Independent woman

I was reflecting to my mother-in-law yesterday that - in my well qualified opinion - her granddaughter looks more like a child than a baby now. It was one of those revelatory moments in which you have thought something for a while, but only realise you think it once you've said so to somebody else. Something in her face triggered my realisation. (My daughter's face, not my mother-in-law's). Possibly her cheeks have shed a little puppy fat; possibly her teeth are a little bit more visible with each beaming grin to which she treats us; or could it be the added intensity with which the wisdom of experience now glows in her eyes?

Whatever the reason, my wife and I are increasingly aware that the double-edged sword of development has been well and truly, um, unsheathed in our daughter. Dubious metaphors aside, on the one hand I can now relate on a very mild level to my own mother's distress at seeing me move out of the family home, when I consider the peaceful vulnerability and complete dependency upon us which defined our daughter a few months ago, but which now exist only in our cherished memories.

On the other hand, new sources of pride now come thick and fast as her increasing independence of thought and movement compel her frequently to discover and hone new abilities. A few weeks ago crawling on her knees suddenly became the norm, as opposed to the occasional variation it previously constituted from the tummy-based commando shuffle she relied upon for so long. The added speed which is the consequence of this new technique has enabled her to pursue her programme of autonomous exploration with greater confidence. Being able to go where she wants has coincided with knowing where she wants to go.

This development also evidently represented the dawning of a new, more balanced era. She soon advanced to a variety of nonchalant sitting positions, ranging from bolt upright to leaning on one arm with a kind of casual Roman decadence. These have since been followed by a preference for kneeling and, now, standing herself up with the aid of absolutely any surface within reach. As yet she can't or won't listen to our advice about checking the stability of said surfaces beforehand, which requires my wife or myself to be on constant alert: hands poised on either side of our daughter like some sort of faith healer working intently on the baby's kidney chakras.

All of these new stances aid our daughter in using her christmas present: a tiny little red piano boasting one, magnificently tinny octave. My adoration of this is bettered only by my daughter's. Her compositions need some work, but she does love to bash them out with gusto. For a love of making music (or 'noise') is another of her recent discoveries. One of the only regrets I have concerning my youth is my failure to have mastered a musical instrument. The signs are good that my daughter will have no such reason for remorse.

And, should her penchant for piano peter out, then her passion for percussion will persevere. Which is why we also got her a little drum. I think even the most cool and rational parents find it difficult to resist seeing portents of future brilliance in every action of their offspring, and I'm no different. If she's not the next Ben Folds, then I think our daughter's a certainty for a role in Stomp at the very least.

She's getting very good at social interaction as well. She has always been happiest among crowds, but now she definitely recognises people and reacts accordingly: she has distinct relationships with people. My favourite example of this is the knowing grin she gives me each day upon my return from work. Nobody else is entitled to this particular privilege, and it is easily my best thing, ever. But other, less regular visitors, are accorded varying receptions according to our daughter's specific memories of them. Nana, as a relatively frequent attendee, is also often treated to a smile; the postman gets nothing.

Child psychologists, anthropologists and other clever people will probably dismiss me as a naive and partisan optimist, but I consider that this discernment between greetings represents a quite advanced level of awareness and communication in my daughter. And, speaking of communication, she has also added some exciting new phonetics to her lexicon. For a long time she kept it largely to "Dadadadadadada", which suited my narcissistic side just fine, but on the whole I am pleased to witness the growing array of noises which now comprise her vocabulary. "Bwabwabwa" is the current favourite, of both its speaker and its audience. It's a difficult noise to make unenthusiastically. She also reserves a different tone of voice for conversations with her toys. This is very cute.

I'm grateful that I can appreciate these nuances in her communication, because I'm sure in about fifteen years she won't talk to me at all. But I'll still find a way to be proud of that.

Further adventures in children's television

Some other visual feasts have crept into our daughter's daily routine of late. Some are good. Some are terrifying. There's something for everyone.

Zingzillas falls into the latter category. As usual I haven't quite given it my full attention, but I maintain that this is a deliberate shortcoming because wildly inaccurate interpretations are funnier. The basic premise of Zingzillas seems to be that some hitherto undiscovered evolutionary branch of anthropomorphised primates has been stranded for an undisclosed length of time on a tropical island. This group has risen above its plight by developing advanced levels of loud clothing, musical ability and the enthusiasm and electricity required to maintain this lifestyle.

This should be an ebullient feast of optimism, which I'm sure is the intention. But it all leaves me with a disturbing sense of unease. I've been trying to put my finger on the cause of this reaction. Maybe it's the massive, lifeless eyes protruding from the protagonists' heads. Maybe it's the relentless gusto with which every task or hurdle presented to them by their simple life is met with song.

But no. I think what really worries me is the old human. Apparently an awkward music nerd was marooned on this island in the seventies. He has since been held prisoner by the big, bog-eyed monkeys and made to participate in their bizarre musical culture. He does appear to have made the best of it: keeping his head down while diligently lending his considerable keyboard skills to proceedings as if his life depends on it, which it may well do. The sinister atmosphere evoked by this poor man's situation is epitomised by the fact that they haven't even offered him a change of clothes. They prance about in their natty threads while leaving this unfortunate captive to suffer in the anachronistic safari suit he washed up in. Now what sort of example is this setting for children?*

Waybaloo (apologies for potentially incorrect spelling) is the antidote to this horror. I have paid even less attention to this, having seen only one five minute burst yesterday. But burst is an inappropriate term, for five minutes was enough to lull me into a peaceful reverie as some very convincingly animated floating aliens soothed my troubled mind through the medium of virtual yoga. This all takes place in a dreamlike paradise which for some reason brought to mind happy memories of a computer game I am yet to identify. But it was obviously one that pleased me. And my daughter seemed to agree. I think there should definitely be more of this TV-as-opiate for children and adults alike.

I will soon write something which actually refers directly to my daughter. But I don't have time right now. There's telly to watch.

*I have now been informed by my wife that this man in fact appeared in only one episode, and is one of numerous people who are fortunate enough to be guests of the Zingzillas'. I apologise profusely for my erroneous slander, but also refer my wife to the above caveat about wild inaccuracies being good.

Philosophical interlude

As a teenager I was quietly self righteous in my views on ethics and principles and that sort of thing. My opinions were formed - I enjoyed telling myself - from a position of rational fairness rather than any particular political or cultural awareness. But I was vaguely conscious that these views often conflicted with those of my elders and betters, and the implication of this was that the responsibilities and complications of adulthood would challenge my outlook. I promised myself that, above all, I would remember how I felt at the time, and not let my conclusions be compromised.

Although it will be a while until my daughter is old enough to be affected by the issues concerned, it is dawning on me that parenthood will inevitably present these challenges sooner or later, and that I had better take stock of my thoughts, and galvanise my answers to all those difficult questions. Am I betraying my younger self if I dismiss my prior views as naive adolescent ramblings?

One relatively small example of these issues is swearing. It used to puzzle me that some words were arbitrarily determined as the evil utterances of the devil, while their synonyms were perfectly acceptable. "Poo", "bum" and "wee" were the innocently amusing alternatives to their darker linguistic siblings, even though the meanings of the sinister, taboo words were identical.

I planned to embark upon a subtle, idealistic crusade to overturn this injustice; gently creating some sort of marxist language in which all words are equal. But now I'm not so sure. As a parent I am forced to admit that I would be mortified to hear my daughter saying the bad words. I suppose the difference is that the general consensus has taken on a greater importance for me. It's easy to not care what people think of yourself, but to dismiss what others think of your offspring would constitute irresponsible parenting.

With this in mind I suppose I owe an apology to my parents, for failing to understand their own appreciation of this when I was young. Then again, I was either respectful or fearful enough to censor my language in the company of those for whom I knew it would be an issue, so perhaps I did understand this principle all along, only now I am more inclined to adhere to it.

All of which is a very roundabout way of arriving at the conclusion that what you say is less important than to whom you say it. "Poo" is a funnier word, anyway.

Perhaps cussing is an innocuous issue, but I think it serves as a microcosm for various others, in that fatherhood has compelled me at least to consider the virtue of pragmatism over principle. Another is appearance. By its very nature, I was more demonstrably rebellious on this subject in my youth. I was fairly close to being a model student at school, but I got told off a lot for failing to tuck in my shirt, or strangle myself by doing up my top button, reducing the circumference of my collar to one smaller than that of my neck. I always listened in class and completed my homework in a timely manner, so why did teachers persist in victimising me over these meaningless concerns?

I am less willing in this instance to concede ground. I still resent these episodes, and I'm still most often situated on the casual side of smart. But I will, for example, tuck in my shirt at a friend's wedding. Once again I think the difference is a consideration for the feelings of others. If my friend the hypothetical groom would rather I look presentable on his big day, then that overrides my need to be slightly more comfortable. And this is the general principle that I hope to instill in my daughter.

