The helpless blog of a first time dad: The five points of pregnancy every father-to-be should know

Junior, Junior, when you gonna come?

Junior, Junior, out of mummy’s tum.

The wait’s been so long, And yet this is my best song.

Junior, Junior, Junior.

OK, so it’s probably not got the longevity of “If music be the food of love, play on,” but then the Bard couldn’t work an Excel spreadsheet or drive a car, so we all have our skills.

Yes, this is week 41 of my wife’s pregnancy and the joy and expectation has given way to two people just sitting around waiting and becoming extremely fed up of answering the “Any news?” question.

The answer I really want to give is “Of course there’s no news, I wouldn’t be sitting at my desk/standing here making this cup of tea in the office kitchen/eating lunch in the `break-out area,’ if my wife was in the throes of labour,” but they’re being polite so I do my best to be so back and end up giving out far too much information about the state of my wife’s mucus plug and the fact that she thought her waters had broke on Tuesday but it turned out she’d wet herself. She can never show her face at the office Christmas party again.

I’m so bored I’ve taken to reading my own blog, just so I can relive the whole 41 weeks again.

However, it did come to my mind rereading the early parts that I really didn’t know what was about to hit me (which included, on one occasion, my wife’s fist). So, as all being well this really will be my last blog calling myself a “dad-to-be,” I’ve decided to list my five lessons of pregnancy to pass on to any man seeing for the first time in his life that his partner’s wee has turned a stick pink. The stuff they don’t tell you in the official help books.

1) Prepare to be ignored

From the moment you announce the pregnancy that is your job done in the eyes of people beyond your loved ones.

When you are out as a couple, no one will address questions to you because pregnancy creates an abundance of small talk opportunities that can only be addressed to your partner. So you’ll stand there like a hotel porter waiting as a guest rummages around in their purse looking for change small enough to give them as a tip while your partner tells so-and-so from Zumba about her terrible sickness/indigestion/backache.

Then you’ll make a joke about a light-hearted comment about the sickness/indigestion/backache, just trying to gain some acknowledgement that you’re there more than anything, and you’ll be looked at by Zumba woman with a combination of contempt and disgust that you caused this and now all you can do is make jokes before the conversation about pregnancy woes is resumed.

2) Everyone will be excited about your 12-week scan – except you

Once your unborn baby is the size of a lime it is ready for its first scan (and, by the way, for the first 32 weeks get used to it being compared to the size of fruit. Then your partner will become the size of a pumpkin and that will stop).

The people you have told to this point, and you to begin with, will get terribly excited about you “seeing” your baby for the first time and hearing its little heartbeat. Then you get to the hospital and experience the most stressful hour of your life.

Basically, it’s an examination to find anything that might be wrong. And it’s a human being growing from scratch so, without wanting to worry you, there is a lot that can go wrong at this stage.

The heartbeat will put you at peace the moment you hear it, but within seconds that turns into an anxiety for it to keep beating. This will go on for as long as the sonographer keeps the speakers on. And transfixed as you are by the image on the screen, any little “hmm” in the sonographer’s voice as she rubs the transducer across your wife’s stomach will be seized upon as a sign of a major problem with your baby’s development. The sonographer at our scan actually said “oh,” at one point and I immediately started to fight back tears. The connection to the mouse on her computer had fallen out of its socket. That’s how highly strung I was.

But try to enjoy it. It’s magical.

3) Google is not your friend

Having said there’s a lot that can go wrong, I should point out that the odds of having a healthy baby are stacked in your favour. You’d do well to remember this every time you turn on your computer.

Now Tim Berners-Lee is widely lauded for inventing the internet, he even got to stand up and wave at the opening ceremony of London 2012, but for the next nine months you will come to curse his clever brain.

Where we once had the NHS, sternly-voiced government films and women travelling around on bikes as our only means of maternity information, now all manner of armchair midwives can make assumptions and draw conclusions about pregnancy matters and write their findings for all to see. Then one day, your partner will have a temperature/leak some green stuff/temporarily lose all feeling on the right side of her face and your instant reaction will be to type these symptoms into Google. Then you’ll click on said amateur midwife’s findings and take them as gospel. (And you’ll find there’s not many people who want to draw your attention to something they think is “probably nothing.” We’re talking nightmare scenarios that will send you into a panic).

The NHS does have a website. They also got a much bigger billing than Tim at the Olympic ceremony (a whole segment of summersaults on hospital beds as against a two second wave).

You should follow Danny Boyle’s lead when placing the information you receive about pregnancy in order of its legitimacy.

4) You can’t win. So don’t even try

So you’re feeling like a spare part in conversations in social situations and pretty helpless at others (there’s not much you can do to alleviate the symptoms that go with pregnancy but never ever say “well you wanted this” to a pregnant woman who is being sick).

But however much your partner might come to detest the sight of you for “trying to help” there’s one thing worse, and that’s not seeing you.

She hates you because of her hormones. Even if that’s not true, that’s what you should tell yourself. But if you are there to rub her feet at the end of the day that will make up for everything that’s gone before and you’ll go to sleep happy (until she can’t sleep because of her size and she punches you in the face for snoring).

But if you think, “she’s not feeling good, I’ll let her stay in bed while I go to the pub” she will immediately take to the internet, post about your actions in a pregnancy forum, and be bolstered by any number of other pregnant women saying how out of order you have been.

I do take a perverse pleasure in reading some of these threads (in a “there but for the grace of God go I” kind of way) and I’ve lost count of the number of posts that have begun “Of course you’re not being unreasonable…” and have ended with the simple refrain, “Men!”

I even started responding to some of these threads, just to try and add a bit of balance and give the other side of the story. As a result, I believe I’m now rivalling Piers Morgan for the title of most irritating man in Britain.

5) If you think you know what love is, you don’t

If it was a planned baby, your partner will have pulled out all the stops before you got her pregnant. Lacy negligee, scented candles, she even did that thing you like that she’s never been entirely comfortable with previously. Anything to put you in the mood to get her pregnant. As a result, you fancied her like never before.

That all stops the moment she finds out her plan has worked. The sweet-talking, sexy temptress you’ve been sharing a house with, frightened that you could be pounced on at any moment, will then be replaced with a blunt-speaking woman who has never truly grasped the phrase, “too much information.”

But here’s the thing. You will have changed as well. So whereas a woman telling you about how flatulence got the better of her in the staff room at work would have turned you off her for life before you made her pregnant, this will now be something to laugh about together. And love her for.

That’s because, if you’re any sort of man, nothing can come between you and the admiration you have for this person. You will honestly never admire a fellow human being more. You will never love a human being more. Just for going through it. To take the full burden for something you think in the beginning you’re creating together. To make your baby.

Being a control freak, at the beginning of my wife’s pregnancy I told her if I could have the baby for her I would. And I meant it. I don’t say that now. To see all that she has endured to bring our child into the world astonishes me, and we think she’s had a fairly easy time of it – and she hasn’t even give birth yet!

So pregnant women everywhere, I salute you. And to Hannah, my heart feels as big as your stomach when I think of you. Thank you. I love you.

Now for bringing up the baby. That’s the easy bit, right?

The helpless blog of a first time dad: A Facebook poke I couldn’t hide from

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