Grown-ups.

What makes people grown up? I've been considering this a lot recently - for what I think are obvious reasons - in both senses: what defines somebody as grown up, and what causes somebody to fulfill that definition? And is it supposed to be hyphenated?

My wife and I have just left the wedding reception of one of a family of dear old friends. We saw some very lovely and interesting people, with whom we very rarely get a chance to spend time. And it was, predictably, a very lovely and interesting occasion.

And we left before 9pm. Disgraceful.

Now, are we just a boring couple who use our bump as an increasingly convincing excuse to flee from amusement at the earliest opportunity? In my darker moments of self loathing, I fear that this is the case. But there are two problems with this outlook. The first is that self loathing is not technically a luxury available to a married man - the "self" includes someone else now, and I have neither the right or the inclination to project my shortcomings onto her. The second is that I don't think it's true.

Rather, I think that we are merely becoming more sensible: saving our money, and our energy for a long drive in the morning, and of course considering the health of mum to be. My transition to prioritising these concerns over drinking lots of beer and dancing until it comes back out again, has been recent enough for me to be aware that it does sound a bit boring.

Which brings me to my realisation that being grown up is defined, not by what you see as boring - contrary to my prior beliefs these perceptions never actually change - but by the fact that you can willingly choose the boring path. Furthermore, you can choose it and still escape the tsunami of regretful despair and humiliation which I had previously assumed would be unavoidable. (I've mixed a few metaphors there, haven't I? Oh well.)

But what brought me to this realisation? If this really is the definition of a grown-up, then what made me grow up? The obvious answer is that I'm going to be a daddy soon, and I have had to accept the responsibilities that this entails. But it hasn't felt like that much of a struggle. I think it's simply a part of getting older and wiser: I just happen to have reached that point in my ongoing emotional development. And that just happens to have coincided with a very real, baby related need for me to have reached that point in my ongoing emotional development. (That does make sense if you read it again.)

Lucky me. And, more to the point, lucky my family. I grew up in the nick of time.

I should point out that I'm still really cool and I could drink you all under the table. Twice. I just choose not to. See?

Thanks, wife.

You might find the following a bit mushy and sickening if you're as cynical or emotionally repressed as I usually am. (I'm making an exception here because I'm talking about my wife and my first born child. They are, I hope, not your wife and first born child, but hopefully you'll be able to feel at least a bit of the love.) I'm about to attempt to gush unashamedly, and yet not before time (and not literally), about how bloody amazing my wife is.

It's easy for me - or any expectant father - to take the role of the mother-to-be for granted. Yes, we can and should pay lip service to the obvious, various physical strains they go through, and the melon through a hosepipe analogies they try desperately hard to ignore, in an heroic attempt to maintain sanity's fragile superiority over fear. But do we really understand and appreciate what they endure to the massive extent that we should? I'm not sure that I have.

I'm ashamed to admit that it was only recently that I made a concerted effort to imagine what it feels like, to have an actual living being inside my tummy. I really visualised our daughter wriggling about inside myself. I could almost feel it. And it scared the funk out of me. Of course I may have been imagining inaccurately - I'll never know, unless science makes some rapid and frankly unnecessary advances in the near future - but this brief glimpse was enough for me to reach an improved understanding of the huge undertaking my wife is currently, um, undertaking. She is responsible, in the most extreme, physical sense, for two lives. She has been for five months, and she will be for four more. Nothing it is physically possible for me to do can ever pay my debt of gratitude.

I'm sure I'll regret making that concession at some surprise juncture during a heated disagreement in about seven years time, but hopefully the fact that I've said it may at least delay that juncture.

All this, and yet she still manages to be the best cook I know. She still allows me to watch pretty much all of sport. She still finds the reserves of patience to nod in vigorous support of every misguided and insignificant opinion I offer to her, the internet or anybody else within earshot. She still produces, from thin air, better ideas for christmas presents for my own family than I have managed in 28 attempts. She still effortlessly outclasses me by a large distance in aesthetic terms. There are countless other examples, but I'm starting to sound like some sort of lazy misogynist, which I'm not, so just one more:

She still spent this afternoon making a craft-tastic book (the creative standard of which would, I imagine, cause Martha Stewart to betray her ladylike manner in a fit of uncontrollable jealousy) about how much she loves me. It made me cry with joy a little bit. I've been struggling for six paragraphs now to resist resorting to cliche, but I can no longer avoid the conclusion that I'm the luckiest man in the whole wide world.