One philosophy which I hope never to renege on is a basic but big one: just be nice to people, really. I don't always succeed, but I always at least try to take the unselfish option, and avoid being motivated by greed. Even this principle is one that I have had cause to question. My career hasn't followed the path of which I dreamed. This is partly because I never really established the exact nature of the dream, but on cynical, self-pitying days I can't help resorting to the cliche that the selfish and relentlessly ambitious number highly amongst the successful.

Even if this is the case, though, I still cling to the notion that happiness is better than success, especially if that success is at the cost of someone else's happiness.

I don't yet feel like I've arrived at a coherent set of fundamental principles by which to live, but if I could summarise it all into one catchy motto for my daughter then it would be something like this:

Do what you like as long as you're not upsetting anyone reasonable.

I think it still needs a bit of work. But my teenage self would have been happy with it.

Remember when our baby was just a baby?

We're snowed in. We've decided to fend off the cabin fever by entertaining ourselves with video footage we made of our daughter in the summer, on a camera borrowed indefinitely from my wife's brother.

Although I'm aware on some subconscious level that babies grow and change at a phenomenal rate, it's easy to take these changes for granted when they occur in someone you study with great interest every day, thus viewing the developments incrementally. But having finally seen the footage from around four months ago, I'm struck by the differences in my now nine month-old daughter. I now have some sympathy with all those distant relatives who, upon meeting me once a year or so in my youth, would make astounded declarations concerning my own metamorphosis.

The outstanding revelation from July's footage is that I'm wearing shorts. And nothing on my feet. This is of course completely irrelevant, but merits a mention due to the stark contrast it represents with the foot or two of snow we're currently trapped by.

As for my daughter, I owe her an apology for underestimating the bountiful head of hair she now sports. Although still modestly covered in comparison to some of her more hirsute contemporaries, she is now a veritable lioness in relation to the Duncan Goodhew look she was working back in July. The one tuft she then had on the back of her neck was also distinctly more auburn than it seems now. Duncan Goodhew crossed with Amy Pond from Doctor Who, perhaps. On the swimmer scalp scale, I'm probably an Adrian Moorhouse, so this is a subject close to my heart. I'm relieved, therefore, to see this evidence of my daughter's progress.

A large proportion of our summer recordings consisted of our persistent efforts to get her to roll over. Seemingly endless attempts to capture this simple movement bore little fruit only four months ago, with the rare successes greeted by delighted whooping and hollering by all present. I do distinctly recall the epic nature of this challenge, but we've moved on. Our daughter can now reach any ground level location she chooses with nonchalant ease. Indeed, she is well into the mischievous, exploratory phase loved and adored by exhausted parents everywhere.

So crawling is mastered and, although she still can't walk unaided, she can really get about in her baby walker thingy (we call it her car, beacuse it's vaguely car themed and easier to say than "baby walker thingy"). She's up and down the living room like Nigel Mansell, with the one exception that her development is yet to include moustache growth. The few seconds a day when we dare to take our eyes off her, we spend laughing heartily in the face of mere rolling over.

Sadly, the conflict which results from our refusal to let her march head first into every solid object and sharp corner, no matter how inexplicably inviting they are to her, has resulted in the evocation of a less desirable sign of maturity: the hissy fit. In July things were so much more agreeable. Granted, she would cry all night long (which she now does a little bit less. A little bit), but the days were a blissful mix of silent curiosity and giggling. I'm sure nostalgia has clouded my memory of this somewhat, although the video seems to back up this assessment. Now though, if I so much as save her from caving her head in on the coffee table, I am met with screams of protest which might be construed by a lesser man than myself as ingratitude.

Other changes we had failed to fully appreciate include the gradual re-proportioning of her body. She still has enough reserves of fat to get her through this cold snap, but in July she was more of a tummy on legs. This of course is good news: we can extrapolate this development to confidently conclude that our daughter will turn out to be a healthy size and shape. Not that she's not now.

Teeth are quite easy to count, so we have maintained a more tangible awareness of her progress on that front. The first couple were still a novelty in July. Now she has eight. They are big, white and sharp. And she grinds them, which makes my skin crawl. But she seems to enjoy it.

All of this goes to demonstrate that, no matter how attentively you observe and admire your offspring, it's impossible to keep track of every detail. So thank goodness (and my brother-in-law) for the video camera.

We really must recharge the battery.

Watching strange things on the telly: a perk of having children.

I like to think of myself as the sort of person who's much too busy being all cultural to watch television.

But it's not true.

Having a baby can restrict one's social life somewhat, so - apart from reading or the odd game of scrabble - evening entertainment for my wife and I does tend to quite often involve the magic picture box in the corner. Of course we are quite discerning, carefully selecting only the most authentic and insightful drama for our perusal. Oh, and I'll watch any sport whatsoever. Latvian tiddlywinks championships? That'll do.

So it was inevitable that our daughter would develop her own taste for telly, and I have monitored her preferences with great interest. She seems to consistently favour two programmes in particular.

The first of these is a popular choice amongst her generation: In the Night Garden. I must confess to being a novice in this area, but I have seen enough to become vaguely familiar with some of the finer points. Please accept my apologies, however, for any inaccuracies in the interpretation that follows.

The opening credits are powerfully hypnotic, largely due to their painstaking stop-motion animation. Something (whose exact nature I can't quite recall) is in a boat, in the sea, at night. Then the camera pans up to the sky, whose stars mutate dreamily into beautiful white flowers which multiply to fill the screen before parting to reveal a forest which, by this point in proceedings, I am compelled to describe as magical. Then it gets really trippy.

We've all heard the rumours about The Magic Roundabout having been conceived by some Belgians off their Flemish faces on LSD. It's hard to imagine In the Night Garden having anything other than a very similar genesis. I'm reliably informed that each episode begins with a Matrix red pill/blue pill style, fate-defining cliffhanger, which revolves around a choice between two modes of transport to the night garden. The ninky-nonk - some sort of early Persian circus themed train - is my daughter's favourite option. I am yet to experience the pleasure of the other possibility, but I gather that its name is something which rhymes with ninky-nonk. I'm not sure where the tension comes from.

Once this difficult decision has been made, we are introduced to the characters who inhabit the night garden. My personal favourite is the one with a funny shaped head who lives in a cave and collects rocks, in order to pursue his hobby of cleaning rocks. I can't remember his name. Sorry. There are also some very small creatures. I wasn't really paying much attention to them. Then there's Oopsy Daisy, an endearing young lady who falls over a lot, which ties in conveniently with her name and catchphrase (which is the same as her name).

But the hero of the piece is undoubtedly Iggle Piggle. Our daughter loves Iggle Piggle. Now, I don't wish to offend, but there's no getting away from the fact that Iggle Piggle looks quite phallic. This must have been deliberate. This chap's appearance represents the subversive legacy of a Belgian drug dealer's contribution to children's TV. He's got a really good song though. He sings it a lot.

These characters basically do some stuff that they always do, and then it's all repeated in rudimentary animated form. We don't usually bother with that bit. But I can definitely see the appeal of In the Night Garden. It's mental, but in an overwhelmingly cosy way.

The same cannot be said of the other show that holds our daughter's rapt attention in all circumstances: The Weakest Link. I'm sure there's no need for me to offer much description of this. People clearly selected precisely for their ignorance fail to answer insultingly easy questions, all of which serves only to provide a platform for an old witch to sneer cheap insults at them. And they're all delighted that this is happening. So is our daughter.

But what really irritates me about this bullying based quiz is the determination of the writers to have Anne Robinson introduce each question under a very specific category. So a poser about, I don't know, tomato ketchup would begin "In ketchups..." I think we're supposed to assume that this one question has been drawn from a vast bank of ketchup trivia at the fingertips of Ms. Robinson. Which seems unlikely to me. Hopefully our daughter will grow out of The Weakest Link.

But not In the Night Garden.

Egg related morning of terror.

Our daughter's diet is at least as varied as my own these days. Indeed, sometimes more ingredients are crowbarred together in one of her meals than I manage in an average week. But she seems to enjoy most of the ridiculous parsnip, prune and peach melba type combinations with which we experiment on her palette.

So, being a man who loves a good egg, I was overjoyed one recent morning when my wife suggested scrambling some for the three of us for breakfast. Sharing the meal with our daughter meant sacrificing salt and pepper from the recipe, but we agreed that this was a worthy forfeit to pay for the honour of enjoying such a hallowed culinary experience with our offspring.

She didn't really like it.

As I swallowed my disappointment at my daughter's failure to do the same with her eggs, she chose instead to carefully spread the remainder all over her face. This is a common response of hers to any reluctance to eat something, so we let her get on with it.

