I have been accused, in the past, mainly by both my wife and my mother, of being bah humbug when it comes to Christmas. It’s not an entirely false accusation, if somewhat exaggerated. For quite a few years now, the “bad” side of Christmas has been the overriding factor in the runup – the shopping, and being shopped for, especially. I’m useless at figuring out what people want, and just as useless at coming up with things I want.

There’s also the commerical side of it, with shops ramming it down your throat the second Easter is over and the ever irritating adverts on TV. Top of the hate list: “Holidays are coming” by Coca Cola. Dear God, if I ever kill a man it’ll be because of that advert. Not least because of the Americanism of the event of Christmas – holidays are in the Summer here, thanks.

But this year, things are different. They were last year too, what with Christmas not really happening due to imminent labour, but this year we have our very-nearly-one-year-old daughter to share it with. She won’t have a clue what’s going on. She won’t understand why she has presents, or even what to do with them, but that doesn’t matter. It all makes Christmas, well, Christmas again.

All the annoying stuff hasn’t gone away, it’s just the good stuff is more important now. But as my daughter would say if she could, “Christmas is rubbish because you have to wait”.

So Happy Christmas, everyone! I’m off to hunt me a reindeer.

Firstly, it’s my very first Father’s Day. My beautiful daughter Daisy (who is 6 months old this week) is too young to celebrate it with me, but the occasion will be marked regardless. She has had a massive effect on my life, as you’d expect, and every day she’s growing up more and more. I don’t know where the time as gone, but it seems only last week when she was a helpless little wrinkled pink thing that only cried, slept and ate.

Now, she’s a playful, happy, noisy little girl. She has her own personality too – she’s cheeky, and can already get her own way simply by looking at me with her big blue eyes. I love her so very much.

Secondly, it’s my brother’s birthday; his first since I last saw him. A year ago he got married in Canada, and in August had a blessing over here. I was his Best Man. Soon afterwards, he simply stopped contacting me. Something I don’t understand happened between him and the rest of the family, and for some reason him blotting them out seemed to require him breaking off contact with me too. I don’t even know why. Now he’s moved house, moved job and essentially disappeared.

Happy birthday, Ian. I both love you and miss you.

It’s amazing how the month has passed not only incredibly quickly, but also somehow incredibly slowly. It seems like years since she was born, and yet she is growing and changing so fast that time seems to just vanish before we’ve had a chance to take it all in.

I was looking over the photos we’ve been taking of her yesterday – loads every day – and she looks so different to when she was first born already. Her head is less cone shaped, her eyes are a little paler in colour, her cheeks and chin more defined, and her belly is enormous. I keep telling her she’s fat, but apparently it’s wrong to do that. She even fits her clothes now, without looking lost in them!

She acts differently too. She can focus on stuff now (providing it’s pretty close to her face), and is starting to react better to toys, noises and the TV (we had a great time watching Space Pirates the other night). She’s also more relaxed, crying less and sleeping at night better.

Everyone says that they grow up so fast, but you don’t realise just how fast until you see it with your own eyes. She’ll be at school before we know it, at this rate.

I’ll type more another day when I’m not knackered. Well, as knackered. 85 hours is forever.

Of course, I didn’t say which time zone, so it’s still possible…

Today was our final planned trip to see the midwife before the baby is due. We’ve got another appointment for a few days after its due date just in case it hasn’t arrived by then, but all being well today was the last one.

And pretty much everything was OK. The heartbeat and size and all that was as expected. We were also told that the baby’s head was now 3/5ths engaged. Hence the picture of Picard up there doing his “Engage!” pose. Or it might be “Make it so!”, I suppose. Whatever.

Baby soon!

What am I talking about? Expected Baby Arrival Day, of course!

Today marks the beginning of the final 4 weeks. Are we ready? Of course not.

Baby at 34 weeks

We were told about methods and types of feeding, the various advantages and disadvantages of breast feeding and bottle feeding, which did sort of confuse us as only this week we bought bottles to use with breast milk, so it isn’t quite as clear cut as the class suggested.

Then we were told about how tired we are going to be, how stressed, emotional and exhausted the first two weeks at least will be, which just sounds the wrong side of ace, and then that was it. We’re now qualified to be parents! But we didn’t get a certificate or anything.

Then we were told about some complications that could happen, most of which involved yanking the baby out with some sort of clamp or vacuum pump, and having a caesarian. Which was also nice.

So we left at the end feeling a bit uncomfortable.

Finally, we were shown a video of two births – one “normal” birth (which wasn’t too bad, despite the graphic nature), and one water birth, which was all sorts of “ewww”. You could see the water going from clear to yellow to brown. And the baby looked like a purple frog.

The class was very useful, but I’m not sure if I’m feeling better, or worse, for going, as there are some things you can’t un-see.

But it did help a bit. We know the importance of connecting with the baby, through touch and sound and so on, but I didn’t realise quite how psychological on both us and the baby this would be. We also got given the Big Book O’Stabs, detailing the multitude of injections the baby will have over the first year of it’s life. There’s loads. Poor thing.

Although not really important, they tend to prefer the size to be 1cm-per-week, +/- 1cm, so 31cm was good. Everything else was normal and as expected!

Anti-natal classes start next week!

I had my ear to my wife to have a listen (I’ve been able to hear various sounds for a few weeks now), but this time, I got a kick to the face! Yay!

Naturally, I kicked it back.

We did manage to get a great picture when it finally calmed down though. I suspect it’s the ice lolly (onna stick – see the picture) it has that made it stop fidgetting…

So we’re just over the half-way stage! We bought some paint for the nursery last weekend. It’s blue, because although we don’t know (or want to know) if it’s a boy or a girl, it isn’t going to know, is it? Besides, the carpet and curtains are blue and we’re not changing them.

What I didn’t expect, was that inside my wife is an actual game of Pac-man. I imagined the heartbeat noise would be sort of badumbadumbadumbadum, but in reality it was WAKAWAKAWAKAWAKA. Amazing!

That’s right. Me and my good lady wife are having a baby! We’re just about to hit the 14 week mark, and the baby is due on the 20th December.

I’d best get packing everything away, then. Babies stick everything in their mouths.