Daddy daycare

Hello all - I'm going to try to bash this out as quickly as possible, as I've only got about 30 minutes before Eliza wakes up from her morning nap.

It's incredible how quickly that precious alone time (when you can actually get stuff done) evaporates, isn't it? You'd think an hour and a half was ample time to steal some moments for, say, reading a book, or writing a blogpost, but after completing the morning chores - cleaning up after baby's breakfast (how can a mess so big come from a person so small?), jumping in and out of the shower, throwing on some clothes, making a coffee, maybe sticking on a load of washing - you're lucky if you get 45 minutes.

I hadn't fully appreciated how valuable these fleeting moments of calm are until last week, when Alice went back to work and I assumed the role of Eliza's primary carer. Let me just say, anyone who thinks that being at home with the kid(s) is easy or like a holiday is fu- hang on, hold that thought, she's woken up. Back in a few hours...

... ok, I'm back. Where was I? Oh yeah, I was saying that being at home with the kid(s) is not a picnic. Actually, sometimes it literally is a picnic - that's the good part - but it's certainly not like being on holiday, which is often how it's portrayed by people who have no clue: 'Oh you jammy bastard,' they will say, 'I wish I could get four weeks out of the office.'

I totally get it. Normally speaking, even if you've got the best work pals in the world, being at home is better than being at work. At home you're just more comfortable: you can lounge about in bed, watch TV, make extravagant lunches - you don't even have change out of your pyjamas. But when you're looking after a baby, it's a bit different. I do sometimes look down and realise I'm still wearing my PJs, but that's because I haven't been able to leave Eliza unattended for more than five seconds without triggering a meltdown.

Basically, the best thing about being at home - being able to do what you want - well, you don't really have that because everything revolves around the baby. All things considered, you certainly have more autonomy at work.

That's not to suggest, however, that I wou- oh, she's woken up. Back tomorrow...

So the point I was about to make is that, despite it not being a breeze being a stay-at-home parent, it's also way more rewarding than being sat at your desk answering emails all day. And if you're lucky enough to have the opportunity to be able to do it, I would certainly recommend it, even if it's only for a relatively short time like me.

I should point out at this juncture that the reason I'm at home with Eliza at the moment is that I'm taking advantage of the fairly new legislation (enacted in 2015) that entitles parents to share up to 50 weeks of leave following the birth of a child (which you can take together or separately and in up to three separate blocks). It's not the kind of thing that employers are disposed to advertise, so it wouldn't be at all surprising if many of you hadn't realised it was a thing, but it's really quite wonderful - if you are able/willing to take the financial hit.

I'm back in the office next Monday, so my shared parental leave experience is nearing its end - which is a shame because I've really loved it. I don't know if I would continue to love it quite as much if I were doing it for, say, six months - I might go slightly mad from the lack of adult conversation - but to have had this quality time with my baby during this period (she's coming up to nine months) has been very special. At the risk of being pegged as a total cheeseball, I feel like my bond with her has really grown because of it.

Of course this will only make next week - when she starts at the childminder - all the harder. In preparation for the full handover we've got a succession of transitional days this week, which will be interesting. I'll let you know how it goes.

Oh, great timing, she's just woken up. Bye!

How to Festival...with a baby

By Jamie Tucker

When my fiancé, Nat, and I found out that we would be bringing a child into this world, our first thought was 'this must be some sort of mistake, right?' Four home pregnancy tests later and we started to envisage what our lives as parents would be like. It scared the crap-filled nappies out of us.

We’re both comfortably into our mid-30s and so therefore have quite a few friends who have transitioned from party-loving, out-all-the-time couples... to, well, parents who we rarely see. 'We can’t really make it tonight as baby needs their routine', they protested. 'You’ll see, it’ll happen to you when you have kids!' they promised. Great. Sounds fun.

So when Nat and I sat down a few days after getting our heads around the idea of becoming parents, we promised each other that we’d still make an effort do fun stuff, and try our best not to become a couple that stopped doing what we loved just because we’d been stupid lucky enough to have a child.

