The M Word

They say that the most popular cause of a failed marriage is money.

Actually, I ought to rephrase that – it isn’t popular, it’s the favourite reason – no I don’t mean that either. You know what I mean, don’t you? Lots of marriages fail because of, in one way or another, money. There, that wasn’t hard, was it?

In our case, we have spent enough to buy a high end luxury car or a low end flat (a very high end one in Dubai, it seems) on assisted conception, so we are down a few bob. My wife, in nurturing this pregnancy with all the care she can muster, has not really contributed much to her business this year, in which she is a partner. Consequently, our monthly income has dropped too.

However, it is a straightforward fact that impending parenthood is an expensive time. This weekend, we reviewed the ‘Mamas & Papas’ catalogue and without much effort clocked up some £2,000 of ‘essentials’ we shall have to purchase. In her high-nesting mode, my wife also would like to renew our carpets, get a new suite, new curtains, have our conservatory re-windowed and then merely redecorate one of the rooms. And that’s all before the little mite is born.

My wife, to our advantage, is an Independent Financial Adviser (IFA), and so we have planned reasonably well for our child but nothing quite prepares you for the fearful list of things which need to be purchased up front or on a regular basis in order to prepare for and nurture a baby. Given the current recessionary times, and my age (sorry to harp on about that but it is the subject of the blog after all), money and the (un)certainty of its flow is a major worry point.

It’s as well to face it early and discuss it. We have until February to get ourselves prepared, kitted out and trained – all of it costs money in some way or another. While the entire shopping list of ideas we both have would be fantastic to have, the reality is that we simply cannot afford all of it and polish off our entire savings when there is no real guarantee of a consistent salary – you have to make priorities and contingencies.

I can only advise that it is best to approach this together, with realism and then get the advice of a good IFA who can help you plan properly while making good provisions for your and your children’s future. I am thankful that my wife and I have never had an issue with the money we spend and we have always compromised when we have had to while understanding our financial outlooks pretty well.

We like the good life and a high standard of living, but frankly the baby will always come first. It’s as well we chaps tackle that issue and come to terms with it early. So put down that Car Magazine, forget the daily pub visits, stop dreaming about the next Lions Tour and knuckle down to the monetary responsibility of fatherhood.

It should sober you up, if nothing else.

Gym Day 2

I actually made it for the second day at the gym.

I felt pretty good after the first session until I got to bed, sipping a nice whisky and then fell into a deep, deep sleep. I awoke at 4.30am and could not get back to sleep as I had a big presentation on my mind. I got up, showered, made tea for both of us and then departed to get to the gym ahead of plan.

I felt exhausted - probably the whisky. I did some rowing then cross training, a few weights, showered and went to the office. I have rarely felt so completely whacked out. The day ground on and finally I have returned home and feel totally exhausted and ready for bed by 9pm.

I am determined to keep this going with only respite at the weekends. I can actually feel the dormant muscles tightening but there is a long, long way to go to rid myself of the tummy. What is remarkable was that I was the only one at the gym despite the fact it is at most worst £15 per month and at best free. It's not by any stretch the most well equipped or luxurious of gyms - there are no towels, deodorants, hair gels or cotton buds but it has a few clothes pegs, a bench and shower, complete with an all pervading rancid kit smell.

What more could you ask for? For an aspiring older dad, I am finally feeling I have a chance of being reasonably fit for the baby's arrival.

What's in a Name?

There are plenty of talking points about having a baby but one of the hottest debating point has been around naming of the poor blighter.

My wife has already concluded the entries for girls' names and the voting has occurred. I can't actually remember being too much a part of that voting but I have to say that the names chosen are lovely. I had some late entrants which may make a repercharge but we will have to broach that later.

It has been boy names which have become the controversial area. In fact, every name I have suggested has been rejected. It hasn't helped matters that I have been joshing on the subject and making daft suggestions. But even when I get to a sensible name, I have been rebuffed robustly. To date only one name has stood the scrutiny test and that is a family name which comes from my wife's side. I have been anti that name to date even though it is not a bad name but more because my ideas have been brushed aside.