You may now make sarcastic vomiting motions. But I know you're really crying with joy for me on the inside.

Getting my kicks.

Maybe it's my laid back nature - which brings with it the mixed blessing of instinctively prioritising sarcasm over genuine emotion - or maybe it's simply the ultimately inconceivable nature of the miracle of life, but I never seem to be quite as engaged as I think I am with the fact that I will soon have a living child. I know this because I generally think I am fully engaged with it, and yet there always turns out to be another level of awareness, the existence of which I discover only upon reaching it.

I have commented previously on one such surprise: discovering the probable sex of our baby meant that we were incubating a she, rather than an it. We now refer to her constantly by name, which makes it much easier than the uninitiated might suppose to conduct in-depth discussions about what she might be up to at any given moment. The possibilities for this are admittedly quite limited, but that's really not the point.

So I was feeling smug and content with my conversations about which of the numerous available activities our daughter-to-be was indulging in, when she found a new one.

Apparently it's normal for first time mothers to feel their baby kicking after about 18 weeks. So imagine my wife's horror when, after 18 weeks and a couple of days, she was yet to feel anything. At least nothing that could be distinguished with any certainty from some gas. And we can all feel that. I feel it quite often.

But then it began. I'm not sure how my wife knew that this time it was genuine baby movement. I think it's just one of those things that a woman knows. But our (probable) daughter was suddenly kicking away and rolling about all over the shop. There was - and still is - no apparent pattern to what she does when (despite our ongoing analysis and discussion of this), but I can always tell because it brings instant, unconditional joy to my wife's face, in a way that I only wish I could achieve. And also because she tells me.

So, already, I'm playing second fiddle to the fruit of my own loins, and the fruit hasn't even been, um, picked yet. But I don't mind, because sometimes, if I put my hand in just the right place on my wife's tummy at just the right time, and apply just the right amount of pressure, I can feel it too. And it instantly scythes through all my prior smug assumptions of complete engagement with my daughter's impending existence, and makes me very happy. And my wife and I share an immediate glee which is exclusive to us, in a way which I would previously have been quite aggressively cynical about.

And I think this has something to do with why parents are a bit embarrassing sometimes; a bit lacking in self awareness. I think they all have this special secret knowledge that some things transcend that sort of thing. They never speak of it to outsiders, but they all know how it feels, however briefly, to be unashamedly happy.

I feel like I'm getting a bit carried away here. I'll show some decorum while I still can, and stop there. If you think I'm being silly, though, make a baby and then see how emotionally restrained you are.

Good news and bad news.

Don't panic - the bad news doesn't relate directly to mother or baby, who are both in rude health as far as we know. However we have all been very upset by a big change in our circumstances, which I don't really want to talk about, but feel like I should.

Last week we came to the very difficult decision to have our dog, Frankie, rehomed. He has always been hard work on account of his boisterous, energetic nature. And he has always found it very difficult to make friends with any other animals (apart from humans), not least our cats. They understandably found his presence quite inconvenient, to the point where one of them once tried to blind him, and very nearly succeeded. Frankie, it turned out, is not one for forgiving and forgetting.

We had hoped that moving house would somehow break his bad habits. But no. This was new territory and it was up for grabs. I refuse to describe him as an aggressive dog, but you don't have to be malicious to be dangerous. After a couple of weeks of rapidly decreasing authority over him we arrived, tired, stressed and bruised, at the realisation that something had to give. So Frankie is currently at the doggy hotel waiting for his new family to find him. The lady who runs the kennels did her best to assure us that Frankie won't pine for us, and that we have done the right thing for all concerned. But this was still the most upset I have been in a long time.