Within five or ten minutes, though, an alarming redness started to appear on her face, wherever the egg had been rubbed. At first I remained nonchalantly calm; confident that this merited less worry than finishing my coffee. But my wife's greater concern soon seemed justified, as the redness rapidly grew more angry, and was joined by some frightening blotchy-welty-rashiness. It was as if our daughter had developed years' worth of very severe eczema in a few minutes.

In what seemed at the time like the most sensible option, we bathed the patient immediately; vigorously and repeatedly soaping the affected areas. Even as we did so, these areas were multiplying, appearing all over her body - including in places where no egg to skin contact had been made. This development was the one which saw my panic level catch up with my wife's. I clearly don't know as much as I should about allergies, but suddenly horrific visions of closing airways and blue faces crept ominously across my mind. This could end badly.

Our next step was to decide between spending Sunday in the waiting room of A&E and phoning NHS Direct. Mercifully, there was still no sign of our daughter experiencing any respiratory difficulties, so we chose the phone option. The nice lady on the other end reassuringly established that our daughter was indeed still breathing quite happily before promising that a nurse with an equally calming demeanour would phone us back within half an hour.

By the time the nurse did get in touch, the initial blotches were beginning to subside, so her soothing Bristolian tones served more as confirmation than revelation of our daughter's immediate recovery. She explained that egg allergies are fairly common in babies and toddlers, and are usually grown out of. Serenity was thus soon restored. We were, nevertheless, left with instructions to steer our daughter well clear of all edible ova for the foreseeable future, as well as a mild, confused sheepishness caused by the fuss we had made, tempered only by relief that it had ultimately been unnecessary.

My wife was still overcome with remorse for some time afterwards. I did my best to comfort her by pointing out that an incident such as this was the only way we could have discovered that it was a possibility. Personally I found this more confusing than comforting. I think I had stumbled upon a paradox.

But I digress. The whole episode underlined to me the tenuous fragility of a baby's life. Maybe our panic turned out to be disproportionate, but we were lucky. I wonder how many similar events end in a tragedy which no amount of love or care could have prevented. Obviously, as responsible parents, we will always take every conceivable measure to ensure our daughter's safety, but from now on I'm going to keep my fingers crossed as a backup.

Pride update.

As my daughter's age approaches the eight month mark, the list of her achievements and abilities continues to grow at an impressive rate. She now has four teeth, which seem to have emerged in no particular order. The symmetry I naively expected has failed to transpire, but this has had no effect on the efficient use she makes of her gnashers as she munches away on whichever concoction my wife and I subject them to. Not that much of it touches the sides, mind you, such is the voracity of her appetite. Root vegetables seem to be a common feature of her favourite meals, which I think indicates a certain cultured maturity in her taste.

Decision making seems to play in increasing role in other aspects of her life. Like any child, she is developing a strong sense of what she doesn't like, and how to express this. At high volume. What I find more admirable - and more positive - is her ability to discern what she does like. Holding her in front of her toy collection is all the invitation she needs to make a carefully considered selection. The repetition in her choices suggests that they are good ones. As a man often plagued by indecision I sincerely hope that this quality of my daughter's stays with her.

Her mobility is also improving. Although yet to fully master crawling, she does occasionally struggle forwards on her knees and elbows, even if she doesn't fully understand how she has achieved this. I am confident that, with each such happy accident, she is programming the instinct which will soon take over.

Crawling may, however, soon be rendered unnecessary. Her legs have been capable of supporting her weight since she was about five minutes old. She has now progressed to the point where a slight balance deficit is the only thing between her and independent perambulation. Thus, when you hold her hands, she walks eagerly in whichever direction she's facing, eating up the ground like Usain Bolt. And nothing makes her happier.

Convenient, then, that she has recently mastered a useful means of expressing this happiness: clapping. I say mastered. Maybe that's a bit generous. Picture a weightlifter who has put too much flour on his hands. The thing he or she would do to remedy such a situation is what my daughter does. Frequently. I should clarify that she is yet to attempt weightlifting. Although she is very strong.

We still haven't identified the language, but she can definitely talk. One of her preferred statements is "Dadadadadadadadada". My wife's interpretation of this differs from my own. While she sees it as a meaningless, albeit entertaining phonetic, I see no problem in isolating any two of its syllables to leave the word every father yearns to hear from his child. Yes folks: my daughter calls me Dada. Sometimes I'm even there when she does it.

All of these excellent capabilities, and yet she still almost never sleeps. At least not for any significant length of time. All I want for Christmas is eight solid hours. And my wife, as a light sleeper, and the one with all the milk (and, if I'm honest, our daughter's first choice of nocturnal visitor), suffers hugely more than I do. Just imagine how much amazing stuff our daughter could do after a good night's sleep.

Daddy dreams.

It was my birthday last week.

It's got a zero and a three in it.

While you calculate the permutations of that, I shall inform you that the celebrations on the day began with my daughter awakening me (with my wife's help), resplendent in her new Arsenal kit. This provided me with far more joy and pride than I could have predicted. Of course I have no intention of goonering her up for trips to Asda. In fact I'll try to minimise the pressure I will inevitably put on her to follow my allegiance as she grows up. I think that, in order for it to be genuine, one's choice of football team must be a personal decision, rather than an imposed one. A bit like religion really. Nevertheless, my red and white fingers are firmly crossed.

I have subsequently concluded that this start to my birthday was the manifestation of one of those slightly embarrassing, idealistic visions of parenthood that you don't even realise you're having. This epiphany has compelled me to search my subconscious for other examples, to accompany that of my first-born dressing up as Cesc Fabregas.

Some, I am sure, are common to most parents, and therefore easier to admit to. The first time she walks, her relieved smile at the end of her first day at school, graduation, wedding, etc etc. So far, so obvious.

I suppose my more bespoke reveries are really based on the hope that my daughter will be like me, and share some of my interests. Football is one of these. I also long for the day when we discuss our favourite books. Even heated debate on this subject will be welcome. I want to take her to art galleries and see her gasp in awe at the understated power of a Mondrian. I can't wait until the day she shoots me down with some carefully pitched sarcasm, or enjoys studying a map for a bit longer than necessary.

I should stress that, if my daughter is reading this in twenty years' time and feeling any regret at the non-occurrence of any of the above, then she absolutely shouldn't. I will be proud of whatever tastes, hobbies, achievements or idiosyncrasies she develops, as long as she takes unashamed pride in them.

And as long as she doesn't support Sp*rs.

Things I love about my daughter

My daughter is now six months, sixteen days and eleven hours old. What better way to mark the occasion than by outlining her most impressive and endearing characteristics?

So, in no particular order:

1. When she wakes up, invariably in a good mood, her beaming grin is often accompanied by an enthusiastic gargling noise, which emanates gleefully from the back of her throat. My best description of the sound is that it lies somewhere between the soothing white noise your television used to make in the good old days when BBC2 went to sleep, and the creaking inhalation made by the terrifying, inky mess confronted by Sarah Michelle Gellar in The Grudge (Incidentally, my wife has for years objected to my impersonation of this but, quite unfairly, is more than happy with our daughter's). Of course, these two references straddle quite a large expanse of middle ground. But rest assured that their audio average, as demonstrated by my daughter, is the sound of contagious joy personified.

2. She has a resilience which dwarves my own. Having spent a significant proportion of her existence fighting off one infection after another, she is now suffering from a particularly malicious cold, regrettably contracted from my wife (whose own resistance is similarly impressive). After spending yesterday evening being mildly amused by her own frequent sneezing, our daughter awoke not long into the night barely able to draw breath through the mucus which had suddenly plugged every sinus, and was embarking on an aggressive takeover of her throat. Fear, pain and panic caused howls of distress and streaming tears, as my wife and I struggled to pacify her. Ultimately we resorted to shutting the family in the bathroom with the shower turned up to eleven, in an attempt to exorcise the snotty demon with steam. Relative calm eventually ensued, but symptoms which would certainly keep me under the duvet have clearly persisted today. Yet my daughter has kept up her proverbial pecker, following with the usual tenacity her rigorous schedule of energetic banging, grabbing, sucking, pooing and grinning. Knowing the extent of her suffering, each burst of energy seemed like a stubborn little miracle.

3. She does an excellent poo. For the first five or so months of her life, I developed a naive assumption that my daughter would forever more only produce occasional bursts of pressurised orange liquid. On the contrary, of course, her introduction to solid food has heralded the dawning of a new era. And this era is brown, solid and regular. And it absolutely stinks. I am suitably proud.