I dare say we shall get there and progress will be made when I stop suggesting ancient Welsh names like Cledwyn and Idris, although I happen to think my suggestion of Gareth was worth at least some consideration. I have even tried the entire Welsh front row but Gethin was kicked out early while 'Hair Bear Bunch' isn't a proper name.

My suggestion to would-be fathers is to buy a book of names and go through it line by line. We did much the same on the web for our dogs. While it was a good repository of potential names it actually drove us toward two names not in the book which we love and so do the dogs.

How do I know the dogs like their names? Because they wag their tails every time we mention them, silly.

The Aftermath

It's been a good 18 months since I last graced the insides of a gym, possibly longer.

I am actually pleased with the fact I made the supreme effort to go - getting up early is never an issue, it was the psychological barrier of getting over threshold of the gym's entrance. This morning I actually did it.

Seven painful minutes on the rowing machine made my chest hurt, then 30 minutes on the 'Fat Burning' program on the cross trainer was actually bearable although the tautness in my calf muscles could fire an arrow. Then I finished off on the weight machines which I thought would be easy but it actually felt like Superman pushing a train. I managed to make it back to the changing room before collapsing, avoiding passing out in front of the pretty blond girl on the running nachine by a whisker. I was always super-organised when I used to gym regularly and I was horrified to find I was several items short in my wash bag including my favourite body wash and toothpaste (I always have a quick shower and brush my teeth before I go to the gym out of courtesy to others, thankfully). So I have already given myself one stern warning for the day, next one is a potential yellow card and I will have to stand in the car park for 10 minutes.

There is a refreshing short walk across the car park from the gym to the office which helps cool you down - that's a bonus as when I start to sweat it takes a while to stop. However, climbing two flights of stairs and greeting people through gritted teeth was hard - the lift looks a better bet in the future but that is surely giving in to age. Sitting at my desk, I am waiting for the pain to start but apart from a rawness in the chest akin to breathing in noxious fumes, I actually feel ok if tired, although I slept like a baby last night.

My wife and I have been remiss about going to ante-natal classes and our discussion last night centred round this - what if there is no time between now and the end of February to go? When I tried to allay her fears by saying, 'How hard can it be?' she turned her back and huffed. Good point, well made.

I have been reading little books about the subject of men and pregnancy but none have really given the kind of training I need. The truth is, while I have cleared up umpteen messes after children and animals, I have not changed a nappy. I have winded babies before now but I know nothing of the regiment and routine required. These are some of the things I fear. What if I forget to feed the baby or fail to wake up when it's crying? What if I put the nappy on wonkily? What if the milk is too cool? What if the dogs take a dislike to it or get jealous? What if Wales lose on Saturday?

You get my point? I haven't yet acclimatised myself to the rigours of fatherhood and I can feel it heading at me like an unstoppable freight train.

Pah! If I can summon the will power to get back in the gym, I can crack this fatherhood business. Can't I?

Off To The Gym I Shall Go?

With steely determination, I managed to overcome the invisible bungee rope that was preventing me making the short journey across the carpark to the gym and I signed on.

There were two immediate positives, apart from feeling as if I had finally shown some will power. The first was that as the gym is changing hands and the new owners will take over in January, so I have free membership up until they call me in order to extract some money. The second piece of good news was that my blood pressure was pretty much normal. I say this with a small caveat as it took 3 readings to get there and some special breathing techniques the chap talked me through. I felt as if I could beat a lie-detector by the end of it.

So tomorrow morning is D-Day. I shall rise smartly at 5.30am and be on my way by 6.00am to get to the gym by 7.00am and be at the office by 8.30am after an hour's refreshing exercise (writer's euphemism for being knackered). A foolproof plan?

As I have had a full day in the office, my wife went for a routine scan with her Mum today. The news was good - Mum and baby are doing fine and we have a another appointment for two weeks time. After having disappointments with scans a year ago and earlier, I still have butterflies before them - and today was worse by knowing my wife was on her own.

