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have my hair cut extremely short and spiky in a bid to look like my heroes Bart Simpson and Denis the Menace. When I was told at school that I couldn’t play football because I was a girl I secretly wished when blowing my birthday candles out that I would become a boy and win the world cup to prove them wrong. In addition, I rebelled against my parents’ alternative ways – I squirmed, embarrassed, when my Dad served up seaweed, homegrown vegetables from our garden and tofu for my friends and prescribed me homeopathic remedies for my many clumsy accidents. I resisted my Mum’s desire to talk about everything (she is a psychotherapist) and the strange sounds she made doing yoga and meditating. I resented my garden being taken over by people drumming and building sweat lodges. I resolved to live on a diet of chips, tomato soup and mainstream television (which I actually managed very well on at university) and resist all attempts to ‘get in touch with mother nature’ or myself as a woman. It unnerved me. I preferred to be normal thanks very much. I got older and realized fairly quickly that ‘normal’ wasn’t only hugely overrated and explicitly dull but also, in many respects going against my own instincts and ethics. I have married a trainee Dramatherapist and have even
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he says they get the kids in and its not bad to J drive. Not , ar bad? I need a car c s y O that I like driving. Its b Ba not about me anymore ed: r u t c its about the baby. The baby I i P tell myself needs a good drive. It deserves the best ride in town while being safe; it needs to be safe for gods sake. It needs to look like a grown up car otherwise I’m a dad thats clinging to his youth which is just sad. So I’m a grown up now. A bloke a work tells me about a dealer doing cheap Citroen picassos he rants on for ages about how great they are. Did I want him to set me up with the dealer? I couldn't get the image of a land-rover discovery out my head as the wagon to drive my baby around up high in comfort, just the price tag and fuel costs stopped me and the dodgy chain smoking bloke selling old ones from a portacabin in the track where they film top gear. I got out with my deposit back after shouting at him there's chocolate melted all over the seats, he looked mighty puzzled. But that smeared chocolate on the old dirty seats saved me from a motoring nightmare. My wife said she was proud of me for being wise as she drove me home in her new car with me on the auto-trader app trying hard to find my dad car.
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joined pregnancy yoga and invested in a homeopathy kit to help me through the birth which I hope will be a natural water birth. We are excitedly discussing creating a healthy attachment using a sling to carry our baby close to us and practicing baby massage. We have researched ethical, organic clothing companies and a potential first trip away with our baby. Talking about my own childhood has made me realize how fantastic my own was and how it has helped shape the person I am today. I hope I too make bicarbonate of soda rockets in the garden instead of investing in an Xbox, plant our own vegetable patch and keep chickens instead of sampling the local fast food chain and indulge in story, play and music as enthusiastically as my own parents did. I hope I am as nurturing and patient with my own child’s emerging unique self and reflect enough love and self worth back to him that he grows up feeling as happy and self assured as I did. Once the thought of a baby moving inside me was a scary prospect akin to a scene from a horror film – the thought of being pregnant and becoming a mother so totally opposed to my impatient, spontaneous and lively spirit that it terrified me. What I hadn’t accounted for was the fact that I would already feel so fiercely protective, so emotionally entwined with the process and have so much warm love for someone I was yet to meet. I have also realized that becoming ‘a woman’ is not a transformation into a stereotypical mother – living a mainstream, claustrophobic, monotonous existence solely to raise her children. No, a mother, and a woman is something quite different – it is something I am coming to embrace wholeheartedly and is filling me with joy – being a woman is empowering. I can be strong and passionate, soft and nurturing, playful and earnest. I don’t have to sacrifice my spirit – it is the opposite, my spirit, our spirits have created a new life and this enriches my own experience of life. As for becoming a mother, I can only begin to imagine the shift in perspective this will bring but I have found in my heart a spark I never knew existed that I know will kindle up and blaze with love, awe and amazement the moment this little life inside me comes into being.
It was after a failed trip to Basingstoke to look at a dodgy Japanese imported Mitsubishi 4x4, my wife almost in tears begging me not buy it. I woke up. My identity was to change and the car was part of this as was my journey to teach me many changes that would have to happen in order for me to adapt to the role of being a Dad. So in the end much to everyones shock but some admirers I chose a Volvo, the safest car in the world. It looks very grown up and drives like a dream with leather seats for my little baby to be in. It took me a while but I got there. This compared to getting the pram was nothing. Go on ask me what the difference between Mama and Papas and Bugaboo is or Phil and Ted's vs Silver cross. Yes I check every buggy that passes me and feel amazed that I feel proud to be a, classic chassis, silver cross, swivel facing multi positing, flat for newborn pram pushing father. Over the last seven months I have made the nursery special, created toy boxes, chosen comics I want to read him, bought soft toys and totally unleashed my dad to be soul into the voyage of being a dad. Knowing that without getting the car sorted and having a decent record collection I would have felt a bit lost. I now spend my days reading Green Parent, the Mother, Junior, articles, baby books, attachment books, co-sleeping books, what nappy guides and sometimes bursting into tears when I see the scan pics or feel the bump kick as I realize the surreal is merging into real and the joy of life is not the promotion or the world trip on a motorbike or the holiday or anything I thought it was. Its love. Its my wife, its my new family; just glad I now have a safe boring reliable car to take them home from the hospital in.
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