The helpless blog of a first time dad: Hectic paternity leave was no holiday

Up and out: Sophia all ready for her first shopping trip

I’D read the books, sat in on the NCT classes and bought three of everything we’ll ever need.

But nothing demonstrates how unprepared my mind was for fatherhood like my view of paternity leave.

Here I was thinking that having two weeks away from work to look after our newborn baby was the same as having two weeks off.

That squeaky garage door – “I’ll sort it when I’m on paternity leave.” The outside light that is starting to rust – “I’ll paint it when I’m on paternity leave.” The mate from school who keeps telling me we should meet up for a drink – “I’ll come and see you when I’m on paternity leave.”

I even filled up the Sky Planner with dramas I wanted to watch in advance and bought my wife the box set of Better Call Saul because she loved Breaking Bad and I thought we could watch it together “when I’m on paternity leave.”

What was I thinking?

The chances of watching a television programme that you need to pay attention to with a young baby in the room is equivalent to Roy Hodgson’s chances of replacing David Cameron as the next Prime Minister.

The day I went back to work I was in a bit of a trance thinking “where has the time gone?”

I was up around 7am every day but not once in the two weeks did I get dressed before midday as we always seemed to be preparing for the next feed, changing a nappy, clearing up ahead of a visit by a midwife/health visitor/family member.

When they’re awake you’re trying to get them off to sleep. When they’re asleep you’re thinking “when shall we wake her to give her a feed?” And the rest of the time you’re just “checking on her.”

Checking on her sounds a very simple act but can take up to 18 hours out of your day.

It wasn’t just me whose routine was thrown out.

My poor washing machine, that has served me well for 20 years taking one load a fortnight for all the years I was single and then one a week after I moved in with Hannah, was suddenly asked to do three loads in two days as we washed all the new clothes that were kindly bought us and tried to get poo and milk stains out of the ones Sophia had already worn. The poor thing didn’t so much spin as whimper on the third wash. And I would have given you very long odds on the first item that we’d realise we needed more of would be clothes pegs.

As an exercise in idle time consumption and not getting anywhere fast, our first trip out with Sophia will take some beating.

She received many lovely gifts from family and friends during her first week on Earth but an activity play mat was not among them.

So on the seventh day we decided to pop to the nearest Babies ‘R` Us to buy our own.

Sophia woke us just after 7am and had a feed and then she went back to sleep. We thought we should leave her so we had breakfast and then pottered quietly around the house, me trying to decide which drama series to delete off our Sky Planner to free up some space for my wife’s Judge Rinder, she reading the sleeve notes of Better Call Saul while picking wistfully at the Cellophane.

This was interspersed, of course, by checking on Sophia every five minutes to see if she was awake yet.

She slept until midday, at which point she woke and demanded to be fed again. That took us to nearly 1pm, by which time we were getting hungry ourselves so had some lunch.

We then got Sophia dressed but as we were preparing to put her in the car seat she had a bowel movement. My wife said she’d go upstairs and change her, she didn’t want her going out with a dirty nappy, but unfortunately that wasn’t the last of Sophia’s ablutions and while in the process of being changed she weed and pooed on the changing mat. This formed a river of excrement which somehow ran all the way up her back, soaking the clothes she was wearing and getting into her hair.

So we had to give her a bath.

This took another 45 minutes out of the day, after which she took another feed, did another dirty nappy and finally got dressed (in a “mummy and me” baby suit, which I tried not to take personally) so that we were in a position to leave the house. We strapped her in the car seat and pulled off the driveway. It was 4.45pm.

Babies ‘R’ Us is a 25 minute drive away and closes at 5.30 so I had to abandon my reticence to drive over 30mph with a baby on board and, after recklessly clocking 38mph on a dual carriageway, we parked the car, dashed into the store and made the purchase of a play mat with four minutes to spare. Diving for the tills in time I felt like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Jingle All The Way (or more likely to anyone watching us rush around the store, a contestant on Supermarket Sweep).

Mission accomplished, we then returned home at a sedate pace to find my sister and husband waiting outside our house in their car.

“We just popped over because we had a large gift we were saving to give to you at home rather than bring it to the hospital,” she said.

I watched as my brother-in-law reached in the back seat – and pulled out an activity play mat.

The helpless blog of a first time dad: The name’s Bonding… Baby Bonding

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