900 days

Et tu, Brute?

Finally, after an emotional roller coaster ride lasting about 7 weeks, all the couples from our NCT class had their babies. Due to the power of time travel I am able to post this in the past, one week ago when I originally wanted to write this.

All mums and babies, and even the dads are up and well, and that’s a very satisfying situation, even though I was only marginally instrumental to one of the births.

It’s funny how a more or less randomly gathered group have given so much support to each other, when the only common factors were having-the-first-baby, and maybe a certain financially safe background that might come with the £200 or so registration fee.

Saying that, 3 out of the 7 dads (including me) changed their jobs so close to their wives’ due date they didn’t get their paid 2 weeks of paternity leave, and, at least in my case it wasn’t a planned decision, so that financial safety only goes so far. But more on that another time.

I’m very happy for all of the brand new families. Meeting all the guys and girls made me realize how many of my relationships with other people don’t seem to have room for soon-to-be-dad conversations. Naturally, as pregnancy only lasts 9 months, all my friends are either not having any children (and not thinking about having any right now), or they had a baby or two already. Like this, conversations seem to only have the 2 outcomes “I don’t know” or “it’ll pass” (now this is entirely unfair to my parent-friends, there’s also “I don’t remember” and “you’ll miss those days later on”); either way nothing that made any impact on me.

Not so with the NCT dads. While the girls established many afternoon coffee meet-ups, The guys started a bi-weekly huddle in a local pub. The first time happened to be on our first couple’s due date, but Steve braved it and we were all mighty proud of that (which set the drinking pace for all following evenings). As it turned out later, we all did it; I went 2 weeks later with Jen being 4 days overdue, and the last time we met the final 2 guys were in the same situation as I was previously.

Says Rob to Frank: “I feel like we’re in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Slowly they’re all turning, one by one, until I see you on the street one day, and you turn around and go gggggaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!”. This kind of exchange must be worth more than any baby book can ever provide.

I will destroy you if you touch me!

And they’re off!

Everything happened so fast in the end: Saturday, November 22, in the morning, 2am, light contractions started. By 7am we were still joking at home, by 12:30pm Esmé Maria Francesca Willerich was born.

It’s nice to be part of an uncomplicated birth; we had heard so many stories about complications in all sorts of ways, we almost forgot that the bulk of babies are still born without a hitch.

A day later Baby and Baby Mama were released from hospital, and the same evening my parents arrived to help out.

I can’t say enough how grateful we are. With both sets of parents living outside the UK we’re quite independent, although sometimes we felt it would be nice to have someone to fall back on. When birth was inching closer, it was clear that we definitely wanted somebody here. My parents were flexible and close enough to simply buy tickets for a convenient plane on call, and so they did after I called them right after arriving at hospital at 9 o’clock.

This first week or so they were buying groceries, making us breakfast and dinner as well as showing super-human patience with our very vocal daughter. That left us with figuring out the details of how hungry she really is (”very”, it took us until yesterday to get that one right), how long it takes for the umbilical cord to fall off (5 days, and day 5 is a bit smelly. The midwife said not to worry, as “it’s just rotten flesh, nothing unusual”), and how long it takes us to lose patience.

This last one took 3 days with me, with very little sleep and of course still recovering from the birth. I felt terribly frustrated that someone who is supposed to mean so much to me can give me so much grief. Esmé had, roughly up until today, not shown any signs at all if she preferred being around the house in my arms, or rather down at the pub with drunken strangers. Instead she learned in less than one day so many variations of cries that all puncture your heart and ears severely, and the lesson that took me another 3 days on top of that was that apart from diaper-changes, food (well, let’s talk about the top-up bottle another time), comfort and warmth there’s nothing I can do to help her, and that in many cases the big four are simply not enough to get her settled.

Again, my parents saved the day a lot of times, when Jen was so tired she’d almost fall asleep standing, and I was so tense I thought I’m going to break my jaw from clenching it too much. I don’t think I’m as good as my dad with singing songs to her yet; I don’t think I’m as good as my mum just stroking her belly and cooing, when the distance between her mouth and my ear is so little that all health and safety alarm bells would go off if this were my employment. These things are doubly hard when you think that everyone expects you to be in total (albeit tired) bliss after birth, when really giving birth was so far the easiest thing for us. But I’m getting there and today is the first time I’m carefully happy.  Just writing this makes me a little proud; and apparently that’s what I’ve been meant to feel since day one. Ah, I’ll get there soon.