4. The way she rolls. For a few weeks now, crawling has been only just eluding her. The will and the strength are there, but sadly the knees aren't. Once she overcomes this hurdle there'll be no stopping her, but in the meantime she compensates by rolling and spinning across the ground faster than I can run, and I was consistently the second fastest runner in my year at school. Until I started smoking. And drinking. How can I fail to be filled with pride at this display of physical prowess in my offspring?

5. She's very touchy-feely. This manifests itself in various ways, some more violent than others, but all equally charming. She demonstrates her affection for someone by slapping them swiftly in the face. And she's got a good arm on her. Furthermore, the slap often coincides with a scratch, but we consider this our punishment for not cutting her fingernails every five minutes, and thus love her all the more for it. She means well. In her less energetic moments, her favoured conditions in which to fall asleep involve being held in somebody's arms (preferably Mummy's), at just such a height that she can suck her thumb while simultaneously stroking their face with the fingers of the same hand. This is extremely adorable.

There are more than five things I love about my daughter. But that will do for now.

A bit self-indulgent and not as funny as usual but nevertheless very insightful.

I've recently been promoted at work.

Hurray. Go me, etc.

I'm not just showing off. As you might expect, this has brought with it more pressure and stress. I'm gradually getting used to these consequences of earning a bit more, and of being a little bit more proud of myself. But at first I really struggled to cope, as the added tension triggered some sort of depression in me and left me crying into my wife's arms and phoning my parents in the middle of their holiday to feel sorry for myself at them. I had a crisis of confidence which made me question my ability to do the job I had been given and, worst of all, to be a father. How could I fulfill my stereotypical role as protector, carer and role model when I had been reduced to a pathetic, quivering mess?

Believe it or not, I'm trying not to be melodramatic, and as I say, I'm adjusting to it all now with the help of those mentioned above as well as my colleagues, to all of whom I'm extremely grateful. But the experience has caused me to question where the balance should lie between being somebody you and your child can be proud of, and ensuring that you maintain a happy and stable demeanour.

My memories from my own childhood are of pride in my father's importance at work, and in his self-evidently hardworking nature, but also of worry at the obvious stress this caused him. Undoubtedly these memories have influenced my thinking in either direction. I'm sure most boys just want to impress their dad deep down. Mine made no attempt to disguise his joy when I told him of my promotion, and I think this was a factor in my applying for it in the first place. Yet I had decided long ago that I considered happiness to be far more important than wealth or status. So why the change of heart?

Of course, as a parent, it would be irresponsible of me to refuse a chance to earn a few more pennies for the family coffers, but I think pride was a bigger factor. I'm ashamed to say it, but I didn't like the idea of telling my daughter that I work in a shop. Now at least I can say that I'm a vaguely important person in a shop. To reiterate, I'm ashamed to confess to this feeling, but the lesson I'm learning here is that the responsibilities of parenthood force you to confront your ideologies. I'm still of the opinion that happiness is better than wealth or importance, but I no longer always feel that my opinions should come first.

So the balance has shifted, whether I wanted it to or not, but I'm also learning that you can still have it both ways. I come home from work a bit more stressed than I used to, but it is precisely by then being the best father I can that I can overcome the tension and the worry. It's a bit harder, but that's why getting the balance right is the real source of pride. Tellingly, it was the same stressed father of my childhood who used his experience to help me through my own little episode. Thus it all falls into place, and it turns out that everything's OK after all.

Hurray. Go me, etc.

The story of the little infection that didn't know when to go away and leave us all alone.

Apologies, oh legion of readers, for the delay in bringing to you this latest installment of amateurish, self-interested, baby-related philosophising. The past month has been - if not traumatic - then at least trying for me and, probably to a greater extent, for my wife (I am still to decide whether the disproportionate burden-bearing on the mother's part is a product of nature, a society which is still more misogynistic than we care to admit, or simply my instinctive tendency for evasive apathy. But this is a debate for another day). Most of all, this has been a hard time for our daughter.

Since you last heard from me, she has suffered a continuous series of persistent, albeit non life-threatening ailments. There have also been notable triumphs, more of which later. Bad news first.

One development which, I suppose, falls under the headings of both pain and progress, has been the notorious ordeal that is teething. One of our daughter's middle bottom ones (Like many otherwise reasonable people I'm no great fan of dentistry or its practitioners, and am thus unaware of technical tooth terms) was the first of many candidates to make the breakthrough a few weeks ago. The legendary distress caused by this is, it turns out, of the kind that has to be witnessed first hand to be truly appreciated.

Relentless screaming for two solid days.

And if there's one thing the past month has taught us, it's that our daughter is a trooper. When she fulfills my vicarious prophecy of becoming a professional footballer, she will be the one who pioneers not diving and rolling about like a cheating coward. When our daughter screams, it really hurts. My advice is to use Anbesol and Nurofen, and to have an amazingly patient wife. Still: only nineteen teeth to go. And I could never have predicted the magnitude of the paternal pride evoked by the merest glimpse of the little flash of white in her smile.

But all this has been no more than a distraction from the real ailments. Shortly after having her last jabs about a month ago, our daughter's right ear began to extrude a worrying volume of waxy gunky gunkwax. Also, we observed, it smelt like a dirty bin. After allowing a day to establish that these symptoms were not likely to eradicate themselves, we made the first of many subsequent trips to the doctor, who swiftly confirmed our suspicion that our daughter was suffering from her first ear infection. This was to be tackled by her first course of antibiotics.

To cut a long story short, four further consultations with irritatingly alternating doctors, and four courses of antibiotics, and now one of ear drops, are yet to vanquish this infection. Initially its symptoms consisted of more screaming, as well as frenzied rubbing of the offending ear which often nearly amounted to its removal. The sleep patterns which were previously just starting to emerge were immediately abandoned in favour of not really ever sleeping at all.

Mercifully, these symptoms have largely subsided in spite of the infection's stubborn refusal to do so itself. However, multiple courses of medicine have caused their own problems. All of these events have transpired, I suspect, to make me grateful for having learnt as a child to spell diarrhoea (If you think I've spelt it wrong, then go and live in America). In addition to the gushing poo (accompanied by stomach cramps and what my wife affectionately refers to as "sore undercarriage"), this medical onslaught may or may not have been responsible for the eye infection which our daughter has now also developed. So her five month old body is currently being bombarded with antibiotics, ear drops and eye drops, each three or four times every day.

One could argue that it's best to get it all out of the way at once, a bit like having twins. Except of course that these maladies are not finite: the chances of their recurrence are unaffected by any previous suffering. And the difficulty we have discovered is that, when your child is suffering in several simultaneous ways - and has yet to learn any of the languages that you speak - it's very difficult to work out what the problem is and how to solve it. I think the doctors have the same trouble.

In spite of all this, I have been genuinely amazed at our daughter's resilience. Of course I am aware that many children and their parents suffer far, far worse, and I am eternally grateful for every healthy aspect of my daughter's physiology. But nevertheless, she has put up with an awful lot recently, and still found time for plenty of happiness and achievement.

Between all the screaming and discomfort, our daughter has discovered and perfected the art of rolling over. Once agin I am overcome with pride as she thrusts her weight determinedly to her right, always bravely confronting the struggle at the last with the inconvenient obstacle caused by her right shoulder. More often than not now, her momentum is sufficiently judged to overcome this hurdle, leaving her lying satisfied on her front as she raises her head to meet you with a look of triumphant glee, another epic undertaking complete. She also sat up unassisted for a good ten seconds the other day. However her failure to repeat this feat has led us to reluctantly conclude that it was a fluke.

Her co-ordination in general is rapidly improving. She can remove my glasses at will in one swiftly executed movement. This might be more irritating than impressive if she didn't always agree to give them straight back. And her ability to harvest huge clumps of my chest hair will no doubt ensure my qualification as a metrosexual before the year is out.

This co-ordination has also helped with her burgeoning talent for eating solid food. She now knows more-or-less how and when to open, close, chew and swallow. And then dribble and smear. Maybe there is room for improvement, but I think weaning will soon be feasible.

I commented to someone the other day (during one of those mutually smug "Oh yes, I also am a father, aren't we excellent" chats to which I am now privy) that the second two months of fatherhood were much easier than the first two. Well, the fifth has been the hardest yet. But also the most rewarding.

Big and happy.

Once again (projection of my issues with the colour pink onto various straw men aside) I have been remiss in my reportage of my daughter's unwavering development. For this I apologise. Here's what you've been missing:

She continues to grow at a mightily impressive rate. At just over four months, she is now over 18lb, a weight usually recommended for ladies twice her age. Not to suggest, of course, that this is a bad thing: her growth seems lately to be focussed upwards more than outwards. The best description I can muster of my daughter's current length is to say that, when I hold her under her armpits and extend my own arms fully above my head, she can quite comfortably backheel me in the face. This is an ability which she happily exploits at every opportunity. I should probably take heed of my wife's pleas for me to stop holding her like that.