The most gratifying scan to date was the Nuchal Translucency screening test which uses a combination of many factors from actual measurements of the foetus' nuchal membrane at the nape of the neck and some other factors such as age, weight etc of the mum and dad plus certain readings of the blood - it is all run through a complicated computer program and out pops effectively the odds of the baby having Down's Syndrome. In our case, despite our combined age, the odds were actually in the normal range which was huge relief.

In the multifarious fears, anxieties and excitements I have of being a dad at 50, this was perhaps one of the biggest. We desperately want a child, but our fear would be that we could not provide the kind of long term parenting required for a baby with Down's Syndrome - and I have picture in my mind of being too geriatric to look after such a child when they would need us most. To know that our odds were high would have tested every belief my wife and I have - we are both very against abortion for every reason barring medical and psychological (it's difficult to be hard and fast but for abortion for lifestyle is to my mind an abomination). This fear brings home the awesome duty of responsibility parenting comes with and why it is more acute for older parents, who naturally have a higher risk of the baby having the condition.

Away from the lighter side of being an older dad - this is the kind of serious issue that age brings. My wife and I would hate to deny anyone (and I include an unborn child) the chance of life but we would not want condemn our baby to a life with older parents who actually would need as much care and attention as them in too few years. That alone would be a very selfish act.

The next dilemma in my mind is whether I actually go to the gym tomorrow morning.

To Gym or Not?

It doesn't matter what shape you are if you are a young or, dare I say it, normal aged dad.

If you are an older dad-to-be, like me, then it's going to be pretty important not to look old and fat or unfit. If nothing else, I have a morbid fear that I will not be able to pick my child up and carry it around for fear of passing out due to over-exertion. I also fear not being able to kick or bowl a ball for fear of aggravating an arthritic joint. I also fear turning up at the schoolyard to collect my child and all the Yummy Mummies asking me how old my grandson is.

I have always been a pretty active uncle and I naturally look younger than I am. As I turned 50, everybody has gasped and thought I was no more than 40. The fact is that I know my age and I know my limitations. I also know that I have put on weight in the last year and when I went swimming with my nephew on the weekend, I felt very concious of my tummy.

I am also the sort of person for whom dieting is not the way to lose weight. For one, I love my food and drink so it is a huge battle. Second, I have no staying power. But, thirdly and most importantly, I need to exercise or else my body soon realises what I am trying to do and deviously changes its metabolism and causes weight to reappear even though I am on a single lettuce leaf and a bowl of steam per day. I used to play sport a lot - rugby, cricket - and now I do the occassional golf. The gym is the only way forward for me.

They say that certain fat you store when you are young is never ever gotten rid of and it is the one thing I have proven in my life to be really true. I can train every workday for an hour or more and drive myself senseless and I will always retain that small but annoying shape of a person who has a problem with their weight. The only six pack I will ever get is from the beer shelf in the supermarket. But at least I will fit nicely into my clothes and feel well.

So today is dilemma day. Do I go and join the gym across the road from the office for a mere £15 per month or do I condemn my baby to seeing a fat and old father? It will be a battle of wills, between a tuna baguette and the short stroll to sign up at lunchtime. Then it will be the discipline of getting up at sparrow's fart each day and getting to the gym early as I have an hour and 15 minutes drive to the office each morning. I have done it all before and it worked. But the will power seems to be lacking just know.

Do I go or not? Find out tomorrow.

Telling The Family

One of the early problems we faced was how and when to tell the family.

It wasn't so much that we were older and therefore slightly uncomformtable about the 'age thing' - well, ok, I was. The biggest issue was going to be how to tell the family and so how not to cause jealousy and bad feeling.

Confused? Didn't I say we had no children so far? I did. But I did not mention that we have two Border Collie dogs, brother and sister from the same litter at nearly 3 and three quarter years old. Yes, for those of you who believe dogs should be dogs and not treated like humans, clearly you have not owned dogs. Whether you like it or not they become part of the family.

