Baba's followup

August 24 2005

Eight weeks out and a lot of thoughts have been floating thru my head about you- know-who.

One of the main ones is what I’ll really be like as a Dad. Will I be able to cut the mustard, will I botch it up or will I fall somewhere in between.

I sometimes think that teaching has been an extremely valuable experience in preparation for parenthood but then again maybe I’ve really been kidding myself all this time. No matter how much you love, loathe or just simply put up with them, at the end of the day they are all someone else’s kid. Fact is you are only really the entertainment, taskmaster or displinarian for a few hours a day.

It’s a bit like a DVD that you hire from Blockbuster. Sometimes you are sad to return it to the store because you enjoyed it so much while other times you can’t wait to get it out of your possession!

I find myself often, especially at night when I’m trying to get to sleep, slipping back to moments of my own childhood, some I hadn’t dredged up for a while and others I’d never uncovered. Times spent hanging with mates, in class at primary school and of course times spent with my family – both good or bad.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my Dad actually. Not surprising really since in only a few weeks somebody will be giving me that new title.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what he would have done just over 35years ago when I was preparing for my big entrance to the world. How did he feel? What was he expecting? Was he pleased with the result? Was he pissed off that I was born on his birthday?

Did he get all swept up in the whole ‘lets buy this for the baby’ scenario that I find my wife dragging me into (most of the time willingly) that swirls around me right now?

I see other Dads with their little kids, holding their hands as they cross the street or carrying them in their arms to give Mum a well earned rest and I wonder did my Old Man ever act like that?

Things were very different thirty-five years ago. Unlike today when fathers are allowed into the birthing room and play a much greater role than perhaps anytime ever before in the whole pregnancy process. My Dad wasn’t even in the waiting room outside the delivery room reading ‘The Sun’ newspaper when I arrived. After dropping Mum off at the hospital in the early hours of August 3 1970, he went home and later that morn, around 10am, got a phone call from the hospital. Mum, the midwife and a few doctors and nurses were my welcome party to the world.

As I said times were very different then. Maybe the medical profession didn’t think Dads had that much to offer at that crucial and monumental time in a new child’s life. It all seems so strange compared to the way things are done today.

My Dad’s not the most excitable fella in the world – he was even low key after Collingwood won their first Aussie Rules grand final in 32 years in 1990 - so I imagine he may have uttered something along the lines of ‘That’s lovely,’ before heading back to the hospital to see his wife and his newborn son.

I really have no idea how he felt.

Truth is, up until now, I’ve never really thought to ask him.



My Dad is a really good guy who I now get along with really well but growing up he always seemed to be something of a workaholic. Although I really admire those qualities now, especially since I too have those tendencies, it was a lot harder for me to understand as a kid . As I charge headlong into fatherhood, I sometimes ask myself, will I also follow in his footsteps? Will work, any work, get in the way of the more important things in life?

The best chance I have of being reprogrammed comes in the shape of my wife, Tamara. She really is an amazing woman. She looks more and more beautiful as this pregnancy goes on. She hasn’t had any morning sickness and has been in good spirits ever since we embarked on this incredible ride back in February. In moments I catch the light falling on her in ways that really bring out her natural beauty and accentuate the glow she radiates these days. She is going to be the most fabulous mother.

I find myself becoming more protective of her. I’m much more cautious when we cross the street, scanning the traffic like a hawk for any stray scooter or blue truck that may veer too close, a nasty ‘rack off’ snarl at the ready. I feel like I’m not just in training to be a father but a bodyguard as well. The lion inside the Leo has definitely emerged during the last couple of months. No doubt it will stick around long after Nipper is actually born, maybe even linger on until adulthood.


October 12 2005

That was the way I was feeling 7 weeks ago. Now, just over one week away from the expected delivery date a lot of those early fears have slipped seamlessly into the background. Not that they have been completely forgotten but in many ways they have been replaced by new ones that have cropped up.

Tam has a veritable slew of baby books here but the truth is I only really started to flick through a few of the pages over the past month.

I decided to make an all-out effort to finish my Chinese course in September (which I passed, I found out last week) believing that it may come in handy on delivery day. Since then I have checked out a few bits and pieces but I haven’t thrown myself into it as much as I think I should have. And now time is running out.

I feel more worded up than a month ago and I have watched a baby video that we bought in Australia a few times (including tonight where I winced a little at seeing someone else’s birth) but I still feel like maybe I don’t know enough.

It’s kind of like an exam at high school. You now how it is. You fill your head full of words and theories and formulas but once you get in that school hall, it either all falls in a heap and you forget everything or somehow you drag out something special and you get thru in the end. I feel like that is the precipice I’m straddling right now. I’ve got a few clues about it all….but, have I got enough?

A lot of feelings really hit home tonight. We went to the hospital tonight as Tam felt the baby had risen (rather than dropped) so the Doc strapped her up to a baby heart-rate monitor machine for half an hour. As it worked out it was all ok but while we were there we saw a little new-born just outside the delivery room.

Cocooned in what seemed like an oversized blanket his gleaming little black eyes peered sleepily upwards and outwards at his brand new world. He still had a blood stain on his fine black hair and as the nurses hadn’t yet washed him, still wore a little of the vernix, a souvenir of his first and most recent journey, on his skin. He was so tiny and so vulnerable and …so amazingly wonderful.

Proud dad was standing nearby. He was suitably chuffed when we passed on our congratulations. At that moment the best wishes of complete strangers seemed as welcome as if they had come from the President of Taiwan. Then, Mum, motionless on a trolley, was whisked past us, her left foot the only sign of life under the thick grey blanket. She looked like a train wreck and no doubt she felt like she’d just been in one.

In a week that would probably be us.

It was a frightening but fabulous realization. The distressing sign of the lifeless mother, who later would surely class what she had just experienced as one of the most amazing moments in her life, and the new life and new hope bundled up in that huge blanket.

It touched and rocked me at the same time. I really dread the pain that my wonderful wife will have to go through sometime next week. We share everything and I really wish I could carry some of that incredible burden for her, to lessen her load…. but physically I can’t. All I can offer her is my unwavering love and support from the side of the hospital bed and hope that will be enough.

I know that whatever happens in the next seven or eight days, it will truly be one of the most incredible moments in our lives.

Just like a cliff I once jumped off on the Isle of Capri, I’m equally terrified and excited by the prospect of what's just about to happen. I’m standing with my feet on the edge of that rocky outcrop, looking down at the wild ocean below and I know that at any moment I’m going to jump.

I have to jump.

My stomach is doing somersaults, my mind is racing as it eagerly awaits the new sensation that’s about to hit me, any second now.

Any second…


………………………………….and then I jump.