The helpless blog of a first time dad: Tunnel vision gives way to nest building

Darryl and Hannah in a rare moment side-by-side at London ExCel's Baby Show

This wasn’t because I had to go to work, far from it (literally).

As you may recall from my very first blog, back when I didn’t have a care in the world, we were on a honeymoon cruise in the South China Sea. We’d docked in Vietnam and were booked on a trip to visit the Cu Chi tunnels. This is an underground network of passageways and cubbyholes which stretches across much of southern Vietnam and was used by the Viet Cong to hide men and supplies from the Americans during the Vietnam War.

They’d widened the tunnels out a bit now (tourists tend to have bigger waists than soldiers – especially luxury cruise ship passengers) and put some lighting in to make it a popular visitor attraction.

I’m never comfortable describing myself as a “war enthusiast,” it puts me in the same bracket as Hitler, Genghis Khan and one of my ex-girlfriends, but I find military conflict fascinating and the chance to climb on a real American tank and fire live rounds from an M16 machine gun floated my boat more than a day spent sitting around the ship’s pool.

My wife, who had planned this pregnancy will all the thoroughness of a military operation, was concerned that the nearest reported case of malaria to the Cu Chi tunnels was not the width of her finger on a 1:10 000 scale map and was always in two minds about going.

Then, on the morning of the trip, she went into the loo in our cabin and came out brandishing a stick that told us next year’s holiday was more likely to be Devon than Da Nang.

I was obviously chuffed, and not just because I like Devon, but I have to be honest and say that the second thing that crossed my mind after “wow, my bits work” was “I guess I’ll have to go to Cu Chi Tunnels on my own then.”

When you’ve lived on your own for 15 years prior to getting married it’s hard to get out of that mind-set of looking after yourself.

Fast forward six months and I was walking around a Baby Show with my wife on the same day some of my mates were setting off on a stag weekend – and not wishing to be anywhere else in the world.

Actually, that’s not strictly true. One of the many things I’ve learned about the prenatal period is that it’s impossible for someone who isn’t pregnant to walk as slow as a pregnant woman, you will trip over your own feet if you try.

So I was one of the many men walking around the Baby Show ten yards in front of their partners, stopping at anything that might interest them and waiting for them to catch up. It was sometimes hard to work out who was with whom and with my wife’s baby brain being the way it is, I had to keep an eye on her at all times to make sure she didn’t forget who she was married to.

But I digress. The point I was trying to make before that cheap shot about my wife’s waddling speed was that, as the due date gets ever nearer, I can feel myself becoming a bit of a nest builder.

Whenever anything involving a drill needs undertaking in my house I’ll usually give my DIY loving dad a call.

But when it came to decorating Junior’s nursery I turned down his offer of help because I wanted to do it myself. OK, so the first time I put the curtain rail up it was about as straight as the audience at a Judy Garland tribute evening but I wanted all the work to be my own so I could feel like a provider.

It’s also the case that, apart from going to work and playing football on a Sunday morning, I’ve not left my wife’s side since Christmas.

This is quite a change from our childless routine, where we almost lived separate lives at weekends.

Not all of this was down to my selfishness, my wife and I accept we are very different when it comes to how we spend our spare time.

I’m from the “a day I don’t learn something new is a day wasted” school of thought whereas Hannah is “a day off where I don’t get at least 10 hours sleep is a day I’ll make Darryl’s life not worth living” kind of person.

I never thought it was a bad thing we didn’t do absolutely everything together, look where that got Bonnie and Clyde, but for the last six weeks or so Hannah has got up at 8am on a Saturday morning and we’ve headed out together to buy the latest home appliance that she feels needs to be improved.

So as well as buying stuff for the nursery, which obviously needed doing, we’ve superfluously replaced all the taps in our house, bought a new oven and hob, ordered a new bathroom suite and are having the room retiled, put a new shower pump in the en suite bathroom and bought a steamer.

How Junior’s life will be improved by his mum and dad eating crunchier carrots I don’t know but it seemed a healthier living choice so we bought it.

I reckon Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen had it all wrong on Changing Rooms by getting the neighbours in to do the work.

There’s no better inspiration for making alterations to your house than the arrival of a baby and if Junior doesn’t come home from hospital with a clipboard and punch list to tick off the improvements we’ve made I think I’ll feel a little bit cheated.

My wife’s appetite is ‘shining’ example of how pregnancy can change you

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