In the last few days Paula has really popped.  That tight little belly she’s always had has grown into a cute little baby belly which is helping to make the whole thing that much more real.

Rockin gadgets!

Say goodbye to boring baby monitors and hello to night vision video baby monitors like this bad boy that was featured on CrunchGear today.

I’m definitely going to have to spend more time thinking about great baby gadgets!

Truth of the matter things are going incredibly well.  Paula’s been great, no morning sickness, almost no moodyness, and other than a bit of a cold right now, she’s been fab.

We’ve been for three scans now, and the last one at 12 weeks gave us a result for Downes.  They say anything under 250 is bad and anything over 250 is good.  Well we came in at 4000, so we’re feeling a lot more confident about everything now.

I’ve been reading a book that Paula got for me called “A blokes guide to pregnancy” which has been an excellent read and really educational.  I started off this whole process knowing a hell of a lot more than Paula, but she’s been doing so much research it’s hard to keep up with her.  However the book has been giving me all sorts of little tips that I expect will come in very handy through out the whole thing.  Not least was a valuable bit of advice about how mood swings are a coming.

That’s saved me from a few arguments that I would have taken the bait on if I hadn’t known about the moody side effects.

Things seem to be quite settled now and I’m looking forward to finding out the sex of my new baby in a few weeks.

First things first. We’ve now told all our friends that we’re expecting…and things didn’t go quite as planned.

My birthday was just over a week ago, and I invited our close friends out to dinner.  We stopped off at the pub for a quick drink before dinner, and managed to get through that without anyone being too suspicious of Paula.  After all she had a drink in hand the whole time!

We got to dinner, ordered some wine and I made a toast to my friends and announced the impending arrival.  I suppose I’m already starting to fall into the parental trap of expecting that everyone else in the world wants to hear all about my child, but I expected to hear lots cheers and congratulations.  Maybe even a few pats on the back complimenting my virility.  I certainly wasn’t expecting the chorus of blank stares I got back.

I think we’re so wrapped up in our own experiences that it’s hard for us to remember how we felt and reacted when we found out about our friends who had previously gone through all this.  I know I was happy for them, but I suppose I’ve always thought it was the end of the great things we did before.  I can only imagine our friends must feel much the same.  We’ll still hang out and have each other over for dinner, but things won’t really be the same again.

And truth be told, I think that’s a transition we’ll all have to get used to.  One way or another.

Matt and Tracy are our only friends who actually know that we’re expecting a child in a few months and this weekend they came over for dinner.  The first time we’ve had people around since we knew what was going on and I know I was worried that things wouldn’t be the same.

Luckily for us we do have great friends.  While Matt and Tracy may never have children they’re both being so incredibly supportive.  We all had a laugh, talked about bad names for our child and generally had fun.  And even though Paula couldn’t drink, she didn’t left out which is the most important thing.

Things may never be the same, but it’s nice to know that we can still have a good time.

He was excited about becoming a grandfather, and the more he thought about it, the more he enjoyed the idea.  But he also felt a bit saddened.  My getting married to his daughter was hard enough for him, but she was still his daughter even if she was with me.  He was still her dad and that was the nature of their relationship.  He was still the man of the family the patriarch.  However with the arrival of a grandchild things have suddenly changed even more.  It’s now our family that is front and center, not his.  He’s now going to be granddad – not dad.  And that means another part of his relationship with his daughter has changed.

That’s what got me.  See I’m constantly surprised by how much I need to consider everyone else in this scenario.  I was prepared to up my empathy game for me wife, but having to consider everyone else in the extended family was a surprise.  It’s forcing me to open up and really look at my family extended family differently.  I’ve never had a problem with my wife’s family, but the best bit so far about this pregnancy for me has to be that it’s bringing me even closer to my them.

And this time I can honestly say I’m not stealing his daughter, I’m giving him a grandchild.

My parents were the first to know. I told them the news last Tuesday, but as my wife hadn’t even had confirmation from the doctor’s office I made my mother promise not to to speak to anyone until we had a better idea of where we were. She was so excited for us, and cross at me for not letting her talk to anyone!