One of the first things we agreed to commit to was a music festival during the forthcoming summer. But which one? We’d both been to Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire the year before and had had a great time. With a capacity of just 10,000 people, it definitely felt like the right sort of size to be doable with a child, and indeed we’d spent the festival weekend with several friends who had taken their firstborns along - one had been only 10 weeks old.

The vibe was also pretty relaxed compared to some festivals I’d been to in recent years. Days were spent swimming in a lake, relaxing around a picnic in the shade whilst listening to talks about climate change... as well as getting smashed and dancing to 90s dance tunes long into the night. It was raving, but in a more chilled, civilised way. I remember the lead singer of one of the headline bands announce to the crowd that 'Wilderness is like no other festival in the world! Earlier I saw a man washing his hands with San Pellegrino!' So you get the idea.

With Nat six months pregnant, we worked out that our new addition would be about eight weeks old by the time the festival rolled into the lush Cotswolds countryside, and having witnessed our friends make light work of it with a newborn the previous year, we made the decision to book tickets (at £160 per adult and £7 for a young child) and just go for it. (The only caveat being that if it was forecast to rain heavily, we’d cut our losses and not go. Pushing a pram around in knee deep mud just wasn’t worth considering.)

Fathers do Festivals

Five months of praying for sun and justifying our decision to friends and parents followed, but we were determined to prove to ourselves that we could still do the things we loved doing, albeit in a slightly different way. So in early August, we packed up the car (with more items than I thought we owned) and headed for Charlbury in the Cotswolds to experience camping, portaloos and glittery face paint for the first time as a family.

As the forecast wasn’t looking to be anywhere near as hot as the previous year, our main concern was how sleeping in a tent would pan out. But having received a few tips on the best practice for camping with a baby, including borrowing a 3.5 tog sleepsuit from a friend, we were fairly confident that Matilda would end up more comfortable than we would in our four-person tent.

And we were right. Temperatures dropped considerably at night, but as we shivered in our sleeping bags, Matilda could not have been warmer - and thankfully didn’t grumble at all during the nights. I should say at this point that we’re fortunate that Mattie is a solid sleeper and rarely wakes up before 5am to be fed, but regardless, we were relieved that she was sufficiently insulated during colder nights than we had expected.

Matilda and Nat

During the day, Nat and I switched between the Baby Bjorn sling and the pram, both of which Mattie was more than happy to be moved around in. We took a pair of baby ear defenders with us, which she eventually took to, and this made Nat and I a lot more relaxed when it came to her being around some of the louder PA systems, and enabled her to sleep through a few headline shows on the main stage. (A shame as I was hoping that an early introduction to live music from bands such as Toots & The Maytals might help nurture a solid taste in music!)

Feeding Matilda ended up being a lot easier than we had first anticipated. As we are mix-feeding her, we rely on bottles being sterilised before her feed and so our initial plan involved boiling water on a regular basis, which when you’re camping isn’t the most straightforward of routines. However, we came across a bottle sterilising unit by Milton on Amazon for about £15. This enabled us to simply fill what is essentially a plastic bucket with a lid with cold water when we arrived at the festival, pop a sterilisation tablet in along with a few bottles, and within 15 minutes, everything would be sterilised and ready to go. They would remain this way for 24hrs if undisturbed. It was perfect and no hassle at all.

Time for a bottle

The rain did arrive for a few minutes here and there over the weekend, but the majority of the time it was warm and sunny. And when it rained, we took shelter in one of the many food and drink tents and took that opportunity to feed or change a nappy. Thankfully, the ground remained solid and wellies proved an unnecessary precaution.

Time for a bottle

Nat and I alternated nights out; Nat partied until the early hours on Friday, with me checking out at 10pm to get Mattie to bed, and then vice versa on Saturday. In previous years, the thought of calling it a night at a music festival before 4am would have been alien to me, but such is the vibe at Wilderness that everything starts winding down at about 1am anyway, and there’s only a couple of places still pumping out music past 2am, so my FOMO levels remained manageable as I was cradling Matilda to sleep back at the tent.

