The baby whisperer...

Just been to the first session of our NCT ante-natal course. What I don't know now about cervical dilation and vaginal mucus just simply isn't worth knowing....

Actually, despite my substantial misgivings about taking part, it proved to be a reasonably insightful morning's work, in the company of a couple of other wide-eyed middle class dads-to-be who presumably I'm now expected to arrange trips to the pub with to 'talk babies'. Given that I hardly have enough time to see my actual friends these days, this seems unlikely, nice guys though they are...

Perhaps the highlight for me was finding the potential answer to one of the problems we have right now, which is that junior is not in the 'correct' position of head down into the pelvis facing his destiny. Apparently I have to get an empty toilet roll tube, place it at the bottom of the missus' belly and talk to him through it, as the sound and vibration will coax him down into the right spot and then gravity (his head is heavier than anything else) should keep him there.

No, that's not made up, I swear.

There are five NCT sessions, the first two on the labour process in all its gory, sorry glory, then others on things like caesarians (oh, goody!), breastfeeding and, most useful to me, what to do in the terrifying first days after the baby arrives.

I have no idea yet what will happen when junior leaves the hospital and comes home for (hopefully) good. How do I hold him (I'm legendarily crap at holding babies)? What do I do to keep him amused? How many hours should I spend studying his every motion with a pained look of worry on my face?

All this and more will no doubt be answered between now and the beginning of August...

So farewell then...

...to my study/office/den/refuge in our house.

Now cleared of all my stuff to make way for spare bedroom furniture. The first casualty of the impending familyhood!

I'll miss playing on the computer and watching baseball games online up there, although I won't miss the amount of junk that ended up collecting in the room - enough to take a whole day of clearing before I could even see the floor.

It makes me realise how materialistic I've been in the past, buying all sorts of stuff just because I could. Oh well, that spendthrift largesse is about to become the second casualty...