In a further, very significant development, our daughter has four imminent teeth. Two middle ones at the bottom and two canines (alright then: vampire teeth), one on each side at the top, are very much visible just beneath the surface, albeit yet to break through. This stage has been reached over the past two or three weeks, and I'd have to say that - apart from slightly more frequent grumbles, a lot of dribbling, and a propensity for putting any available object into her mouth, she's taking it all rather well. This would appear to indicate that our daughter is made of strong, resilient stuff. Excellent news. Sadly though, this does weaken my claim that my impassioned and heavily dramatic reaction to any affliction I suffer is somehow hereditary. I must instead conclude that it is because I am a man.

Perfectly timed to coincide with the tooth growth, has been our daughter's introduction to real food. Early attempts at baby rice met with amusing but disappointing results, as eager curiosity failed to overcome the confusion of a novice, and the rice dropped unchewed and unloved from a tongue unable to reconcile itself to the new flavour. And the small, heroic quantity that ran this gauntlet and made it to our daughter's stomach was not treated well when it got there, as her nappy was soon to discover.

Gentle perseverance, however, has resulted in some progress. One day last week, my wife introduced further rice to our daughter's mouth, and PING: something clicked. Or should that be pinged? Anyway, the eating instinct suddenly kicked in as she chomped gummily away on the solid(ish) stuff, before despatching it throatwards with the nonchalant efficiency of a seasoned professional. Only today, our daughter enjoyed her first sample of butternut squash: an experience to which I think she beat me by about twenty years. I should clarify that these have only been tasters: our daughter is still breast fed, and will hopefully remain so for a good couple of months. And I should reiterate my immense gratitude and pride in my wife for her steadfast commitment to this.

Our daughter's personality is also flourishing. She graciously takes pity on her father and knows just how to make him glow with joy, pride and other cliches. Upon seeing me after any significant absence, her brow wrinkles at first, before recognition and delight compete to spread across her face, jointly manifesting themselves in a beaming grin which I defy anyone to improve upon. Another preeminently lovable habit of hers is to squeal for all she's worth as a demonstration of happiness. In combination with seeing the unbridled joy on her face, this is absolutely adorable. Regrettably, without visual confirmation it sounds like the blood curdling scream of a Wes Craven protagonist at the climax of her panic. I dread to think of the conclusions our neighbours must draw from the noise, with the sinister accompaniment of our satisfied laughter in the background.

But she's just happy. Which means that everything's OK.

Exciting new look!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is so exciting I was compelled to use more exclamation marks than a hyperactive PE teacher enthusiastically designing a poster about his birthday party. Probably one involving squat thrusts. When you consider that I am one of those punctuation scrooges who see exclamation marks as the literary equivalent of laughing at your own joke, you'll begin to gain some understanding of the level of excitement on show here.

I invite you all to gasp in admiration at my blog's beguiling and appropriately pink new look. Of course, blog historians of the future will be unaware of its previously underwhelming aesthetic. But you, privileged readers of the present, will no doubt be suitably impressed by the transformation. Congratulations on sharing in the glory.

Homophobes and cliche-phobes may object to my choice of colour. To homophobes I say that you are now wrong about at least two things, and also that you should take the matter up with the football and rugby teams of Palermo and Stade Francais respectively. And to cliche-phobes I cite the determined reluctance of my wife and I - prior to our daughter's birth - to allow pink to permeate every aspect of her life, and the rapid crumbling of this resolve in the face of the colour's irrefutable suitability for little girls. You try having a daughter and let's see how long you persevere with cream and beige. And what sort of a stupid, made-up term for yourself is cliche-phobe anyway?

Cousins: something to aspire to.

We have recently enjoyed visits from both my wife's sister (from Canada) and mine (from Essex. But anyone who has had the pleasure of traversing the A12 will find this journey equally admirable), and their respective families. My sister has two sons, nine and seven, and my wife's sister has a two year-old boy and a one year-old girl. All have their own interesting and varied characteristics, to be endured or enjoyed accordingly by those in their company. As a proud and doting uncle I should stress that enjoyment is overwhelmingly the more common response in each case.

As well as the usual pleasure derived by my family from visits by these families, it has occurred to me that - as a parent - I now view such occasions with added import. I cannot help but regard our niece and nephews in the context of my daughter's potential, and hope that she will grow up to share some of their best qualities.

Our eldest nephew is, by all accounts, very very clever. He possesses an encyclopaedic knowledge of the UK motorway network (the utility of which will, I am sure, reveal itself in due course), and effortlessly outclasses me at mental arithmetic. And I'm no numerical slouch. I value an enquiring mind very highly, and sincerely hope - with some confidence - that our daughter will show levels of intelligence even approaching his.

His brother is relaxed charm personified. This ability to remain calm under pressure means that he shows an increasing prowess at, for example Wii bowling, not to mention football. Needless to say, this is an extremely valuable quality. I have already been working hard to develop my daughter's interest in sport, and the early signs are promising. Much to her mother's chagrin, her apparent passion for watching television is at its strongest during the football. Or the cricket. Or even the rugby. And I'm not even that bothered about rugby.

Our Canadian nephew constitutes an unprecedented bundle of energy and enthusiasm. Other jaded parents who speak of their loved ones as people who "never stop" are but amateurs, yet to experience true relentlessness. Rest assured that he will drain every ounce of mischief from any building he enters. And he gets away with it all. Because he, at two years old, is a people person. He makes charmingly appropriate use of please and thank you, remembers people's names and, when all else fails, he brings out the grin. This is a grin which, in tandem with his big brown eyes, cannot be resisted. In this respect also, our daughter shows early promise. Please, thank you, and names are as yet beyond her, but the grin is coming along very nicely indeed.

Our niece, last year, underwent harrowing surgery which would be a traumatic ordeal for someone of any age, let alone under a year, as she was then. This was a very difficult time for her family, friends, and anybody who knows her. The one person who held their resolve, and kept smiling throughout was our niece herself, who made less fuss than I do when I cut my fingernails a bit too short and it's all sore for a day or two. This kind of dignified resilience is a rare quality, and one which I would be immensely proud to see in my daughter, but hopefully not in similar circumstances. Our niece also demonstrates adorable maternal instincts, which were demonstrated last week by the hugs and kisses she insisted on bestowing upon our daughter. Both young ladies seemed to enjoy this bond, as did we. Although we did have to stop her from sharing all her food with our daughter, whose digestive system isn't quite ready for such generosity.

Clearly any sane and sensible parent wants their child to develop the best possible characteristics. What is interesting is how parents determine which characteristics these are. Only from experience have I truly understood that you define the best as that which you see in those you love.

I won't sleep tonight if I don't temper this with some healthy cynicism, so I feel I should also raise the possibility that the qualities I identify in others are simply those I see in myself, in my more egotistical moments (of which there are many). But whatever the cause, the effect seems to be good, so that's ok really.

A letter to my daughter.

To my daughter,

This weekend, your Mum and I went to our friends' wedding. It was a beautiful day, and we were so proud of you. Everybody thought you were amazing. Which you are. You inspired them all to want to have babies of their own. I didn't tell them that there's no way their babies could ever be as excellent as you. Sadly, I spent a little too long drinking in the sun, so I'm slightly jaded today.

Also this weekend, we watched two films which made me feel very sentimental. I hope that one day you'll read this and, if you do, I hope you'll forgive me for being a bit tired and emotional.

Both of the films we watched were based on books, which I also hope that one day you'll read. But for now, I'll tell you a bit about them and why they made me think about you. The first one was called The Road. It's a very sad story, but it's also very beautiful, because it's all about how much a daddy will do to look after his child, even when everything else has gone really wrong. Making sure you're ok will always be my number one priority.

The second film was called Where the Wild Things Are. It's all about a child who's a bit naughty sometimes, but really he's just frustrated because he's got a better imagination than anybody else. In the end, his own imagination helps him see that the people he loves, love him too. If I hadn't read this book, and watched this film, I might never have realised something very important: I must always encourage you to use your imagination (as long as I don't think you'll get hurt) because that's the best way to have fun. Sometimes grown ups forget how important having fun is, but I promise I'll try not to. You can hold me to that.

Love from Daddy.

Talking

Here are some things that our daughter has mentioned:

Dagenham

Pete

Manga

Gang

Ge (not a real word. Yet)

Kay

Ugly

Pride and prejudice.

One change fatherhood has caused in me is that I pay attention to other babies now. Not in a sinister way: I just mean that I acknowledge their existence, really. Previously I was a bit scared of any children I'm not related to, which I think is fairly normal for a young gentleman, prior to his initiation into parenthood. I've always been a bit shy, but the age group with whom I would go to the greatest lengths to avoid eye contact was the youngest one.