We know we have made the right decision and I'm not trying to justify anything here, because we don't need to. But this was not an easy choice, and had nothing to do with our convenience or happiness, because it certainly doesn't feel like we have achieved either. Rather - and this is what makes the situation relevant to this blog - we have made our first truly difficult, but responsible parental decision. I think we have started to learn the lesson that you have to risk making yourself unpopular, and you have to risk making yourself cry to keep your child safe at all costs. I think we are becoming grown ups.

Which doesn't exactly bring me to the good news, but it's about time for some, so here it is: my wife had a scan for medical reasons last week. It wasn't a fun one, during which you just look at the baby and coo and point and then take a photo home. But the nice lady doing the scanning did her best to manufacture that situation, sneaking in a look inside the bump and revealing that, to the best of her knowledge (which seems to translate as "probably"), it contained a girl. We are having either a girl or a very modest boy. Well, no son of mine...etc, so we are assuming that this tentative gender diagnosis is correct.

As my description of this news as "good" implies, we are very happy about this. For the record, I thought it was going to be a girl, and a small part of this happiness derives simply from being right. But I do like the idea of being the father of a daughter. Mainly, just knowing (or probably knowing) makes it all seem more real. Which is nice. We have chosen a name, but revelations of it thus far have met with a slightly upsetting mixed reception, so I'm being shy about it now.

In other news: Cessation of sickness, itchiness and smoking continue successfully, and my wife falls asleep at precisely half past nine every evening.

Ding dong, the itch has gone.

It's been a busy time for we expectant ones. We moved house, which we have been well aware we were about to do for quite some time, and yet it all seemed to come as a bit of a surprise. I hope I'm not saying the same thing about having a baby in six months' time. I think that, on some level, I never really believed that it would finally happen. I hope I'm not saying the same thing about having a baby in six months' time.

Of course, moving house when you are pregnant is probably not recommended by life coaches. The physical strain is an obvious issue, which we overcame through a combination of me not moaning about my back anymore and a lot of help from some friends and relatives. (You know who you are: thanks again.) Thus my wife pulled her weight, but not any muscles. And nobody's conscience was troubled by any threat to the health of she or the baby.

Then there's the stress. Moving house consistently features in lists of very stressful things to do, and with good reason. Once all the stuff has been transported from one place to another (in our case via a third, independent place, just for a laugh), you have to perform dazzling calculations in your mind concerning the order in which to unpack, decorate, get new furniture which suits the architectural authenticity of the new house, and arrange for that carpet to be banished from your house - and preferably this earthly domain - to be replaced by something altogether more palatable and easier to clean when the dog pisses all over it. Any assistance you may need from third parties with any of this will be promised within two weeks, and confirmed a week later to be available in about six months.

These activities must be carefully balanced against the relentless need to phone every person you have ever spoken to in order to obtain a form to fill in so they know that the payments you make to them for whatever it was you originally spoke to them about will now be originating from a different address. This is very important to most of them and should really have been done several years ago.

And then there is the ongoing need to segregate the dog and cats, their magical moment of spontaneous harmony not having happened yet, despite us really hoping that it would. The new surroundings are, of course, incompatible with any sensible form of segregation.

All of which makes me very reluctant to associate with hormones any unusually heightened emotions that may or may not have been displayed recently. Besides, that particular association (which I am not making) only applies to the first trimester, which is now trailing in our wake.

I admit I was sceptical about the promise of any unpleasant symptoms abruptly disappearing upon the stroke of week 13, but it does seem to be coming true. The morning sickness which seemed to have gone long ago, but persistently turned out not to have done, has now actually gone. Touch wood. And best of all, the ridiculous itching - which was really beginning to threaten the future of my wife's skin, not to mention her sanity - has disappeared like some sort of Keyser-Soze-in-the-Usual-Suspects character. Seriously - this was a blight on my wife's life which left her crying herself to sleep, and which I honestly feared would continue indefinitely. I cannot adequately describe the relief I felt when she calmly mentioned that it had stopped, by the way. I probably appeared less excited when she told me she was pregnant.

Appeared.

So. The moral of this story is that the passing of one hardship can overcome the presence of many.

Or: stressed? Tired? Just be grateful your wife's not itchy anymore.

