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.