up all night

3 and a half days ago I became a Dad! And I thought that would be the end of sitting around watching TV/reading blogs online etc.. but no.. not when on night two of your baby boy being at home he gets incredible wind because you cooked your wife a lovely dish involving loads of roast onions and garlic and that in turn is in her milk and now in the baby and bless him he's only just been using that stomach for 2 days so of course it'll make him ill, it's like putting aeroplane fuel in a brand new scooter... and then it spluttering and farting down the road. A lot.

So, bless him, he can't sleep on his back so one of us has to stay up for hours cuddling him so he can sleep.. and it's been my turn for the last few hours and after realising I can just about hold him in one arm whilst making a cup of tea, grabbing some hob nobs, sitting down, watching Family Guy for the first time in my life on some digital channel (and not finding the farting talking baby bit funny..), after getting up, juggling baby to other side, letting the cat in, opening a pouch of Felix with my mouth because one hand is busy and spraying my face in tuna juice, feeding the cat and getting myself settled with a blanket over me and a blanket over the boy and get the laptop out.. I figure I'd catch up on one of favourite blogs: The Write Girl.

She's a brilliant writer from Hertfordshire who currently finds herself in Japan teaching children English through play and Drama (so if a load of young Japanese men and women one day visit your town and can only converse by pretending to be a cow, or a crab on a sea bed.. then you know why..)

It's been brilliant as ever.. and has kept me busy for so long that i've had to readjust our little nest whilst I plugged in the laptop - getting a face full of baby fart whilst bending over to reach the cord (hmm, onion baby fart and eau d'tuna, I.. am.. hot). What she's up to in Japan is brilliant and part of me thought.. I've never done anything like that. Am I missing out?

But I wouldn't change where I am right now for the world.. both of us then, having incredible adventures with people who can't understand us or be understood by us and finding escape through our laptops. And both of us experiencing raw fish for breakfast.

Fraser has slept through three months of her adventures but when he wakes up he's going to see Daddy pretend he's a cow and that we're in a field full of grass and that he's a cow too. He certainly farts like one. Notice that no one ever feeds cows onions...

I'm a Dad!

Tuesday afternoon my life changed forever when at 16.56 little Fraser Edmund joined the Folland clan.

It was an emergency c-section. One moment my wife was in a bed and I'd been told to 'go and get the bags' out of the car; the next moment, I'm back with the bags and the room is full of people in blue/green scrubs uniforms and my wife's in a hospital gown and in a blur of activity a nurse grabs me and says that it's all about to happen and I need to get changed into scrubs and grabs me grabs the bags, rushes me down a corridor, points me to a cupboard and tells me to get changed and join them in theatre... If that sentence lacks punctuation, so did the moment itself. It just flowed. No. Rushed from one blurry verb to another.

In amongst all the action and overwhelming 'trying to remain calm for your wife when clearly this is terrifying for her' experience... I did manage to discover that I look good in scrubs. No really. A student mid wife even said in theatre, 'is dad in here yet?'.. when I was just standing 3 feet away from her. See? I looked like a doctor! Well, that's my memory. The scrub nurse will probably tell a different tale involving me being so nervous that I put the trousers on back to front so didn't see the tie up cord, so wandered down the corridor with them falling down and my pants showing and said nurse coming to tie me up (honestly! If I can't dress myself, what hope do I have?!)

Sorry for being rubbish

Wow. Just realised I have't written anything for the whole of October?! How lame is that?

Basically I've been just too busy waiting to become a Dad. We're now a week overdue and it's like someone keeps shifting what day Christmas Day is. You know it's going to be soon, you put up all the decorations and get yourself excited and then it turns out it isn't the 25th at all, nor the 26th, 27th etc.. You just know that eventually the present you'll get will be amazing and you have to be patient, even though you know what it is and you know where it's hidden, you're not allowed to open it. Be patient.

I've tried to tell my wife that this is a great excuse to start eating Quality Street, but she's not buying into the Christmas metaphor in the same way. She's also sick of finding a half drunk glass of sherry and mince pie crumbs each morning.

Anyway, if it doesn't pop out on its own accord (or umbilical cord) soon they'll tempt it out by the end of this week. If it's any child of mine they should just waft a bag of fresh doughnuts under there and it'll soon poke its head out. So yes, we're just sit tight and wait for our delivery whenever that might be. Anybody would think it was the Royal Mail in charge of its birth.