I’m employable, and reasonably intelligent most of the time. The kid would have to learn how to arrange their own footwear mind you, but overall I wouldn’t be bad.

Some days I hate having to watch other fathers with their children, purely through jealousy. There are days I feel humiliated and useless when I see boys half my age managing to do what I can’t. I wonder what do they have in them that I don’t? It’s illogical, silly and unbecoming, but two years of failure will give you those days.

So here we are, two years on from a naïve evening on the couch where we came to the biggest decision we’ve ever made. We are nowhere closer to the ‘normal’ we laughed about in bed; statistically we are further away than ever. We don’t discuss names, childcare options, or how many children we should have, now we just hope we get one chance.

A chance to see a positive test, to hear the delightful sound of my wife vomiting her guts up daily, to feel the excitement of a pregnancy, to not have an empty house. A chance to be normal.

All of it is uncertain now, except for one thing. If we don’t get the chance, I know my wife will still be squeezing my hand.

I’ll be squeezing right back.

'If at first you don't conceive...' was originally published by the Irish Times on 11th March, 2009. Subscription required for articles more than 1 year old.