Visual confirmation

Throughout what, for want of a better term, I shall call my art career, I have always found it a useful means of viewing my work objectively to look at it in a mirror. Seriously, try it. I might become an art teacher purely so that I can share this single piece of wisdom.

Anyway. It was for much the same reason that this works that I had a sudden moment of clarity last night. My wife was quite understandably assessing her pregnant profile in the mirror, and upon joining her in admiring the reflected view, it all suddenly hit me. Now, obviously I was aware of the fact that she was pregnant prior to yesterday evening - my previous musings on this blog will attest to this - but I was somehow more aware at this moment. It all became very real to me that my wife is one of those women you occasionally see, who has a small person inside her tummy, which will at some point soon cease to be in her tummy and demand a lot of attention. From me.

As if to clarify any remaining doubts I may have had, my wife went for her 12 week scan today. This was the first one I have missed, much to my regret - although my being at work meant that my wife's doting mother was granted much deserved scan escort status. We have, as previously mentioned, had scans before, the images from two of which are at the top here, depicting a blob which could, in all honesty, be anything. This time, we have six images which verify with relative certainty that we shall be producing a human. A human which apparently requires its mother (and grandmother) to eat lots of chocolate in order to lie still and have its photo taken. I think you'll agree it's got my blur.

We are told that all is as well as can be determined at this stage. He/she proudly sports all sorts of arms, legs and noses in the usual quantities, and currently measures 7cm from crown to bum, which seems to be some sort of common measurement. And 7cm is normal, as I'm sure you know. I am encouraging my child more now than I will at any other stage of its life to be as normal as possible. My wife is as happy as I have seen her in the last two months, and we are both experiencing a heady mix of pride and relief.

We are definitely having a baby.

What to expect when you're reading about pregnancy

I've had a relapse on the bad back front, which essentially means I'm living the dream of being off work without feeling particularly ill. Only the dream doesn't really account for the fact that you can't go anywhere or do anything. For the first time in about fifteen years, I'm bored.

Sky Sports News can only hold my attention for a finite length of time. And the sports pages of the various newspaper websites have become more than sufficiently populated with my opinions on UEFA's incompetence. Even the late, great J.G. Ballard's compendium of short stories has diminishing appeal now that I'm over 500 pages in.

For these reasons, and also because my wife bought it a long time ago and has read it several times over and probably knows it off by heart and really feels that I should make some sort of effort, I read a bit of What to Expect When You're Expecting yesterday. It's the book that parents to be always read in films about parents to be. It's sold ten million copies. It's widely regarded as something of a bible on the subject. My outstanding impression - admittedly after reading only one chapter (the one about the third month of pregnancy) - is this:

It hedges its bets.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. The format is very clever - the book adopts a sympathetic, I'm-your-friend-not-your-doctor tone by covering each issue in the form of frequently asked questions. So pregnant women concerned about blockages can turn to the section headed "I've been terribly constipated for the past few weeks. Is this common?" to be comforted by subsequent assurances that yes, it's perfectly normal, try eating some fibre. This is reassuring and informative.

But immediately after this comes the section headed "All my pregnant friends seem to have problems with constipation. I don't; in fact, I've remained very regular. Is my system working right?" This is of course followed by assurances that yes, it's perfectly normal. Having read both sections, I'm left wondering why the issue needs to be mentioned at all if it's no problem either way. This seems to be the standard pattern.

I don't mean to write off a book which has successfully comforted and informed ten million expectant couples. I was just surprised to find that there was more emphasis on the comforting than on the informing.

Although I suppose that's what we all need really. Maybe that's why I'm contriving to write scathing reviews of internationally bestselling books: I'm not bored; I'm nervous. If only someone would write a book to comfort nervous parents to be.

Itchy and scratchy

The morning sickness has for the most part subsided now, it seems, which is a huge relief to everybody. Or at least it would be, if it hadn't been usurped by the dark horse of unbearable pregnancy symptoms: itchiness.