All in all, the weekend went without a hitch... apart from Nat puking up inside our tent... but that’s a different story altogether. On Sunday morning we packed up and were on the road by lunchtime, and we really came away from the festival feeling as though we'd had a great time. We’d experienced the festival in the way we wanted to, and enjoyed doing it as a family. It gave us the confidence to do it again and reaffirmed our position that the things we love doing don't need to stop just because we've had a child.

Top Tips for Festivalling with a baby

1) Choose your festival wisely

I’d love to take my children to Glastonbury one day. Primarily because it’s the best festival in the world. That’s not an opinion, that’s just fact. However, it’s a different beast to any other festival in terms of size and sheer volume of people. Plus, you have to be very lucky to get a weekend without rain... and rain on a farm with 250,000 people means only one thing. Mud. Lots of it. I can’t imagine anything worse than taking a baby to a muddy festival as it just makes everything that bit harder. That’s why a small festival such as Wilderness is perfect, as it’s in August and more often than not dry. But this is England we’re talking about, so all bets are off to a certain extent. However, a festival of a more modest size and fewer people is definitely something to consider, as you’ll find it less hectic and overwhelming, as will your little one. Plus you’re never more than a ten-minute walk from your tent.

2) Family Camping

We opted for a family camping ticket (at no extra cost) but these can only be purchased with a child ticket. The main benefits are pretty obvious. No late night parties after the music has been shut off; more toilets and showers within the field; the field is placed on the other end of the site to the main stages so noise is minimal; security at the entrances; other parents and families close by should you have forgotten to pack nappies (I don’t suggest you do this) and need to borrow one or two. The only negative here is that although it’s pretty quiet in the camping field past 10pm, by about 7am a lot of the families are waking up, which means sleeping past about 8am is unlikely.

Reading time

3) Pack Well

This doesn’t mean pack everything you have because you might need it. Although it’s probably better to have something and not need it than to need it and not have it, think about the trips you’ll be making too and from the carpark (which can be a good 15min walk away from your campsite) with heavy bag after heavy bag, and then getting them searched by security every time. Obviously be prepared and pack enough nappies, water wipes, clothes and food supplies for your baby, but look to cut out all unnecessary items and pack light when it comes to your clothes for the weekend. This ain't a fashion show... no matter how much Nat tried to convince me otherwise.

4) Prepare for cold nights

Even if the daytime temps are pushing the high 20s (which is unlikely at a British festival), nights in your tent will be cold. We were advised to take a sheepskin rug with us to lay down on the floor of the tent, which absorbs the heat from the day. We then took a SleepyHead to lay on top, which kind of negated the whole point of the sheepskin to be honest (see point 3 above). Matilda then slept in a vest under a long sleeve onesie and then in a 3.5 tog sleepsuit (which I can’t recommend enough). We then had her under a blanket, which was probably surplus to requirement on top of her sleepsuit, but all added together kept her nice and toasty throughout the night.

Snug as a bug in a rug

5) Bigger wheels are better

If you have a buggy/pram with big tyres, you’ll find it a lot easier to get around. Although it wasn’t muddy on the vast majority of the site, there were a couple of areas that were less navigable than others. I saw quite a few parents struggling with designer/ornate prams which 'looked fabulous' as Nat would say, but were terrible in the middle of a damp field or on a slippery or pebbly gravel path round a lake. We have the Baby Jogger City Mini GT and it has three big wheels which was a dream over the various terrains at the festival.


6) Relax and know that your baby will be fine

Before embarking on our maiden festival as a family, I did some online research into camping with a baby. One main piece of advice stuck with me and so I’m passing it on. Your baby is more adaptable than you probably know. She’s probably even more adaptable than you are. So relax, know that if she’s being fed and wearing the right amount of clothes then she’s probably loving all this extra stimulation when it comes to colours and sounds that are surrounding her. Enjoy your time there, knowing that if it all goes completely tits up you can always pack everything away and go home.

Have a listen to our Baby Bite - Wilderness Festival Special here!

Planes, tanties and automobiles.

I was definitely expecting to have written another one of these a bit sooner - having been on holiday for the past couple of weeks - but time really flies when you're having fun, it seems. 

