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The Ferrero Rochers that killed Ian Ferrero arrived today. My daughter seemed as fascinated by them as my wife. I can't do this deal for two people, can I?
Fathers have it pretty easy with the whole baby deal. The least we can do is to be a rock for our wives and do as much as we can. I have managed to remain calm through most of this. The first midwife at the hospital commented on how relaxed I was, saying most dads are freaking out as the whole thing starts. Maybe this is where being a stand up has been helpful: coping with the stress of making a room full (or worse not full) of people laugh (or worse not laugh) has perhaps taught me that panic is not the answer when things take a turn for the worse. But then again I have not experienced the pain of child birth, of after child birth, of breast feeding or the psychological brainshag of having grown a baby inside me and it now not being inside me or the hormonal surges that accompany all those things. And when our baby is in a bad mood, which she still only very occasionally is, I try not to take it personally and view her as a very persistent heckler or troll, who I have to win over. My comedy (and indeed my life) is often about testing patience, so I have to see Phoebe as a worthy patience-testing adversary who I can’t let show has defeated me (even when she gets close). On the downside I don’t have tits (which has been a lifetime regret in many ways) so I can’t just take the easy root out and wap them out for her when things are getting hairy. But in a way breasts are just a cheap, hack heckle putdown, like “this is what happens when cousins marryâ€, though that is a great heckle put down to a baby that you have created with your cousin. I wish I had a female cousin because I would definitely have had a baby with her, just so I could have used that joke at every opportunity.
Also as a comedian I have had to deal with other comedians, many of whom, like babies are entirely self-centred, unable to see the world from any perspective other than their own, incapable of listening to or understanding any contradictory position and can only be shut up if you stick a breast in their mouth.
So Phoebe is a terrifying combination of arrogant comedian and incoherent heckler. But also an audience that I am desperate to impress and make laugh. She is a triple threat. But my only effective weapon against this adversary is to make her think I am as cool as a cucumber (even when acting the part of the uncool fool).
I can’t give out too much wisdom on child-rearing just yet. I am a novice and we’ve been blessed with a child who seems to mainly sleep at night so far, but I have a feeling that remaining calm and at least seemingly unfazed might be one of the keys. At this stage the baby is working purely on instincts and basic emotions and can only communicate by crying. So if the parents are stressed or unhappy then I think the baby has to feel that on some level (I may be wrong, perhaps they’re just so much the centre of their own universe that they only operate according to what they feel). But I was very impressed by some friends I was with a few months ago who have two young children and a fantastic attitude to raising them. One of their children had been hurt bouncing on a bed and had to go to hospital with a broken bone. Some people might have freaked out and gone into panic mode, but my friends carried on calmly as if nothing massively significant had happened and went ahead with the dinner they had planned, albeit with one of them at the hospital with her son and the other at home with the daughter. They argued that it was best not to respond to anything as if it was a big deal. And that serenity certainly worked. It made the situation far less scary, kept things in control, but didn’t cause any panic.
Life throws up some accidents and incidents, but you have to deal with them as they come. It’s easy to expend more energy worrying about something that hasn’t happened and is unlikely to, than you would have to in the unlikely event of it occurring. My unrufflable friends certainly had two of the happiest and sweetest kids I’ve met. Which might just be a coincidence or of course you might just be calm if you already have calm kids. Who knows which way round it works? Shakespeare wrote some tedious plays about nature versus nurture and I tend to think that we’re born with fairly well-formed characters, but there must be some wiggle room. Phoebe was complaining and shrieking as she was born, her screaming beginning as her head emerged, with her body still inside her mother - I don’t think I will forget that sight. But she’s been placid so far, but maybe she’ll be the kind of person who only gets really angry when they have to exit another person by a hole that isn’t really fit for purpose. We’ll see.
If we are who we are then it doesn’t matter what you do, so regardless of whether our attitude affects our kids’ personalities, we might as well try to keep things serene. I want to help my wife through these weird and wonderful early days as she gets used to all the stuff she has to do and rests up from all the upheaval. And I want to help my daughter get the best start we can give her. So it makes sense to do as many of the jobs as I can, and remain cheerful (which frankly is easy - I am enjoying all of this from the troll-faced crying to the squirting faeces… and that’s just the teachers. Damn doesn’t work).
Loading and unloading washing machines and dishwashers, sterilising breast pumps, watching youtube videos about how to use the pram and the carseat, singing songs, dancing with my daughter in my arms, making the meals. It’s the least I can do for the two incredible women in my life.
Tonight we didn’t have too much food in the house, just the last few vegetables from our weekly delivery from the middle-class organic vegetable provider (which in spite of all that that represents and how ashamed I feel for being a part of it, I thoroughly recommend). There were four beetroots, one of the few foods that I claim to actively dislike (though it’s a childhood aversion and I haven’t minded it so much when I’ve had it recently) and some risotto rice in the cupboard. Risotto is one of my other least favourite foods, as it was the basic vegetarian staple of nearly all restaurants in the 90s and it always seemed too much like a savoury rice pudding to me (and rice pudding is one of the worst desserts). But necessity is the mother of making you eat loads of stuff you don’t really like, so I pushed the boat and and attempted to make a meal that was well out of my comfort zone. And it was definitely the nicest beetroot risotto that I had ever tasted. It wasn’t that nice, but then it had beetroot in it and was a risotto, so what did you expect?
And halfway through making something in the house tripped a fuse and plunged everything but the kitchen into darkness, whilst Catie was in the process of trying to feed and comfort a crying baby. We didn’t really successfully remain that calm throughout that one. I had to rush up and down stairs in the dark whilst my rice risked sticking to the pan and sort things out. And even when I thought I’d done it, the lights were still off in the bedroom where my wife and child were, so I like a knight in shining armour, with pink beetrooty hands I ran up to save them/turn the light switch on as my wife wanted to know what was happening and I worried about burning the food. We coped. There may be trickier tests to come.
If the ultimate aim of Me1 vs Me2 Snooker is to be entertaining one person, then my daily life is now all about the happiness of two people. And in some ways, getting it right, that is even more rewarding than playing myself at snooker in a basement.