I remember when I was about 12 years old, I lay topless in the sun for too long (I don't know why - I'm not blessed with a Mediterranean complexion, and this sort of behaviour was out of character for me even then) and was rewarded with a severely sunburnt tummy. Naively, I dealt with this by going for a nice hot bath immediately. By the time I got out of the bath, my tummy's skin was a raging inferno of irritation which brought me as close to insanity as I can remember being. I genuinely remember thinking that this must be what fitting feels like as I vigorously rubbed at least three layers of skin from my poor belly with the towel, in a frenzy suitably accompanied by my own screaming and wailing.

So I do have some sympathy with my wife, who for a week or so now has been suffering the same symptoms, but constantly, and far less discerning about which area of her they focus on. As usual, all I can offer is sympathy and a description of it on the internet, neither of which are very helpful really.

They don't warn you about this one. Knowledgeable people tell us it's nothing to worry about when it happens this early in the pregnancy. But try telling that to the poor lady who spends her nights filing her nails on her own legs instead of sleeping. The only hope is that it will soon stop. I wonder if these trials are biology's way of ensuring parental joy when the baby finally comes out and stops causing all this trouble.

Although apparently it's common for it to cause trouble afterwards as well. I sincerely hope ours doesn't.

Pregnant women can't lift

I may have mentioned that we're moving house soon. As is the nature of these things, we still don't know exactly when this will happen, but are assured that it is imminent. Based on this information, I can only conclude that we will have to move house before finding out when we have done it.

This is really only quite tenuously linked to my wife's pregnancy. It all just adds to the general atmosphere of quiet panic which flavours what will, in retrospect, I am sure, be the happiest and most life changing period of our lives.

One aspect in which the two events are linked is my wife's inability to undergo strenuous activity on account of her condition. It just so happens that all of the strong people we know are either incapacitated or in another country. Thus it has fallen upon me to be uncharacteristically decisive and manly, confidently asserting that I will do everything. People discover unfeasible reserves of might in life threatening situations, so I'm sure I can carry a double bed.

Consequently, I have spent most of this week (off work) putting all our possessions in boxes and carrying the boxes to other places, in a fragile attempt to appear organised and under control about the whole business. All of these illusions were comprehensively shattered about half an hour ago when something in or relating to my spine appears to have snapped quite angrily, and now prevents me from sitting up within ten minutes, let alone carrying a bed.

All of which, as I've said, has very little to do with the pregnancy. I just wanted to have a moan really.

Midwifery is a funny word, isn't it?

We went to see a midwife today. I'm not sure whether to refer to her as "a", "the" or "our" midwife. I'm sure consistency and familiarity are preferred in these things, and she seemed like a nice enough sort, so the chances are we'll be sticking with her, and she with us. Although if we ever actually get to move house and there's an alternative around the corner, it might seem silly not to reconsider. And even if we don't, calling her "ours" seems a bit possessive or something.

I've said quite a lot there about something completely meaningless. Sorry about that.

Anyway. Our midwife was very generous in various ways. She was generous with her questions, and now knows exactly which diseases every member of my wife's extended family has ever suffered (not many, I was relieved to hear, having not previously been so generous myself in this respect). She was generous with her little roll of tape, using about a metre of it to stick some cotton wool to my wife's arm after extracting three separate vials of blood from it (generosity works both ways, you see). She was generous to me, alleviating the awkward silence which abruptly descended upon us as soon as my wife left the room to wee on a stick, by also leaving the room, ostensibly to get me a little leaflet produced by somebody on behalf of dads to be in need of something to look at while their wife is out of the room weeing on a stick. But most of all, she was generous with the reams and reams of stuff she gave us to read, look at, worry about, get free nappies with, and generally be weighed down by on the way home.

All of which will be incredibly helpful, I am sure, if we manage to read a significant fraction of it before the baby is actually born. If I sound ungrateful, that's just the fear talking. One thing I've realised is that the only way to cope with the mounting number of small but persistent things to be afraid of, is to regularly explain to people that I'm a bit scared. That way, by next March, when my nervous breakdown is in full swing, people will say "Bless him - he's been a bit scared since last August, you know." Aware of and comforted by this sympathy, I will in fact no longer be scared of anything - and will perform perfectly each of my paternal duties and obligations. So all this moaning now is a kind of pre-emptive strike.