In my defence, I have also been doing a bit of work while we've been in New Zealand - something I negotiated so that I wouldn't blow basically my entire holiday entitlement in a oner - and, in the last week, we have been travelling around quite a bit, but still, where the hell is my holiday disappearing to? Soon I'll be back at my desk with only my memories for comfort. :-(

I shouldn't think like that, though. It's an easy trap to fall into to start worrying about the end of your holiday before your holiday has actually ended, thus tainting the end of your holiday, so I need to focus on what's to come. And what's to come is that we still have a couple more days in Wellington before flying to Melbourne for five nights, where we will attempt to re-live former glories*. It will be a great way to cap what has been a excellent trip.

A solid two weeks of our time thus far has been spent in New Zealand's capital city, Wellington, which is where Alice's parents (Eliza's grandparents) and sister and sister's family (the Tunnicliffes**) live. In fact, due to various works still to be completed at the Tunnicliffes' new house on the far side of town, everyone is currently residing under the same roof, which despite being hectic at times (with just the six adults and three kids), has provided a great opportunity for the family to spend plenty of quality time together.

Alice's mum, Liz, aka 'nan' with her three grandchildren, Matthew, Isla and Eliza
(Yes, it's easy to mix those two names up)

And Wellington is a great city. It's small (roughly 400,000 people) but it has a lot to offer in terms of city-based attractions - cafes, restaurants, bars, museums, etc. It's main selling point, however, is definitely its natural beauty, sitting as it does on the shores of a great natural harbour on the North Island's southern tip, bounded by hills of luscious green***. Unfortunately, it's unique geography also makes it very windy, and often significantly cooler than much of the rest of the North Island - but on a good day you can't beat it****. And in this respect we've been really lucky.

Wellington Marina

Oriental Bay, Wellington

Breaker Bay, Wellington

Despite coming in what is the very tail end of summer (i.e. autumn), the weather has been great for us almost every day, which is great because there is nothing worse when you live in the UK than going on holiday and finding out the weather is better at home (fortunately it rarely happens).

Our luck with the weather continued during our trip to Auckland, which took us via Lake Taupo and Mount Maunganui. We had always planned to visit Auckland, as several of Alice's close pals now live there, but instead of just flying there and flying back we thought we'd turn it into a bit of an adventure and take to the roads.

Adding a second driver to the hire-car reservation turned out to be a shrewd move

Baby of the Lake (Taupo)

Huka Falls, near Taupo

Papamoa Beach, Mount Maunganui

The road trip was also something of an experiment, to see how Eliza would fare. Despite the suggestion above that she is a keen motorist, she's actually a bit funny when it comes to the car. Mostly she is fine - she'll go in without too much fuss, she'll go to sleep, and then she'll wake up and be relatively content playing with one of her crinkly books and being distracted by mum. But every so often she will absolutely lose it, and will go so red and scream so loud that she will effectively force us on to the hard shoulder. On more than one occasion, this prompted Alice to say 'I'm never getting in a car with her again'. But overall I think road trip was a success.

More concerning, given that we have a 4-hour flight to Melbourne coming up and then a 22-hour flight to London, is that on the one-hour flight from Auckland to Wellington, our worst fears were realised - we became those people. Things were going well enough at the start, but at around the half-way point Eliza started getting cranky.

We tried desperately to avert disaster by deploying all of the distraction techniques we could in the cramped conditions, but ultimately we were fighting a losing battle. We rallied briefly when I decided I could no longer put off asking the unhelpful gentleman next to me to move so that I could get up and walk down the aisle, but almost as soon as she settled the plane began its descent into Wellington and I was forced to return to my seat and the disapproving looks of those seated nearby.

Funnily enough, though, I didn't actually feel as bad as I thought I would. It was clear that Alice and I were trying everything we could to try to keep her calm, which in the circumstances I think is all you can ask for. If you've still got a problem - fuck you.

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* Alice and I lived in Melbourne together in 2012-2013, so it's pretty exciting to be going back - and the fact that we will be going back with Eliza has a nice symmetry to it, since it's sort of where she was conceived of, if not conceived.