Now this has changed. Working in retail, I regularly encounter younglings, so it has been easily noticeable to me that I suddenly consider myself part of an exclusive club, whose admittedly large number of members know and understand the secrets of communicating with and understanding babies. I now shamelessly grin, wave and coo at every possible opportunity.

This behaviour seems to be deemed acceptable by the parents, so I assume it is normal. I think the reason people such as myself conduct ourselves in this way is because we want to show off. "I too am proven to be capable of reproduction," we are saying with these demonstrations of our ability to interact with the fruits of others' loins, "I can do this because I have also made one." Which is fair enough really. Of all the things to be vain about, the perpetuation of one's genes is one of the more acceptable.

But there's also a competitive element. I think it's human nature to compare what's yours with what's not. This may be a recent - and not necessarily admirable - development in our evolution, caused, perhaps, by our shallow consumer culture. Or it may be a more fundamental instinct. This is for anthropologists to speculate upon. But it seems to be a ubiquitous trait, the consequence of which is that, while I am grinning, waving and cooing at all these babies, I am making instant judgements on their size, beauty, alertness, intelligence and general potential to be a successful member of the species. And as I jump to these wild extrapolations, I am comparing them to those I have made about my own daughter.

And she always wins.

I try to be as objective as I can, but in all honesty I judge my daughter to be the most beautiful, amusing and adorable creature ever produced by biology. This is a worrying portent of a tendency in me towards competitive parenting. But there is little I can do. I'll try to rein it in by the time she starts school, because I don't wish to be that annoying parent that the others don't talk to (although I think your child has to be called Tarquin for you to truly achieve that status). Sadly though, I fear it's beyond my control: My child is quite clearly better than anyone else's.

Dad pride.

Our daughter is over seven weeks old now. Already I struggle to remember when she wasn't here. Really I should have been more diligent in documenting her progress through life, because many of her developments have been and gone.

By way of apology, I hope that you will accept this list of Excellent Things My Daughter Can Do:

Change colour. They say babies like routine. One of our daughter's is to cry and cry and cry until she goes purple every evening. This is not fun, but it does seem to clear her sinuses (see below). Also we have recently discovered that bathtime can be an effective and enjoyable antidote to this.

Genuinely smile. After weeks of getting willfully overexcited about the facial expressions babies make when they fart, we are now certain that, under the correct jiggly conditions, our daughter does actual, proper grinning. And there is nothing more rewarding to look at.

Grow. She puts on over a pound a week on average, and is already over a stone. Most supermodels weigh less than this, which somehow means that I can proudly tell people my daughter is better than a supermodel. She actually is more beautiful than any I can think of.

Withstand an horrific illness. I think our daughter is just coming to the end of her suffering, caused by the worst cold ever conceived by biology. I know it was this bad because I gave it to her. I feel very guilty about this, despite not really having been able to help it. For over a week, our daughter was unable to eat and breathe at the same time. She barely slept as a result of the frequent panic caused by her respiratory troubles and, I suspect, very hurty sinuses. Mercifully, although still snotty, she has noticeably brightened up over the past few days, so is hopefully over the worst.

Press-ups. Our daughter has always been a big fan of lying on her front, on mummy or daddy's chest. When she finds herself doing this with her arms underneath her, her usual inclination is to lift herself up and gaze curiously into whoever's eyes she is confronted with. Should these eyes be yours, you will find it impossible to resist saying "Ahhhhh", and being very impressed by her strength and stamina: she can stay up there for hours.

Stand up. Almost. Obviously it will be several months before she doesn't need some guidance and assistance, but our daughter can very nearly support her own weight on her legs. Some killjoy told me that this is perfectly normal and therefore unimpressive, but I think it's one of the more amazing of her achievements.

There are, of course more. But I have to go to work.

Manly manness.

Towards the end of my first week at secondary school, I had what was probably really just a bit of a tantrum, but felt to me like a harrowing nervous breakdown. This was as a result of the realisation dawning upon me that I had entered a cycle of responsibility that seemed infinite. Lessons were followed by homework, which was followed by a bit of sleep (during which I was asleep, and therefore unappreciative of my freedom), followed by lessons, and so on.

Of course I soon discovered that I could still make time to watch Neighbours and play football, and subsequently felt a bit silly about my nervous breakdown. But I concluded that silly was preferable to harrowing, and was therefore happy with this progression.

Since discovering that my wife was with child, my quite self-involved nature dictated that I wondered whether fatherhood would change me. Would I become more assertive, decisive and generally manly? Or, conversely, would I enter a new cycle of infinite responsibility, and be paralysed once again by its unrelenting pressure?

Upon our daughter's birth, therefore, I relished the chance to assess the imminent evidence in relation to these questions. For a few days I bravely smiled at strangers and spoke clearly in public. But then the initial euphoria wore off and the real test began. My subconscious prepared to sit back and observe with studious interest what was to become of me.

I did have previous experience of cooking, cleaning, washing and that sort of thing. But I had always carried out these activities with a sense of reluctance which is only apparent to me now because it has all but disappeared. I don't think this is down to any increased sense of responsibility; rather - when compared to trying to stop somebody you love, whose only means of telling you what's wrong is by crying, from crying - hoovering doesn't feel like such a chore.

So these sorts of tasks have become minor distractions, like cleaning my teeth in the morning. I used to hate doing that until I had to start shaving. It's all relative.

I also found the motivation to do the big, butch jobs which I had previously found easy to put off. In one act of afternoon spontaneity, I cleared the ominous jungle which has dominated and rendered useless our greenhouse since we moved in. I drew on hidden reserves of testosterone to hack away at the stubborn triffids, courageously avoiding all the big spiders and bees. The resultant mountain of rubbish and garden waste was quickly and efficiently despatched to the tip that very afternoon.

This is how dads spend their time. I was settling into my role nicely. I even considered washing the car afterwards, but everyone has their limits.

I've been back at work for a week now, and am yet to truly rediscover the air of jaded cynicism I traditionally bring to my job (whilst always performing it to the very highest standard, of course). Is this the result of a new, more mature and paternal perspective?

So the early signs are, on the face of it, that fatherhood is making a man of me. I'm more responsible, hard working and mature.

And yet I still play computer games on my lunch break. I still think flatulence is quite funny. I still find myself unable to resist manipulating any possible situation towards me watching football. So maybe the early signs are misleading. Or maybe these are simply the necessary means of relieving the pressure, thus avoiding another tantrum. What I have learned - which I hadn't when I was eleven - is that you cope with the responsibility because you have to.

The one thing about which I can be conclusive is that I care a lot less than I did six weeks ago about whether anybody else thinks I'm a manly man. I just want my daughter to be happy. Which I think means that, manly or not, I'm definitely a dad.

A bit up and down. And up.

I've been putting off writing this, because I don't know where to start. At the risk of rendering the phrase "resorting to cliche" a cliche, I shall have to resort to cliche in describing the past few weeks as an emotional rollercoaster.

In hospital

Despite her impressive size, our daughter was technically over three weeks premature, so the first five days of her life were spent in hospital. They let her mum stay there with her, of course, although this meant that I was left alone to look after myself and the house. I had my first taste of life as a busy person as I struggled to get to grips with the washing machine, the dishwasher, the oven and, for the first time in years, sleeping in solitude. All of this while trying to spend every permissible minute at the hospital. By day two I was being told off for falling asleep in my wife's hospital bed. Apparently that's frowned upon.

I'm well aware, though, that I had the easy role in that first week. My wife's recovery from the most harrowing physical ordeal of her life was spent in a cubicle defined only by a blue curtain which didn't quite go around her bed and our daughter's tastefully soulless perspex cot.

Our daughter initially had quite nasty jaundice, which meant that she had one thing too many in common with David Dickinson, was a bit sleepy and not consistently bothered about feeding. To add to my wife's understandable distress and confusion (as well as my own), one nurse in particular seemed psychotically determined for there to be something seriously wrong with our daughter. Every movement she made was met with a gasp and a knowing look which promised us bad news. At one point this nurse even contrived for us to be led fearfully into a private room, in which a team of paediatricians told us that the nurse's observations compelled them to test our daughter for Down's syndrome.

I don't intend to pollute this blog with negativity and recriminations, but I have to say that this nurse was the only person to "observe" any symptoms relevant to such a diagnosis, and I therefore hold her solely responsible for the unnecessary life changing fears we went through in the days before the test results came back negative. I never discovered this nurse's name, but she is very definitely in the wrong job. The one good thing I can say about this little episode is that it taught me never to take your child's health for granted. Only a week previously I had had such little appreciation of the impact on a parent's outlook that can be caused by the slightest doubt in this respect. I certainly appreciate it now, and would urge any parent to be constantly grateful for all of the things that are not wrong with their child.