If not for all of our prior worries and difficulties, this trip to meet our midwife would have been the first medical attention attracted by our pregnancy, which seems a bit odd over two months in. Mind you, the pace quickens as standard from here on in. We have two more scans to look forward to (conducted, I believe, from the outside from now on, which will be beneficial to my wife's comfort), as well as at least eight further rendezvouses (what's the plural of rendezvous?) with our midwife (who is generous with her time).

Now. I don't want to get all political about this. But it would be remiss of me to fail to point out that all of this attention is free of charge on the NHS, not to mention the coupons and promises of allowances and benefits to which we are - to our great relief - entitled upon successful completion of the pregnancy. So all of those reprehensible capitalist idiots in America seeking to cling on to this one of their countless unfair advantages by attacking one of the UK's last surviving beacons to the principle of fairness and compassion can, well, just shut up really.

As a reasonable person, whose sense of empathy extends beyond my own bank statement, I did not need to be personally involved with the NHS to understand what a magnificent - albeit sometimes flawed - institution it is. Without it we would undoubtedly be plunged into debt purely by trying to safely produce a child, and it would be to the benefit of someone who already has a lot of money, but wants more of it. I'm glad we're not having our baby in America.

P.S. My Grandma was a midwife, so while I'm being all emotive I'll dedicate this to her.

Scantastic

I think this will be the most scanned baby in the long and illustrious history of maternity. On 14th September, we're going for our twelve week scan. It will be our fourth. Fancy that.

All is well - the mysterious area of blood is still lurking ominously (you used to get fined £1.50 for that in McDonalds), but we are assured that it is no real threat. Baby him/herself is progressing nicely. At scan number one it was dwarfed by its own yolk sack, which I'm sure you'll understand can be quite embarrassing. By scan number two it was winning the battle with the yolk sack, and had advanced to an impressive 8mm.

Now, we laugh at scan number two's pathetic 8mm. My wife is now incubating an 18mm monster, whose heart was easily discernible, pumping away at 160bpm or something. It's not actually a monster. More of a broad bean really. Which is considerably more baby shaped than the blueberry of which we were previously the proud parents to be.

All this scanning raises an interesting question. If talking to a pregnant belly familiarises baby with the comforting, nurturing tones of a parent's voice, then is our unprecedentedly well documented broad bean destined for a life of vain camera hogging? Have we unwittingly produced an attention seeker? I hope not.

I intended to add a picture of our latest scan to this. This hasn't happened yet because, quite ironically, we need to scan it in first, and I can't be bothered. But I will.

Morning sickness

I can't wait until my wife doesn't have morning sickness anymore. Apparently it's like being really hungover for three months, except you don't get to have the preceding fun. It sounds rubbish. And it doesn't even necessarily end after three months. We refuse to face up to this possibility.

And I'm no help whatsoever. When my wife feels dizzy, bloated and literally sick and tired, all day, almost every day, the best I can offer in terms of respite are words similar to "Oh. Oh dear. Anything I can do to help? No. Sure? OK. What can I get you? Feeling better yet? No? Oh. Oh dear. I well want a cigarette." This doesn't seem to make her feel much better.

Sometimes I gallantly rush to the nearest shop to stock up magazines and chocolate and other romantic, sympathetic things of that nature. Trouble is, I end up eating most of the chocolate and I resent paying £4.70 for a well-bound collection of adverts for special cream that makes fifty year old women look 49 or something. And, if I display too much of this mainly useless gallantry, then baby might have to do without clothes or cots or nappies. Also, chocolates and magazines are a bit of a cliche. And I like to think I'm too discerning to have married a woman who is easily impressed by cliches.

By the way, none of this is supposed to reflect badly on my wife, who is increasingly my hero. I'm just feeling a bit useless. I wish I had one or more of the following: more imagination when on a spontaneous sympathy shopping trip; magical healing powers; a time machine, enabling us to skip to trimester number two.

