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Most of you will have heard the news about Mrs Will being in the family way. Over the next few months I'll be posting our latest news and bagging a few tips from you all. I'll try not to bore you with baby photos.
Up until about 18 months ago I was dead against having kids. I'd seen relationships got to pot, watched too many ankle biters bawling their eyes out on Dr Tania's House of Tiny Tearaways and thought, no, leave it to some other mug. How many blokes feel the same? A lot I'd bet. It's a wonder the human race keeps going.
Then, suddenly, the idea didn't seem so bad. I can't explain what changed my mind but a female friend said you wake up one morning and, wham, babies are all you think about. Like an oven that's reached it's temperature, do women know when it's 'time'? Mrs Will knows pretty much every else I'm feeling so I wouldn't put it past her.
The OMG! I Must Have A Baby thing wasn't as extreme with me, but even I switched from being 100% against to warming up to the idea pretty much overnight. Maybe it was mates having kids and wondering what it'd be like to have your own rugrat around? Was it because settling down, marriage, mortgage and kids seemed, well, too frightening to think about?
It could have been the fact I've realised there's more to life than work, work, work. Picking up a pay cheque isn't as rewarding as cleaning up baby sick or taking your nipper to the park, right? Well, we'll find out :-)
Up tomorrow (or later today if I have time) some upsetting news we had earlier this year. If you want a rollercoaster of emotions, you've come to the right place.
No matter how much you plan for it though, when it happens you haven't planned enough or properly.... it just fucks everything up and it stays like that for a long time.. you just adapt and change your life.
I make it sound like a bad thing but to be honest there are so many peaks and troughs it balances things out nicely!
Hmm, it's interesting that a lot of guys seem to go through quite a bit of their life thinking that they never want to have kids!
I'm the opposite, I have wanted to have them since probably 18!
Yeh, I know I want kids... just not right now!
I have to say i have always wanted kids; but i have always known that i wasn't ready to have them.
There was too much stuff to do first, and even when me and Mrs FB decided that we would stop using family planning and actually start planning a family i was a little nervous. Am i too imature? could i honestly cope with the sleep deprivation that everyone seems to suffer. How will having a child affect my holidays? You know the selfish guy stuff, oh yes and the change in sex life...
Well i realised i could worry about that forvever and never have a fatbaby, and i would love to have kids to take to the park, the zoo and to teach them weird stuff like my dad taught me.
i know i want kids 1) because we're having one and it's a bit late to change my mind. and 2) i think i am secure enough in myself to know i would make a great dad.
i still have doubts that i would be good, but i think if you don't worry about doing the right thing you don't care enough to be doing it.
Having spoken to Will in person and seen his website i know he'll make a great dad too. and as for being bored by baby pictures... never!
As a real uncle and a kind of surrogate uncle to lots of my friends kids. All the sleepless nights, dirty nappies, puke, hassles etc are made up for by the little things. Like when they smile and giggle at you and start to walk and talk and learn to do things. It's brilliant.
Oh, and they are a great female magnet (even if they are a bit old)!! I was out all Friday afternoon with my mate and his twins, we had a buggy each. All these ladies kept saying how nice it was to see dads out with their kids!
I was the kind of person who dreaded the idea of marriage, mortgage etc......being a bit of an old hippie at heart. So it was quite a big deal when I tied the knot with She-Wolf.
But marriage turned out to be pretty much the same as cohabiting - good fun - (sorry vicar!) and the mortgage was about the same price as the rent...so in the end I wondered why I'd been worried.
Then, a few weeks/months later (!), we just knew that all this had really been about babies after-all. It was a strangely instinctive thing where you really felt that Nature was taking you over. For us, luckily, the conception thing was ridiculously easy and almost immediately the old pregnancy test proved positive.
Then we became terrible nerds - watching every process with excessive fascination and treating pregnancy as a great experience in its own right. In many ways I think we were really naive about it, well I was, and didn't really visualise the end product. I did find that I got a whole lot more protective though and found myself having pretty aggressive confrontations with strangers who let doors close in front of my missus or when people pushed in in front of her and things like that. I really did think that I was going through the equivalent of a male pregnancy - feeling a bit like a knight in shining armour.
We didn't really over do the nest making - we just moved, totally redecorated a house, constructed a completely over the top nursery and waited for the braxton hicks (?) and all those other distantly remembered signals of approaching birthing.
The birth of our first son was not much fun for the She-Wolf.....the labour broke all hospital records....we actually went through three possible birthdays....and the doctors got to experiment with all kinds of gadgets. I had a great time though! Being there so long I got to play doctors and nurses and ended up briefing the new shift when it came on duty. In the end I was allowed to eat in the doctor's canteen.
Nothing in life compares with the birth.....the world is completely turned upside down and there is absolutely no emotion like it. Meeting your child, face to face for the first time is as profound an experience as anything in a human life. In both cases, we have two sons, I felt I knew them straight away.
So marriage, mortgage and all that stuff is just child's play in comparison.....your life really changes totally and permanently when you have kids.
There is an immediate sense of immortality, that you are part of a chain that will carry on after you and which came down to you from jages past and simultaneously, a feeling that your own life is not the central purpose of existance. You know that you would die to save their lives.
So go for it, enjoy it but know that your world will change for ever.
I dont think anything prepared me for the appalling passion and desperation there is about being a mother.
Your life changes when you give birth and you never really get over the pain that comes associated with the separation.. although you learn to deal with it as they grow and become independant.
When they are little you can fall into their eyes, take their feet in your mouth and bury your face in their bellies - they consume you and have complete trust in what you say and in your always knowing the right thing for them.
I turned from an even tempered calm individual into the type of woman who would tear your head off if you hurt her child.. almost over night.
It is wonderful but it is heartbreak - you aren't the same person again - and, to a certain extent, you never get over the shock of having to think for and worry for someone else... you never really believe they are safe again unless you have your arms around them... not deep down.