Homecoming

Five days after the birth, I brought my daughter and my wife home at last. I'm not sure what kind of fanfare I expected, but the event felt somewhat ant-climactic. We were inundated with cards, presents and visitors during the following week or so - all of which were lovingly intended and gratefully received. My wife's mother and mine were respectively virtually and literally ever-present, and I'm not sure we would have coped without them.

But despite all of this, the second week was, if anything, more difficult than the first. Nothing can prepare you for the profound effect sudden sleep deprivation and a dramatically increased weight of responsibility can cause. Somebody remarked to me that "Nobody tells you how hard it is", and at the time I eagerly agreed. But in retrospect I think that people do try to warn you, and you just don't listen, because you stubbornly believe that your love for your child will overcome any threat to your unbridled joy.

By the end of the second week I was seriously starting to doubt this assertion, and feeling increasingly worried about my wife's physical state (her old foe, SPD was refusing to let the excruciating pain in her pelvis abate), and both of our emotional states. And you can't really tell people that you feel depressed when you have a two week old child. It just seems ungrateful.

Don't worry: everything's going to be ok

Almost literally overnight, everything seemed a bit better. I don't know whether we started to get more sleep, or whether we just got used to less sleep, but suddenly I could understand what people meant when they said you had to really appreciate these early weeks of parenthood.

Every sound our daughter made; every inadvertent grin or glance in my direction - without wishing to resort to cliche - now felt like a cherished gift. I lay in bed one morning with my daughter asleep on my chest, my wife lying serenely at my side, and the sun shining through the window, and I had one of those moments (which only a year ago I would have found nauseating) when you're pre-emptively aware of your own future nostalgia.

With each passing day my wife and I get a little more confident; a little more trusting in our daughter's ability to breathe without us watching; a little more proud of her increasingly beautiful features; and a little more attuned to the nuances in her grunts and grumbles. I think we're quite confident now that the three of us are going to make a rather nice little family.

And any worries we had about our daughter's feeding now seem frankly laughable. During her stay in hospital, she lost 7% of her birthweight (9lb 7oz. Seriously), and had already started to claw back this deficit by the time she came home. Eight days ago she weighed in at 10lb 1oz. Yesterday she was up to 11lb 4oz. One of the midwives remarked that my wife must be producing gold-top. I think it's clotted cream. I want some.

In the hospital they give you a little red book, intended to be your child's health almanac for the remainder of eternity. Towards the back of the little red book is a chart on which to plot your child's weight during his or her early weeks, months and years. Our daughter is literally off the scale. In twelve years or so I imagine this pattern would cause some upset, but for now this is excellent news.

Hurrah.

WE DONE A BABY

I'm still emotionally and physically drained, so I can only hope that the following is in some way coherent, informative and a little bit entertaining. Having built up the excitement of my phenomenally large readership to feverish levels over the past few months, it seems only fair that I should outline the details of the climax. Are you sitting comfortably?

Deceptive sense of anti-climax

We went to bed somewhat disappointed on Saturday evening. Some significant twinges earlier in the week, followed by the removal on Thursday of the band which had for months been holding together my wife's cervix, had convinced us that everything was sure to drop this weekend. My wife had thought that she might be having some mild contractions on Saturday afternoon, but - not having had any before, neither she nor I could be sure. So when, throughout the evening, they failed to escalate into a full-blown agonising labour, we concluded that the wait would continue into the next week. I fell asleep some time before midnight.

At about 12:45 I awoke to the sound of my wife informing me that she thought her waters might have broken, but again couldn't be sure, because the resulting liquid constituted more of a cupful than the bucketful predicted by labour legend. She had more troubling back and downstairs pain than earlier, but it wasn't really coming and going like all well-meaning contractions should.

For the first time I can recall in my almost thirty years, I felt that this may be the moment to be manly and assertive. I decisively phoned the hospital, and told them "Um, er, hi, um, I um, I think my wife's waters broke. A bit. Maybe." Having described the night's proceedings so far to the nurse/midwife on the phone, she recommended that we come on down.

Going for a drive

On the way to the hospital, I nearly took the wrong turn, in an error which betrayed my attempt at remaining calm. "No, that's the DHL warehouse," said my wife, who actually was somehow quite relaxed. At this stage. "Well they do do deliveries," I quipped.

I did laugh.

Just me.

Snoring

Upon arrival at the hospital we had to use the A&E entrance (all the others are closed at night), which meant queueing behind some drunk people with broken legs, who had chosen to suffer their agony right in the doorway. I am ashamed to say that my decisive assertiveness deserted me as we waited patiently, my wife almost doubled up in pain, for the drunk people to move a bit.

Eventually we arrived at the maternity department, just in time to be deposited in a big shared ward full of no doubt delightful but nevertheless heavily snoring ladies who weren't in any apparent labour. Because my wife was under 37 weeks pregnant, this was technically a premature labour, which meant that we had to wait for a doctor (rather than a readily available midwife) to check her progress. Her discomfort was by now increasing exponentially, her SPD really showing us what it was made of. And we felt the need to be very quiet so as not to wake the nice ladies making a cacophony of snoring noise.

After about two hours of this, the doctor made some time for us, and inspected my wife before declaring that we had better get ourselves to the labour ward because she was 9cm dilated. Any fool who's seen Casualty can tell you that ten is the magic number when it comes to dilating. And also that it often takes roughly ages to reach this point. So it was something of a relief to hear that we were there already. It felt like we had cheated. And punishment soon followed, because when my wife took this, her first opportunity to ask for an epidural, she was told that it was too late now. Gas and air then.

The business end

It was about 3:00 when we reached the labour ward. At some stage I had rushed outside to phone my wife's other designated "birth partner", her mother. She arrived to join us at around this point. The next four hours were something of a blur. The ante-natal classes to which we were assigned by a well-meaning local bureaucrat are due to start in about a week, so I only really had love and Casualty to inform my role. I settled upon a repetitive routine of patronising reassurance, which involved mentioning deep breaths and pushing a lot of times each.

Now, I don't want to make this about me, but I have to say that it is unimaginably difficult to watch someone you love in such intense pain. I remember fighting back tears several times as my wife produced screaming noises of which I had no conception she was capable. Her repeated requests for an epidural that would never come redefined desperate perseverance. This was an intense experience. She said afterwards that she had thought she was dying.

Done it

Our beautiful, perfect daughter finally graced us with her presence at 7:02 on Sunday morning. All my withheld tears made a break for it and successfully escaped. I remember repeatedly informing my wife that she had "done it". It turned out that she was already aware of this. The paediatrician was on hand to give our daughter the once over before casually declaring that "she's fine". And that was when the relief kicked in.

Over the next couple of hours this grew into a surreal sense of relaxed euphoria, as our daughter was measured and weighed at 9lb 7oz. Which means that my wife had a 9lb 7oz baby without an epidural. Admiration doesn't begin to cover it.

Post-natal

Once my wife had given our daughter a massive feed, got her breath back and cleaned up a bit (herself, not the room. They have people who do that), we were moved to the post-natal ward. All was happy and well until our daughter had her blood sugar and temperature tested, and both were worryingly low. Furthermore, the ease with which she had fed upon entering the world now seemed to have been a false dawn. She wasn't interested in feeding anymore, refusing to suck from either a nipple or a bottle, and had to have it forced down her with a syringe. And she objected to that.

This continued throughout the day, so that even though our daughter's temperature and blood sugar level were more normal by the evening, the midwife was talking about shoving a tube down her throat. At about this point visiting hours finished and I was again reduced to floods of tears upon leaving the hospital. Granted, I had only had about half an hour's sleep, but this moment made me realise just how much a parent cannot help but care for their child. I went home to bed lonely, worried and overwhelmed.

Improvement

At 6:00 the next morning (this morning) I awoke to a beautiful sunrise and a text message from my wife, telling me that our daughter had fed three times throughout the night. For the second time in 24 hours I experienced delirious relief.

My wife attributed this improvement to the midwife on duty overnight, whose more relaxed and patient attitude had eventually borne fruit. And this raises an interesting point. In general, the staff at the hospital have impressed me beyond description with their commitment, compassion and knowledge. However, the necessary turnover of staff shifts means that you and your baby are subject to the changing opinions of the staff on duty. Consequently, the approach to any problem has no continuity, and varies dramatically, as do the resulting conclusions. I don't know the solution to this, but I was surprised at the obvious impact it can have.

I should clarify that throughout today, our daughter has shown more and more dedication to consuming colostrum, and appears to be healthy and problem free. But I have had a taste of the irrepressible fear I will forever experience: that this situation could change at any moment.

