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.

No walk in the park

Last weekend we went to 'Baby Dump'.

The name? Don't ask, I don't know.

While it sounds like the setting for a Stephen King novel, or some sort of shrine to infant excrement, it is simply a baby goods store.

The kind of place that would have made our faces explode just 4 months ago, it still felt more than uneasy walking around there, but we had a scouting mission to complete.

Eye opening, to say the least.

Did you know that you must have 154 different types of baby seat/bassinette to attach to a stroller?

You need one kind to carry the kid to the car, another for in the car, another to remove him from the car, another to bring him back in home, another to rock him to sleep in, another to have him actually sleep in, another for Tuesdays, another if you need to go to the supermarket, and another if you plan on coming home again.

All of these need different adapters to connect to the one Über stroller that you will have remortgaged your house to buy.

You didn't know that? Idiot.

Each of these seats come with their own colour coded set of accessories too. Rain covers, sleet covers, snow covers, fog lamps, alloys, bear traps, fire extinguishers, and flick knives.

All available in midnight magenta and sea-surf blue, all essential enough to make not having them akin to child abuse, and all costing a day's wages.

Then you have the mini sleeping bags because blankets are just so passé, and you never know when your stroll in the park could turn into a trek across the arctic circle.

We left with half a dozen brochures and no idea about what we might need or not need.

What the grump-with-a-bump and I did learn is that transporting nuclear waste is less complicated and expensive than taking a baby to the post office.

King & Queen of the dump

We planned it in advance.

Three months of researching, testing, comparing, doubting, pricing, and pondering - right up until we decided to make our move.

A decision which came just 24 hours before we carried out our Saturday morning attack.

Motivational music was the order of the day on our way there, nerves were evident, but we were focussed.

Bulbous drops of rain began to fall quicker on the windscreen as I turned the key in the car park, the engine falling quiet. In silence for one last moment we stared at our nemesis looming large before us.

Fighting the urge to start the car and just go home again, with fear in our throats, we readied ourselves one last time.

‘You ready for this?’

‘Yes, you?’

‘Yes’

‘Go!’

As fast as a heavily pregnant woman with short legs can move first thing on a weekend morning, we bolted across the car park, towards the neon sign, and through the doors. There was no turning back now. We had to go through with it, the only question now remaining was would we succeed.

Would the forces of workshy customer service spring into action, enabling their forcefield of inverted invisibility, which renders the attention of its bearer unobtainable to the mere mortal?

Would the drawbridge of ‘that is not possible’ be pulled up before we crossed the moat into the courtyard of successful transactions?

Would the conveniently reusable sword of language barrier be wielded about our heads, forcing a retreat?

We couldn’t let it happen, not now, we’d come too far. This was too important.

‘Pardon, spreek je een beitje engels?’ I asked

‘Ja’ she said.

The store blinds flapped, the lights flickered, and the other customers protectively covered their pregnant bellies as I took the deepest of breaths before closing my eyes and continuing....’wewouldlikethemutsysliderwithraincoverandthesafe-to-go-carseatand adapterset(inkakiplease)andforgoodmeasurewewouldliketoorderthatcribupthereinmilkwhitewithmatchingmattress,heresourmoney,heresouraddress,thankyouverymuchgoodbye’

And exhale.

With that, we had defeated the intimidating beast that was the ‘Baby-Dump’ shop. With that, we had purchased a stroller.

It may have paid more for it than Gwen Stefani did for hers, but the accomplishment was symbolic.

Back to the car I carried the padded baby chair under my arm, like the severed head of an enemy king. The car park tarmac passed under our tired feet like the grass of a battlefield falls away from beneath those of happy warriors, the ford focus awaiting our victorious return like a faithful stallion.

The rain lashed down hard as we drove away from the grey industrial estate, and I can’t be certain, but as we accelerated up the exit for the A4, I’m sure I heard a ripple of applause sending us on our way.

The end is nigh

Dear Mr. World Health Organisation man person,

I've got some news for you. The planet is going to spin off of its own axis and plummet through space forever until it collides with something bigger and uglier than us and kills us all.

Why so?! I hear you cry in horror...

Babies.

Babies everywhere. Multiplying at rates invisible to the human eye.

I've been trotting around various cities in this part of the world over the past week with my visitors, Antwerp, Rotterdam, and the Hague and you couldn't swing a cat for fear of hitting a newborn smack in the chops.

Either 86% of the world's population is currently pregnant or there is a serious run on shoplifting bowling balls among the female species.

We even went to Amsterdam last weekend, for gay pride, you would think a poor infertile would find some peace there, but nooooooo. Bloody babies n'bellies as far as the eye could see.

In fact, at this rate of multiplication, I calculate that the world's resources should expire sometime later this week.

Now, let me take a minute to gash my wrists and grab the salt shaker. I've insanely and inanely rambled on before about how I believe we are being mocked by nature. Well, these little froggy horny green bastards were not satisfied in deafening us with their incessant copulation and production of masses of frog spawn, but now it seems that they are playing happy families too.

We are overrun by hundreds of baby frogs.

My warning to the mammy and daddy frogs? keep them out of my sight, or those feeble frogs could fall fowl to my crumbling grasp of reality.

I'm just days away from strapping a couple into a stroller with a couple of bonnets on their heads and taking them to the playground.

"Hi everyone, meet Kermit and Kermitta"