I suppose it doesn't help that I give them 'virtual human characteristics'. The boy dog is a real lad, complete with an almost Ozzie twang in my mind and a comment for everything, he struts about the place as if he owns it whereas she is more lady-like but very intense about everything. You may think I am mad, but the two seem to mimic every comment I make. Too boot, the boy behaves like a teenager getting huffy if he doesn't get to play a game and is completely crushed if we go out.

This is where the problem begins. They behave pretty much as if we are 'Mum and Dad' to them and, err, well we behave as if we are their parents too. So it was always going to be a shock and potential issue for two, effectively, teenagers to have a new baby to interrupt their lives. How do you tell them?

Well the first remarkable thing is that they seem to know. They both have become slightly more protective to my wife - the 'bitch' (how I hate that word about my own daughter, I mean dog) especially so. Then we have recently started saying things like, 'Are you going to have a baba?' Seriously, we do.

The girl seems to get quite excited, but then again both have a 'vocabulary' of about 80 words they know and so several words in the sentence may lead it to believe it is either going to get a dog treat or a walk. He, meanwhile, as a typical male, looks on impassively. Indeed, if they did know anything about themselves, she may be excited by the fact that she is going to give birth herself to the first coming of the dog Jesus as she is speyed while he clearly is thinking, 'Nothing to do with me, mate'. His undercarriage is still intact but the poor fool dotes on his sister so much that the only thing he has tried to mount is me and my brother in law. His sister has long since told him where to shove his appendage.

The result is that we are not sure what the two 'kids' think. As pack animals, the boy dog thinks he runs the house and frankly I am pretty low down the order of things in his eyes, while the girl knows her place. So when the baby arrives, there is going to be an issue. Firstly, they pretty much roam the house as their own. Secondly, they demand a lot of time, attention and interaction - not least a walk of at least an hour but more like two hours a day, which is tough when you are out most of the day. They are the focus of attention in our world - we cannot go away for the weekend without making arrangements for them to be looked after, while we have had only one holiday since we have had them and worried about them the whole time.

In reality, they will not know that they have a new 'brother or sister' until he or she arrives. I don't think they will like it.

Telling the rest of the family? Oh, that was easy. Amazing how communication has changed these days.

Annus Maximus

It has been an amazing year for more reasons than one, but for me two incredible things have happened:

1) My wife became pregnant and we are to be parents for the first time.

2) I turned 50 just this week - here in November 2009.

I could bore you with the long details - suffice to say we have been married for over 14 years and we have tried just about every method in the book and could have bought a nice flat with the money we have spent on IVF treatments but just when we were considering new options, a miracle occurred and my wife became pregnant at the age of 43 in June this year - naturally.

The startling reality took a long while to hit home. I am old, fat, unfit and in precarious employment, at an age where things could go horribly wrong. We are 6 and a half months into the term and only now have I really realised that things are going to be very, very different.

First up, we love kids - adore them. We have 4 nephews we think are superb, two nieces we don't see much of but love and two new nieces who are twins who are the most adorable forms of life you can kind find - and that includes cute kittens. And we have two godchildren who consider us family - in fact, I treasure the card for my 50th from my goddaughter who called me the 'Best Uncle in the World'. I should have her stuffed and put in reception.

So this child will be loved - we are two people who have always wanted our own child and more. It's just that now that I am 50, it is very different. I am going to be the oldest dad in the playground, unless I go to LA where it's Michael Douglas. Until a year or so ago, I was super fit and now I have gone to seed. I may look youngish but I am beginning to feel my age.

But the excitement of being a dad is kicking in. This blog is about a guy and his wife who are finding life is about to change very drastically. And guess what? I am scared.

I am going to be a geriatric dad. When my child is 18, I will be 68 - then he or she is 30, I will be 80. The good news, if I have any money left, is at least they will get it earlier than their peers. The bad news is that they will won't be able to invite their dad to the Parents vs. Pupils rugby, hockey, netball or cricket match as I will probably have a zimmer frame - and they aren't cool.

So read along with my thoughts, hopes, fears and attempts to be younger and cooler.