Acknowledgements

Without wishing to mimic an irritating oscar winner, I would like to express my enormous gratitude to the staff at the hospital, to the friends and family who have relentlessly inundated us with good wishes and congratulations, to my parents, who could not contain their eagerness to meet their new granddaughter or their delight at doing so, to my wife's mother, who effortlessly coaxed my wife and I though the most difficult night of our lives, to my wife, whom I once described as my hero, and can think of no better description for her now, and most of all to my beautiful, precious daughter, whose very existence justifies mine.

Thanks then.

Trepidation

We're getting really close to the big day now. And - like on the morning of our wedding, when I woke up at 5 o'clock in the morning with diarrhoea - the tension is mounting. There's an almost tangible sense of excitement and trepidation in the air, the two of them battling for the honour of being our overriding collective emotion.

We've both been growing more impatient for a while now. Firstly because we're rather looking forward to seeing our daughter who, as a direct descendent of my favourite person and my wife's favourite person - decide for yourselves whether we are narcissists or a loving couple (it's the latter) - is bound to be worth meeting.

Secondly, my wife's adverse symptoms are piling up. The swelling is almost permanent, and affecting every extremity (by which I mean her hands and feet rather than anything untoward). Her SPD (extreme hip ache) is relentless in punishing her for any attempt to stand up for more than about five minutes a day. She has also developed carpal tunnel, which basically means her hands are constantly midway between numbness and the pins and needles which immediately follow numbness. And, as a result of our daughter being a typical girl and demanding a lot of space, and the consequent repositioning of my wife's stomach, acid indigestion is an almost constant foe.

All of which seems to get even worse at night, which means that sleep has been very hard to come by for my wife. And, despite her best efforts, my sweet dreams have also been disturbed. We keep telling ourselves with a kind of self-congratulatory irony that this is good practice for the inevitable sleepless nights to come. But a part of me thinks that it would be nice to get in as much slumber as possible now, to build up some sort of sleep credit, as it were. I'm not sure if it works like that, but I guess we'll never know.

Anyway, last night trumped all previous efforts. It seems that our daughter is making preparations to leave, and has made a move towards the exit. In real terms, this means acute lower backache for my wife, as well as various other symptoms which politeness prevents me from describing, but all of which can be grouped together under one general heading: labour pains.

Time and the cold light of day have revealed that they were not labour pains. The nice lady at the hospital has revealed (over the phone - we didn't actually go there) that they do, however, indicate that we can expect labour pains soon. That's not entirely accurate: they reveal that my wife can expect labour pains soon. Either way, the whole experience made it all seem very real and looming. And flippin' scary.

Also very exciting, of course. But trepidation is edging it at the moment.

Don't panic.

Up until the last couple of weeks I've found the pregnancy/impending parenthood combo surprisingly ineffective in the face of my calm, dignified and frankly quite enviably self-assured persona. "Easy for you to say, man," reply, doubtlessly, any mothers or feminists reading. Probably all of the women, actually. And the more reasonable men.

And you're quite right. If there's one cliche which the experience thus far has confirmed - and I hope my musings have reflected this, even though I am fairly confident that they haven't - it's that it's all much easier for nearly-Dad than it is for nearly-Mum.

But so heavy now is the burden on my wife, that even my cracks are beginning to show, so to speak. The last week or so has seen her fluid content increase dramatically, resulting in hands, ankles and feet that look a little bit more like those of the humans in Wall-E than they used to. I'm allowed to use that comparison because my wife came up with it.

Also, her midwife this week revealed some minor anomalies in her protein levels. I'm still resistant to panic, but it seems that she is now only a nasty headache away from pre-eclampsia. For those who don't know, pre-eclampsia can lead to eclampsia, which can be as terminally serious as it gets. I should stress that everybody else is quite relaxed about this possibility, precisely because it is a very small one, but I found myself in the unusual position of being the one who allowed paranoia take hold of my sense of reason for a day or two.

I have now been convinced that your wife's midwife mentioning the name of a condition is not the same as your wife having the condition. Sensible serenity has been restored. But I think the doubt will linger in the corner, occasionally waving frantically in my peripheral vision, until our daughter is born and I can tell it that it is no longer needed, thank you.

Strangely, I was a bit disappointed at remaining much calmer than I would have expected when, this morning, my wife believes she had her first braxton hicks contraction (a false alarm contraction, basically). The first I knew of it was when she interrupted QI (which we had recorded the night before because you go to bed very early when your wife is 33 weeks pregnant) by saying "I think I just had a braxton hicks contraction" in the same tone of voice as she would usually use to tell me what she wanted for lunch, for example.

I suppose my calmness was a reflection of hers. But I'm quite retrospectively excited about it now. To my simple man-mind (a phrase which hopefully will get the feminists back on side), this represents the precursor to the beginning of the beginning of the end which immediately precedes the actual beginning. Which, when you think about it, is really very important.

Hip hip hooray.

Because I'm quite vain, I've been reading back over my previous posts on this blog, and I've realised that, because I'm quite vain, I've said a lot about how I feel, but not enough about the welfare of our main protagonist: my wife.

In my defence, some of her symptoms would have made unnecessary or unpleasant news. To mention them would have been cruel on either their victim or the reader. Or both. Also, so well has she coped with what is, after all, a massive physical ordeal, that I have been far less aware of her suffering than I expected. (That's supposed to be a compliment, as well as an excuse).

But in the last couple of weeks, my wife has started to suffer more noticeably. We have tentatively diagnosed her with SPD, which has nothing to do with a short-lived eighties political party, and everything to do with very, very achy hips. The cliche I expected to see manifested months ago - mother-to-be struggling to sit up, let alone stand or move, and then suffering for hours as a consequence of her efforts - has finally arrived. Or, as my wife puts it, she feels like a barbie doll who has had her legs pulled out and then put back wrong. Her sense of humour, mercifully, remains unaffected.

I think I know why she's suffering: our daughter's enormous. We had another scan the other day, during which they took more measurements than a hyperactive cartographer before estimating that she is already nearly 5lbs. With two months to go. That's going to trouble anybody's hips. And she does like to push her weight around. Another excellent example of maternal humour saw this described as "using my cervix as a trampoline." I did laugh. Apparently it's normal for a baby's size to double in the last month or so, which is why we really hope she emerges early.

I try to avoid gushing, physically or emotionally, but it would be rude not to acknowledge and praise my wife's effort and resilience for the cause. Thanks wife. You won't regret it.

Decoration

We took the plunge last week and decorated the nursery. It never occurred to me beforehand how seminal this is. We were going to pay a man to do the job, but time, money and frustration determined that we chose instead to do it ourselves. So I spent last weekend lovingly painting walls and even woodwork an exciting shade of white. And I'm so glad I did. I feel like my daughter and I have bonded by proxy.

Maybe this seems so significant because we moved here not long ago, so every change we make to the house represents our first (and therefore extremely meaningful) mark on that particular part of it. I do generally feel a slightly excessive amount of pride upon surveying the fruits of our decorating labour so far. In fact, self congratulation is one of my many talents.

But I think this is a parents-to-be thing. It's difficult to stop thinking about my impending fatherhood, thus I feel increasingly emotionally prepared. However, I can naively daydream all I want about what my daughter will sound like when she laughs, or how I'll handle our first disagreement, or what she'll say about me to her friends in 15 years - but with my pragmatic hat on, I realise that nothing compares to decorating the nursery as a real, tangible indication of a baby on the way.

We can now stand in a space created exclusively for our daughter. We can look at the walls, floor and furniture that she will gaze upon in her formative years (although hopefully she'll have more interesting considerations to attend to than staring at the walls). Furthermore, the toys, clothes and various other equipment so far accumulated by our daughter now have a home, which seems to instill in them a purpose.

Another side to this - which I only recognised while I was painting away - is the fond memories I have of watching my Dad decorate my room when I was young. He used to teach me about nouns and verbs while he was painting away. It has been suggested to me that this particular aspect of the memory is not so cool, but my English GCSE begs to differ. Thanks Dad.

It seems obvious that this association has shaped my bizarre emotional connection with decorating. But I should also note that I have been displaying bizarre emotions all over the shop lately. As an example, I have recently been reduced to tears by The Sopranos, Doctor Who, and a predictably predictable Nicholas-Cage-showing-his-sensitive-side vehicle called The Family Man, which ordinarily I would be ashamed of even watching. Well, I still am, and yet I feel obliged to admit that it had me weeping like a hormonal drama queen who's just seen the end of The Champ, having not blinked for ages.

I can only assume that this is some sort of sympathy-hormone issue. I can't decide whether my newfound emotional vulnerability will be a timely aid in my relationship with my daughter, or an embarrassing affliction, from which I hope to recover immediately. I think it depends on who asks.

P.S. Eagle-eyed readers who haven't done already can discover our daughter's name in the accompanying pictures. So now you know. Sorry for being shy about it.