** The Tunnicliffes consists of Anna, Craig, Matthew (4 years) and Isla (2 years).

*** Interestingly, Wellington recently topped a ranking of the world's most liveable cities.

**** This is a popular refrain in these parts.

400,000 words and 30 bags of cement

Hello! Predictably enough, the initial flurry of posts to kick this blog off was not maintained. I had the intention, but the last few weeks has been manic.

I'd braced myself for the new challenge of juggling dad responsibilities with my big annual work deadline - which actually turned out to have a major upside that I hadn't anticipated* - but what I hadn't factored in was the added ball ache of arranging building work at our flat, which felt like one stress too many.

Had we not booked to fly to New Zealand on Good Friday, the day after my deadline at work, it wouldn't have felt quite so pressurised, but we got ourselves into a situation where the many various chores we had to take care of before leaving had to be done by C.O.P. on Thursday April 13, a day which ultimately involved signing off the final chapter of a 400,000-word book, getting last minute consent from the building inspector for works to begin, ordering a water pump, clearing all the stuff from the living room, and packing my bag. And that was at the end of a week that also included sourcing the building supplies, preparing for and hosting a BBQ, carrying 30 bags of cement from the street to the back garden, and recording episode 5 of the podcast.

My laughable but - incredibly - successful attempt at doing drawings.

On Thursday of the previous week, looking ahead to everything that we needed to get done, there was a definite sense of unease in the Singh Jennings / Wilson household, but having a hard deadline like that is a powerful motivator and by the time Friday morning rolled around, the only thing we had to worry about was making our 9.30am flight from Heathrow (which we managed, but not without the customary airport freak-out when it transpired that Eliza's ticket had not being issued properly by the travel agent). And then, a mere 30 hours later, we were here in Wellington.

Customary beer at Brisbane airport. It cost me $15
($12 plus $3 public holiday mark-up) but it was worth it.

The prospect of making the journey with a 4-month old was a little scary, but in the end it went about as well as could be hoped. The real fear was that we would become those people - the people you pity and also slightly despise who bring a screaming baby on to an aeroplane. Luckily, that fear did not materialise. In fact, we even got a comment from the people sitting behind us on the second flight, from Singapore to Brisbane, to the effect that hadn't even noticed there was a baby there - although I think this was attempt to excuse the fact that they stole the overhead locker from a fucking baby**.

Eliza lording it up in her luxurious bassinet

But yeah, basically it all went pretty smoothly. She fed well***; she got some good sleeps in; she didn't cry much, except when it was time for a nappy change in those tiny loos... The only major gripe we had was the pilot's itchy trigger finger on the seatbelt sign button. Some of the 'turbulence' could have passed for moderate flatulence, but still the sign came on, and with it came Eliza out of the warm, snuggly bassinet and into mum's lap - for those are the rules - and invariably at the precise moment she'd nodded off.

It was tempting to leave her be and risk the wrath of the flight attendant, but then the guilt kicked in - what if this gentle rocking turns into a full-scale nosedive? I'd never forgive myself for not taking her out of that damned bassinet.

Needless to say mum and dad didn't get much rest, but that's pretty standard for me when flying.

Anyway, that's enough for now, but I will definitely be doing a few more of these while I'm footloose and fancy free on holiday.

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*One of the benefits of the deadline run-up is having the option of working from home several days a week. For some reason, though, before this phase got underway, it hadn't properly occurred to me that this meant I'd be able to spend much more time with newborn Eliza than I would have otherwise. This unanticipated bonus was something I became massively thankful for, as normally dads go back to work after two weeks and then - weekends aside - might only see their child for an hour or so each day.

**This became my suspicion when they proceeded to make a completely empty offer to help us get the bag that, as a result of their despicable behaviour, ended up half way down the aisle.

***Actually, she fed more than well. She's on the small side baby-wise, and is not normally a big eater, but during the flight she was on the boob every hour (except when she went down for a big sleep). Perhaps it was thirst - the air on aeroplanes is quite dry, as you know - or maybe just comfort, but either way it meant lots of trips to the flight attendants' area for dad to forage for snacks and refreshments to replenish and rehydrate mum. I said to Alice that it felt vaguely primal, before kicking off my Air Max, popping in my earbuds and pressing play on the touchscreen to resume watching Nocturnal Animals.

