Posts Tagged ‘Babies’
Fatherhood²: How Tricky is it Taking a 5-week-old Baby on Holiday?
Having just returned from a week’s holiday with our family, I thought I’d share a few my thoughts on travelling with a very small baby. I’m by no-means the expert, but having been told that we were mad for even thinking of taking such a young child (just 5 weeks old on the day we left) away, I was quite pleased that things turned out fine. So if only to provide some reassurance to other parents who are wondering whether or not to holiday with their baby yet, here’s my view:
Having travelled on many flights which included babies, I’m pretty sure I’m still not comfortable with taking a baby on an aircraft, unless you strictly have to. Not only is their screaming a little bit annoying for the other passengers, but I can’t imagine the pressures that air travel puts on your body can be very good for a tiny baby.
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Fatherhood²: Hi-ho, Hi-ho, it’s Back to Work I Go…
Just a little over 3 weeks after little Frederic was born, today marks the last day of my paternity leave – a realisation which has made me rather sad this weekend. As I’ve said in past posts during these few weeks, I really appreciate the paternity leave we in the UK get – and especially how accommodating my own employers have been. But it’s going to be a bit of a shock to the system getting up for work tomorrow…
It won’t be a the early morning that’s tough – though a poor night’s sleep tonight make me a bit more bleary-eyed I imagine. It won’t be the working either – aside from the fact that my iPhone has allowed me to stay in touch with the office and my emails during my time off, I enjoy my job immensely so it won’t be hard to jump back into. The hard part will be being away from Freddie (and Robert) for most of the day.
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Fatherhood²: Five Days in, is it Double Trouble?
Before little Frederic was born on Friday, I’d speculated on a few occasions that having a second child couldn’t possibly be as hard as the first one – something which I’m still just about clinging on to now, five days in to little Freddie’s life.
Some things have definitely been easier, some things just as hard. And of course, having an older brother or sister brings with it a whole new bunch of challenges which I’d not spent much time thinking about. Here’s a few of my observations on fathering a second child, from where I am sat (or more accurately, slumped) on the evening of Freddie’s 5th day…
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Fatherhood²: T-minus 2 Weeks and Counting
At 38 weeks, this week marks the time in our first pregnancy when Robert was born – so anticipation is running fairly high in our house at the moment.
As with most pregnancies, Sara is looking a little bigger this time around (supposedly the muscles having relaxed more during the last pregnancy causes more “expansion” the second time) and we’re pretty-much ready to roll – bags packed for Sara, baby AND Robert, plus several different flow-chart plans plotting who we’ll call
I can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like for Sara, but for me the mixture of anticipation and trepidation is very bizarre to behold.
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Fatherhood²: The Madnezz of baybee naming in 2011
So I was planning to write a blog post about the waxing and waning of popular baby names, but I’ve been a little derailed…
Sara and I are still 3 months away from the arrival of Baby 2.0, but we’re obviously now spending a bit of time thinking about baby names.
I personally quite impressed that we already have a “Top 5″ list, but I should point out that Robert only officially got his name (it was one of our top choices, but hadn’t been finalised) when Sara was going in to the caesarian surgery room, and Robbie Williams’ “Angels” was playing on the stereo. So the fact that we have a list this time may also mean nothing.
Fatherhood²: Baby gadgets aren’t always baby good-gets
As a total gadget-loving dad, I relished parenthood as a good opportunity to stock up on new gadgets, tools, widgets and generally things with plugs on them. One of the few books I bought on the subject of parenthood was The Bloke’s Guide To Baby Gadgets – a fun read, though possibly not one I’d recommend in perspective; you can find most of the info on baby sites these days, with the benefit of comparison engines clinching it for me! But anyway, the gadgets were an exciting prospect to me.
Almost three years on, and facing the prospect of revisiting some of those purchases for a second time, I wanted to reflect on a couple of items which I now consider to be a complete waste of time. Some lovely folk on Twitter and a couple of boards I frequent also helped with some suggestions, so a big ‘thank you’ to them as well.
Obviously these opinions are all just that – opinions. You may well and possibly will disagree, but if I can save even ONE wasted purchase, it’ll have been worth it… I’m also planning to do a companion post with my “must have” purchases at a later date, but for now, here’s the no-nos… Here goes!
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Fatherhood²: Guest Post – Planning ahead, or not
I guess the one thing that I always come back to as a father is the question, “Where will we be in 12 months / 5 years / 10 years time”. The obvious offshoot to this guessing game is to envisage your children at certain milestones, Graduation… 21st birthday… first court appearance and the like. Ultimately though, I think the truth of the matter is: whatever we surmise, things will never turn out quite the way we envisage them.
This concept for me at least stretches back to when we were expecting our first child. I looked ahead and imagined how things would be. I had expectations of fatherhood mainly from the input of my parents over the years and I ‘saw’ things panning out in a certain way. Generally, they did. But the specifics of parenting were either very different, had changed with the passing of time or I had simply got it wrong in the first place.
My Year in Photos – January 23rd – “Feeling broody…?”
Today we headed over to Hertfordshire to visit our Uni friends Dave and Claire, who recently became parents for the first time. We had a lovely day out, followed up by a lovely pub lunch in Maidenhead and a trip to the Sheeplands farm shop at Harehatch, on the way home. Win!
My Year in Photos – January 22nd – “How not to save money”
I headed down to the trendy shopping street in Chiswick today (I’m assuming there’s not many of these streets, or I’d have found them by now!) to buy a baby gift for some friends of ours who have recently had a baby. As you’d expect on a street of trendy boutiques, there were lots of very pricey-looking shops to choose from, but this seemed like the best bet for baby thins (judging by the name!).
I ended up getting some very nice gifts in their sale (I won’t reveal what, in case they are reading this!) but was pretty impressively shocked to see some “Baby Dior” booties on sale in this shop – for NINETY POUNDS! Considering toddlers apparently change shoe size every six weeks, that’s quite an impressive habit to have to keep… I think I’ll stick with Mothercare!
My Year in Photos – January 15th – “I need a drink”
After an incredibly busy day (including a promising sales meeting with a client whose logo I took a picture of, but decided it wasn’t a wise thing to upload…!) I sat down in front of the TV and realised I was sitting on this book. Sent to us by my cousin Lucy, it’s a very funny pretend baby book giving kids instructions of how to make various cocktails and drinks. It’s very funny. It’s also about the only interesting photo I took today!