Cravings

I'm fascinated by the cravings pregnant women get. I keep asking my wife if she's got any yet. I think it's starting to annoy her. And she hasn't yet, that she's aware of. She did really want a Mr Whippy the other day, but she thinks that's just because Mr Whippys are really nice. We went on quite a long and ultimately fruitless expedition in search of one. I hope our failure wasn't some sort of omen.

I wonder if fathers to be get sympathy cravings. About half an hour ago I was struck by sudden thoughts of sushi, and would have rather enjoyed eating some. Is this what cravings feel like?

Of course, the more likely explanation is that I had sushi for lunch and had just done a burp, leading to what I have previously termed a "food memory". But I suppose we'll never know.

One thing is certain: my sympathy belly is developing nicely.

I used to joke that my first two children would be named Smorgasbord and Juxtaposition because they were my two favourite words.

My blog's a Daddy blog

The wife is pregnant, and I think that what I am going to do is to use this previously redundant blog to talk about life as a Daddy to be. I'm not sure how this is going to pan out - I may have nothing to say, I may be unable or unwilling to express it, or I may express sentiment which is unentertaining, uninformative and unimpressive. This is quite likely. However I'll try to be honest, eloquent and amusing and maybe someone will read it and be glad that they did.

The pregnancy is currently somewhere around the six or seven week mark, which I believe makes my progeny about the size of a blueberry. We found out that we were expecting two weeks and two days ago. This is the second time we have found ourselves in this position.

Some background

The first time was last September and it ended in tears after about two weeks (of us knowing about it). I'm not even sure of the medical terminology, but I think it was a missed miscarriage, followed by a week of basically waiting for the failed remains to drop out. That is not a pleasant sentence, so imagine how enjoyable an experience it was. And I am aware now as I was then that this must all have been much, much worse for my wife than it was for me. Ultimately, nothing happened in that week, other than the shedding of a lot of tears, and the guilty resumption of smoking, so my wife then had to go back to the hospital for a D & C, also known as a scrape, which leaves little to the imagination.

The physical and particularly emotional pain that my wife went through during and after this was extreme and long lasting. My own experience was of confusion and bewilderment. In two weeks I had gone from shock and fear through glee and pride to paternal determination and focus. This was as steep an emotional slope as I have ever struggled up, only for it all to be torn away in one unexpected moment.

I would like to say at this point that I'm really not one for self gratifying claims to emotional torment (I'm English), and I feel uncomfortable trying to put all this into words. Furthermore, I'm well aware that many other people have suffered the same and much worse. But I'm hoping it will help me, my wife, and anyone else going through this sort of thing who feels, as we did at times, that they're the only ones. If, like me, you tend to cringe at shameless expression of this nature, then I sympathise, but shall nevertheless continue.

This time

It was my wife's birthday, and also the day before our first wedding anniversary. To celebrate these occasions, and to alleviate some of the stress of imminently moving house (still hasn't happened), we went for lunch with some friends and family. The previous night, we had been to our local pub to drink a lot of beer with some friends before returning home so that I - according to tradition - could fall asleep on the sofa while everyone pointed and laughed at me.

They claim that they don't, but I would. Thus, I assume that they are lying.

So when, just before leaving for lunch, my wife told me she felt a bit funny and had a strange feeling that she might be pregnant, I calmly assured her that she was merely hungover and would feel perfectly normal after a cigarette. After lunch, a pregnancy test disagreed quite strongly with me.

Smoking

Yes. We have both been smokers for many years. During this time neither of us has ever really wanted to quit, and we have both always quite enjoyed it as a frequent and satisfying hobby, despite being very well informed thank you about the considerable health risks. We summoned all our resolve and determination to quit during our short-lived first pregnancy, but wasted no time in taking up the habit when that ended in disaster. It felt at the time like the only consolation available, and we grabbed it eagerly. This tiny drop of relief in an ocean of sorrow (apologies for all nauseating metaphors) made us feel very, very guilty.

You may well be thinking that of course we should feel guilty because smoking is bad for you and may even have played a role in the miscarriage, and you are absolutely right, but have obviously never quit smoking. Or had a miscarriage.