The story so far

Eliza is now 11 weeks old (and a day), so it seems a good time to take a moment to reflect on the past couple of months and how well - or not - I have adapted to the role of dad.

The short answer is that things, I think, are going pretty well. But what am I basing that on? Things seem fine - in that I don't feel monumentally tired constantly, or completely out of my depth, or like I want to 'pop down to B&Q' one day and never return - but perhaps I'm just setting the bar extremely low? How's a man to know?

The answer is that although you can't know for sure, you can get a fairly a good gauge from listening to the experiences of others. It's an imperfect method because people's tolerances for things - such as poo and crying - differ. So you need to be alert to the drama queens and the people who always think they have it harder than everyone else. You know the sort.

You also need to be alert to the fact that tales of woe tend to be more amusing to tell than stories about how the little one had a nice time in her bouncy chair before going down for two-hour nap and only cried a smidge.

Having a nice time in the bouncy chair

This isn't true for everyone - some people feel the need, clearly, to constantly tell everyone how wonderful everything is (you know the sort) - but in general the bad stuff is shared more than the good.

So yeah, weighing up this smattering of iffy anecdotal evidence, my conclusion is that things - so far - are going fairly well with Eliza.

She cries of course - most typically in the late afternoon / early evening - but she also has long periods during the day of being very content just looking at stuff, gurgling and generally existing.

She doesn't especially like her buggy and sometimes gets extreeeemely cranky when placed therein, but on other occasions she's absolutely fine.*

In terms of feeding, she's been a bit of whizz since day one. We are incredibly thankful for this and are very much aware that it can sometimes be a real struggle. She's not always thrilled about the bottle - although will take it - but when it comes to boobtime she's a real pro.

Her greatest trick, however, is one that amazes me every day - or every morning to be precise - which is that she consistently sleeps through the night, from 9.30-ish pm when we put her down to 7.30am when we all wake up. (I chat about this in episode three of the podcast, which you can hear below).

I keep trying to tell myself that it won't last, that at three or four months we'll hit one of those dreaded sleep regressions, but at the moment it's an absolute dream - in fact, if you add it to the fact that I now go out less,** I've probably never been more rested. (I'm touching wood as I write this).

Well rested dad

So all in all, she appears to be a relatively 'easy' baby, which I think has to be almost entirely down to luck. I mean, I can't think of anything we've done that seems especially conducive to making a calm baby - other than trying to remain relatively calm ourselves, which I suppose isn't always easy.

Anyway, that's the story so far. Bye!

*We've recently transitioned from the bassinet for newborns to the standard seat and it's much better. I think it's the not being able to see what's going on that's the distressing aspect for her.

**Last night was Alice's and my first night out since Eliza's was born. We left her with my parents while we went to dinner and a gig with friends. Understandably we were a bit nervous about it, but in the end it went reasonably well.

Before the Beginning

When you tell the story of how you became a parent, how far back should you go?

An obvious landmark is the moment your baby actually pops out, screaming and bloody, and is tossed towards you by the midwife.

Eliza's first moments

I've heard it said by dads - not infrequently - that this is the moment when it really hits home, but I don't think you can say it's where the journey begins. It certainly wasn't for me.

Another key moment is the three-month scan, which marks the point when, supposedly, you can safely start telling people - and announce it on Facebook via a grainy ultrasound pic (something we resisted doing*). Telling people is definitely a big deal; from that moment, you're basically all in. There's no going back.

However, we were already all in by that stage - you know, aside from the occasional plaintive chat about the probably-too-adventurous holidays we would no longer be taking. So, I have to go back further. Right back, in fact, to January 2016 - or thereabouts.

Alice and I, as individuals, had always planned to have children, and I think it was back in early 2013 that we started talking about doing it together, but it wasn't until January 2016 - I was 34, Alice was 31 - that we had the really serious conversation about when to start trying.

We both have jobs with fairly predictable annual cycles - Alice is a teacher and I work in publishing - so the key question was, what is the optimum time of year for a new baby to arrive?

