It’s a man’s world… so get ready to follow our fathers as they take on the trials and tribulations of parenthood. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll probably cringe as our crack team of dynamic daddies let you in on what life is like at the various stages of fatherhood. This month, father-to-be Mark Wreford reflects on the ups and downs of pregnancy…
There are things in a man’s life that let him know he’s turned a corner. A first broken bone. A first kiss. A first car. A first successfully completed DIY project.
Recently, I have begun experiencing a new set of firsts – and lasts. Our first positive pregnancy test. My last nine months of uninterrupted sleep. Selling my first guitar to make space and money. Our last Christmas as a couple.
Actually, when it comes to Christmas I feel like I sort of missed our last one as a couple. I love family and tradition, but as I sat amidst the present piles, musing on how blessed we all are, I couldn’t help but notice that the contents of my pile had changed with age. There was an Xbox One in my brother-in-law’s pile. My sister had all things One Direction. I had chutneys and children’s toys. And socks.
I’m really looking forward to being a father for the first time, but life has started changing pretty quickly. When my wife, Ellie, and I got married, we were really blessed and someone gave us a VW Polo. It was old then, but it drove like a Go-Kart and whatever broke, me (and my dad) managed to fix. It had rusty rear wheel arches and a dented side panel that would have cost more to replace than the car was worth.
It had a chip in the windscreen which had been fixed but was big enough to look like it hadn’t, and it stalled occasionally for no apparent reason. That, and the three doors and small boot combined to ring out a death knell for my beloved ‘Percy’.
Sure enough, it wasn’t long before I was up to my eyeballs in second-hand car stats about MPG and boot dimensions and the all-important child-seat technology, Isofix. I moved straight from my boy racer banger to a sleek middle-aged saloon: we bought an Avensis. This might have been OK if my father-in-law didn’t already drive the same car!
I started listening to Radio 4 – now that I could hear it clearly – and telling ‘dad’ jokes. Hair began to sprout from my nose and ears and my previously awesome moves deserted me on the dance floor (OK, that last part is a lie: I’ve never been a dancer. At least I have an excuse now).
Baby Wreford is due on June 2 this year, which, coincidentally, is when my peaceful, ordered existence is scheduled for destruction. Although, the lie that is ‘morning’ sickness gave me a pretty good indication of what might be coming my way when the little one arrives. Oh. My. Goodness.
As a writer, I spend the day whimsically searching for inspiration – at least, that’s what I hope you think. Instead, I’m currently doing a fulltime Masters in theology and working as a journalist. When we found out that there was a bun in the oven, my own loving dad and I were knee-deep in the mire of kitchen construction in my house. And then the mum-to-be found out that the expensive, shiny new oven she had picked ‘smelt funny’. For two-and-a-half months, she traded on that excuse to stay out of what is a very pleasant new kitchen (thanks, Dad) leaving me to cook, clean, wash-up, iron and generally run around like a headless chicken whenever I wasn’t sat at a desk typing like a headless chicken.
Eventually, it wore off at about the same time as the NHS invited us to meet our baby for this first time. Looking at that grainy image on the screen, everything else blurred into the background as my eyes glistened with tears.
It was magical.