Getting Prepared

After a work Christmas Party is not the best time to go shopping - men, it is a time when we are at our most vulnerable.

But I succumbed. I found myself at Bicester Village Outlets - busy with frantic Christmas Shoppers and ostensibly we were there to do the same. But our course among the fashion, sports and baggage shops was changed and we seemed to drift into 'Petit Bateau' as if by magic. About an hour later, after several unknown women had lent their oar on the subject of what is required in the crucial first few minutes, hours, days, weeks, month and quarter of a baby's life, I found myself at the checkout with a large bag full of enough clothes to dress octuplets and £185 lighter on the wallet front. This, I was reassured, was for the first few vital minutes of our yet-to-be-born baby's life. It's no longer about survival in our evolutionary history, it's about how you look.

It's a complicated business, this clothing thing. You see, the problem is that we do not yet know the sex of the brute, despite it kicking its mother like Jean-Claude Van Damme in a training session every few hours - I think we might have the new Jonny Wilkinson in there. So the issue was all about the colour of the clothes. Pink was off the menu - it's a bit binary as that is a girl's colour; even I know that. For me pastel blues are pretty metrosexual these days but for Mum this was not the case - too boyish. So we ended up with stripy suits of different colours that will make our baby look much like a small convict like Baby Face Finlayson out of the old Beano, and pastel yellows, creams and whites all highly impractical as they will show up the vomit a little too obviously for my money. I was over ruled.

There were several options in the wardrobe for the first few minutes let alone weeks by the end of it all - the baby will pop out and slip into something quite casual first thing, but have some formal wear for meeting people in the first few hours and days. It will be as well dressed when it gets its head down for 40 winks and it will look pretty sharp as it wakes its parents up in the wee hours each night. Best to look your best at all times, allegedly. There is also the vital small woolly jacket for coming home, complete with a little off-the-shoulder cardy for lounging around the house, plus a small array of vests with buttons up the front and those at the back as you never know which the little tyke will prefer.

To be frank, we were a little short on socks, booties and bonnets but I was not going to quibble after parting with so much cash in such a short time. I had been bushwhacked hard enough as it was. I have got up early today to see if I can find a good online course for knitting for the rest of it - surely it can't be that hard? And then there is the buggy - or should I say, buggies. I had toyed with the Mamas & Papas brochure and was horrified to find the complex array of equipment deemed essential for starting up in parenting. I mean, a buggy is a buggy, right? No.

I surveyed the various configurations but couldn't get the price down below £650 for a start up kit including buggy frame, pram, car seat and fold away trestle to put the thing on. That is only marginally less than the current worth of the car in which it will all be transported. And apparently, it is also essential to have a second buggy - a lighter, more sporty model for quick release and whizzing around Tesco's.  None of this includes the cot, which looks like a portable prison, changing blanket, weaning clothes, comfort blankets, bottles, sterilisations tanks, bottle warmers, baby and temperature monitors, sleeping jacket-cum-bag and the paraphernalia to adorn the cot. And that's before we get to the toys, DVDs etc. Then there is the minor cost of converting a perfectly nice room into a baby suite - and don't forget the 'changing unit' and small bath.

It's endless - and we haven't even got to the toys yet. Thankfully my sister has sent us a fantastic baby monitor unit which is ex-NASA by the looks of its features. But, men, the best parts in all this are the technical bits - the ones where no expense is spared and is in our domain. The photographic department.  I love such gadgets and I now have a strong array of essentials.

We start at a decent phone with built-in high end pixel camera. I happen to dislike these so I have stuck with my Nokia E71 and that's that. For quick photos, the ad hoc ones, I have a compact Nikon Coolpix with 10 megapixels in natty metallic puce which accompanied me to South Africa on a trial run to see the Lions Final Test - these things have to be field tested, you know. I already have a Nikon D40 SLR camera with telescopic lens options for the all important close ups - this is a trusted friend which has photo'd our dogs in every conceivable pose and place. It's a great camera. Latest addition to the portfolio is a fantastic Panasonic High Definition lightweight Video Camera - spanking thing that is simply the cat's backside. I haven't quite mastered this yet but I'm getting there and little baby will be featuring in more movies than Harrison Ford pretty soon. I suppose I should buy an Apple Mac or video iPod to make sure I can carry all these films around and bore anyone, anywhere by endlessly replaying them or having my laptop set to slide show to show the baby in proper historical sequence minute by minute. I can't wait.

Meanwhile, it is back to the repainting of the bedroom and selection of new lampshades. Lack of money and sleep are some things I am just going to have to get used to. Call me stupid, but I'm quite looking forward to that too.