For me, the least convenient time would have been - well, right around now actually - basically February through April - as it's the absolute busiest time in my publication cycle, and the thought of trying to juggle the workload and a new baby brought me out in sweats.

For Alice, the main aim was ensuring that she made the most of that treasured six-week summer break by returning to work (following the baby) immediately prior to the end of the school year - so that she would receive full pay (and not maternity pay) over those six weeks.

Weighing up these factors - as well as the additional factor of wanting one last summer of fun before embarking on the road to parenthood - we decided that the time to start trying was September 2016. There wasn't much agonising or fanfare about this decision, it was pretty matter of fact.

This all went out of the window a couple of months later, however. We were in the Loire Valley in France for the long Easter weekend, and at the end of one particularly wild and boozy day, Alice turned to me bleary-eyed and said that she didn't want to wait any longer. I had no particular objection, so that was that.

Boozy day in France

It's hard to pinpoint the moment of conception precisely, of course, but we think that was the day, and a couple weeks later we had confirmation that Alice was pregnant when she pissed on a stick, and then another stick, and then another stick just to be sure.

We were quite surprised and very thankful it had happened so straightforwardly (as often this is not the case) and we were also, of course, very happy to be pregnant - although I feel I should point out that it wasn't like a scene from a corny Hollywood movie. We were happy, but we weren't without some doubts.

And although those doubts definitely dwindled over time, I always found it a tricky question when people asked, suggestively: 'You must be over the moon, riiiight?' or 'Aren't you just sooooo excited?'

My usual answer would be 'yes' - probably accompanied by a slightly unconvincing smile - but what I felt like saying was: 'I'm not not over the moon, but it's a bit more complicated than that'. Because yeah, I was happy, but it's hard to be wholeheartedly enthusiastic about something that has some fairly obvious drawbacks (e.g. the end of freedom) - especially when all the positive things about it are quite intangible - I mean, how the fuck do you know how you're going to feel?

As it turns out, it's all going pretty well. But more about that next time.

*Word of mouth always seemed perfectly functional - and more appropriate to the news - although I do worry that there are a few friends who still don't know.

The Beginning

Hi, I'm Seth, and this is a little blog I'm doing to chronicle my life as a new dad - and podcast novice.

Three months ago things were quite different for me. I had no podcast. Nor did I have a baby, although the fact that there was one on the way was fairly obvious.

Pregnant Alice

Then something happened. No, not the baby. I got a WhatsApp message. From my good pal Tom. Tom had seen a half-serious comment I'd made in a WhatsApp group about doing a podcast on some topic or other, and was coming to me with his own idea.

'Seth', he said, 'if you're interested in doing a podcast, I've got what I think is a great idea for one... football!' Much as I enjoy rabbling nonsensically about football constantly, I had to politely suggest to Tom that it was a topic already well served by podcasts.*

'Ok', he said, 'how about fatherhood?' I was about to shoot him down once again but I paused. Tom, a father himself, continued: 'There's not a lot out there for dads - unlike for mums - and potentially there's a big market for it...' he had my attention, '.... and you're about to become a dad for the first time, so I think you'd be a great person to front it - that and your smooth, dulcet tones and rapier-like wit'. I was sold.

In all seriousness, although we did think it was a solid idea, we mainly wanted to do it because we thought it would be a laugh. So we arranged to meet up to discuss it in person. And from there, one thing sort of led to another; we invited two other mates - Jamie (dad-to-be) and Benji (dad) - to get involved and before we knew it we were at Jamie's studio (big up Green Rock) recording episode one with our first guest, director and playwright Ben Ockrent.

The next life-changing event for me occurred just over a week later. (Yes, this time it's the baby.)

Alice holding Eliza just after she was born

Eliza Neve Wilson Singh Jennings arrived on December 23, 2017. There's a blow-by-blow account of the birth story (albeit disputed) on episode two of the podcast, but what we don't delve into too much is the whole emotional journey of becoming a parent and dad.

That's partly what I'm aiming to do on these pages. I'll also document some of the more incremental developments along the road - ones that are perhaps too subtle to get across in the rough and tumble of the podcast.

*Tom didn't actually mention football, this is a total fabrication on my part