I promised to speak to my grandmother and sister and I managed to get a hold of them over the last week to fill them in so at least my mother has someone she can talk to! Actually my only sister is currently pregnant with her first so my parents have been in the midst of getting ready to become grandparents for months now, they’ve had plenty of time to get used to the idea of becoming grandparents.

However my in-laws had no such luck.

After a long drive down to London, I greeted them at the door with glasses of champagne and a toast – to family and the new grandparents in the room. They stared and asked if we were kidding.

I’m not sure what sort of reaction we were expecting exactly, but blank looks of pure panic were not among the list I had in my head. My in-laws spent the next hour or so in shock but they’ve been progressively warming to the idea throughout the weekend.

We’ll be holding off telling anyone else for a while now, at least until my wife has her first proper doctor’s appointment.  At least I’m getting used to people reacting in strange ways to what is obviously massively important news to me.

And when it comes to being a new parent…that’s really true.  Nothing in this world has been done more than life, and so i know that almost anything I write will probably seem trite to at least half the people reading this stuff, and I generally include myself in that half.

Regardless … I was on the tube today and noticed a girl across from me. She had a pair of clear blue eyes, the kind that you can’t help but notice.  The sort that stand out in a crowd.  The kind that often accompanies both albinos and blindness, although for her, they were just the sort of eyes that get noticed.

I looked at this girls eyes and thought that my new born child will probably have eyes just like that.  Most likely they’ll change colour in a few days, or maybe not.  Maybe my child will be blind or an albino or bare a different sort of physical mark.  Of course the thought  bothered me.  I want a perfect child!  I also don’t want to feel responsible for that!  I want to believe I’ve got great genes

But the thing that really got to me was the intensity of the feeling.  How can I already care so deeply about this thing?  Feel so responsible for it?

It was Saturday afternoon and we were starting to get ready for a big night out at my friends annual August Bank Holiday Weekend Party. Good thing we checked first! See we’ve been lazily trying to get pregnant for a few months now. My wife went off the pill in April and we had a few months of pretending to use condoms, but quite quickly ended up saying screw it. We’ve been more or less just playing it all by ear to see what happens since.

I guess I now know what happens when you play that game! You end up looking at a couple of blue lines on a plastic stick thinking “oh shit! Is this really happening?”

I remember being pretty stunned, although not nearly as stunned as my wife was. She’d had a fairly bit of serious blood flow about three days before she took the test, which she thought was a pretty good sign of NOT being pregnant. Of course she knows almost nothing about the process of child birth, so this will definitely interesting!

At this point, four days in, we’ve more or less had confirmation via a second pregnancy test performed by a nurse in our local doctors office. We’re still waiting for the actual blood test to be performed. Apparently my sister in the states managed to have her blood-work done on the same day as her doctor’s appointment and got the results the next day. Here in the UK we’ve had to make an appointment for this Friday, and we won’t be getting the results for another week and a half. To be honest, until the blood test comes back, I’m going to continue to be nervious and doubt things slightly which is a shame as I’m really starting to get excited.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m also incredibly scared, nervous, excited, disappointed, everything. I know this is the end of so many parts of my life, but I also know it’s the beginning of so many other parts. I’m conflicted inside, but still confident that we’ve done the right thing. It’s an odd realisation.

I’m dead certain I’m not the first person to write about their pregnant wife and the birth of their child and I’m not the first to feel these emotions. I suppose I want to make clear my intentions with this blog. I really could care less if anyone actually reads this. To be honest I’m not sure that I’ll be able to keep it up, but at this point I’m imaging this blog to be for my child more than anything else. if anything were to happen to me, they’d have something from me, and if I manage to make it to your 18th birthday and I’m still doing a blog about you, well you can consider this your gift, and no you aren’t getting a car!

I expect I’ll be changing tone of voice quite often, although for the most part i’ll try and keep the posts consistent. Some will be to my child, some for myself and some to the world, but I’ll try and keep all of the posts from my heart.

On that note it’s well past my bedtime…goodnight