We have, of course, quit again now, and it occurred to me the other day that if we can successfully make that sacrifice for our baby, then we should fear no other challenge presented to us by parenting. Probably quite naive, I know, but I was quite proud of myself at the time.

This time (continued)

In view of our prior disaster, we have been generally shitting ourselves about something going wrong this time. With this in mind, we persuaded our doctor to persuade our hospital to give us an early scan, at 5-6 weeks. This was last week, and imagine our relief upon seeing the 3mm blob indulging in some sort of blurry pulsation which apparently constitutes a heartbeat. Having missed the one, doom-laden scan involved in our first pregnancy, I was obviously overjoyed to be here for this, altogether more happy effort. All was as it should be, we were told.

I have deliberately ended that sentence in an ominous fashion.

Not again

After learning about our first pregnancy, it did not take me long to become overwhelmed by feelings of paternal pride. I was surprised and a bit worried to discover that this didn't happen this time around. I'm sure that this was because of my fear of another miscarriage. Of course I hadn't taken any conscious decision to adopt this guarded, frigid mindset, but it makes sense to me. This probably explains why my overriding reaction when it seemed to be happening again was more detached bewilderment than devastation.

Last Friday, I arrived home from work to find our dog alone in the house. My wife works from home and so is usually there when I get in. nevertheless I was unconcerned enough to have a poo before picking up the phone to see where she was, at which point she walked in the front door with her mum.

I had only seen that look on her face once before, and immediately knew what had happened.

She had been unable to contact me at work that afternoon when she had started bleeding heavily. She had phoned her doctor, who had given her a number for the maternity ward at the hospital. She phoned them and explained the situation, to which they replied that there was nothing they could do, and suggested another ward. She phoned this ward, who were equally helpful. Her only remaining option was to get her mum to take her to A&E. After a two hour wait there, she was seen by an apparently heartless doctor, who seemed frustrated and angered by her tearful inefficiency in communicating her symptoms to him. He offered the popular refrain that there was nothing he could do, but booked her in for a scan FOUR DAYS LATER.

Guilty confusion

I defy anyone to cope well with the situation we faced for the next three days. We found that we could only manage by assuming the worst. My wife's symptoms suggested this anyway. By Sunday we were starting to console ourselves to another failed pregnancy. We would forget the whole thing ever happened. We would be selfish, and concentrate on ourselves, with no worries about being sensible, responsible or healthy. We could start smoking again.

By Monday evening my wife's pregnancy symptoms - having apparently faded during the previous three days - were returning. What if, by some miracle, everything was OK. This would be incredible. But it would also mean that we had been massively premature in consoling ourselves with these selfish promises. With the scan the next morning, we were faced with the ridiculous worry that we might feel relieved if it was bad news, or even somehow disappointed if it was good news.

Phew

We needn't have worried. As the nice lady put the thing up there to do the scan, she inhaled to speak, and we braced ourselves for the inevitable, familiar sorrow, tinged with the shameful possibility of relief, only to look at each other, bemused, when she described the baby and its heartbeat, bigger and stronger than a week ago.

We were relieved. Because - and I could immediately tell that my wife agreed with me - there was no disappointment, only delight at the unexpected reprieve for little blueberry. We were back on course. This was this morning so I'll adopt the present tense now I think - we're back on course. We're back to being parents to be. And, far from being disappointed, the paternal pride which had been so conspicuous by its absence is now upon me.

The worst either of us feel is embarrassment at the fuss and upset we've shared with people over the last few days. I only hope they can understand the confused state we were plunged into.

I could easily just be saying all this. But I'm not.

Going forward

There are still worries. There was bleeding which - although far less serious than we feared - does mean that the baby is at a slight risk. My wife's nausea and fatigue are back in full swing. We will in all probability never smoke again, and it will be a long time before I have the epiphany which makes me happy about this. Most of all, I'm worried because I'm going to be a dad.

I've caught up now on what's happened so far. I plan to comment upon these worries and anything else I deem relevant or interesting, albeit hopefully more briefly, so watch this space.

I've got a blog, I think.

I've got a blog, I think. Get me.

I don't know what to do with it now. But one day I will, and then I will be pleased.