Welcome to my blog on impending fatherhood. I’m Jim and I turn 50 in September! My wife, Daisy, is a spritely 37. We're expecting our first child in October - hence The Geriatric Dad Blog!
This is a proper, ‘in real life’ read from a man's perspective, so I hope you enjoy it and follow the series as we go through all the ups and downs of impending parenthood.
This week: Daisy suffers some mental difficulty as she enters the third trimester. Plus, we go to a festival and... it doesn't quite work out as we'd hoped!
The last couple of weeks in particular have emphasised to me that pregnancy isn't always a walk in the park, especially as you enter the third trimester, as we are currently doing.
Pregnancy: mentally taxing
The other evening I got home from a long day in the office, opened the front door and called out my usual greeting.
No reply was forthcoming, which was unusual. It didn't take a genius to know something wasn't quite right.
After a quick look around, I saw Daisy wasn't downstairs, so I went up to the bedroom to find her lying down, clearly upset, crying.
"What's wrong?" I asked, immediately worried, sitting down beside her and taking her hand. Had I done something bad? I wouldn't put it past myself...
"I feel like a BEACHED WHALE!" she quietly sobbed, a tear rolling down her cheek.
"I can't do any of the things I used to be able to do. I can't do Parkrun any more. I can't bend over properly. I can't do yoga. My ankles are swelling up. I'm massive. I get terrible heartburn every day."
She paused.
"I look like a MASSIVE MANATEEEEEEE!" she then wailed, the 'eee' trailing off into more sobs.
"How will I ever be as beautiful again as I was on our honeymoon? I EVEN HAVE CHUB-RUB!"
I paused to take stock for a second. How to best respond? Was Daisy suffering from prenatal depression?
I took her hand in mine and tried to reassure her. Then I opened my mouth to speak. I knew I had to tread carefully.
Firstly, I said, she was wrong: she didn't look like a beached whale. A beached porpoise maybe, I joked, but not a beached whale. Certainly not a massive manatee.
A glimmer of a smile appeared through the sobs.
Secondly, I told her she was still every bit as beautiful to me today as the day we met... and the day we got married... and the day we went on honeymoon. And that - if she wanted - of course she could get back in the shape she was in before Sprout was conceived (not that it mattered to me one way or the other, I'd love her the same whatever).
Thirdly, I gently made the point that her current discomfort wasn't going to last forever. Sprout would be here soon, then she'd be able to start getting back doing some of the things she loves.
I once had 'chub-rub' too
To try and cheer her up, I admitted that I'd once had 'chub-rub' as well.
It's true. For some reason, when training for the 2019 Great North Run, my inner-arse cheeks kept rubbing together, with the consequence they got rather raw.
Oh yes, I know the pain of chub-rub. So while there are many things Daisy has been through (and is going through) during her pregnancy that I can never experience, 'chub-rub' isn't one of them!
I also made the point that we were lucky to be where we were.
Lucky that it hadn't been too difficult for us to get pregnant. Lucky that everything has (touch wood) gone well so far. Lucky that we've been given the opportunity we've been given to have a baby, as some couples are not so lucky.
And with that, albeit slowly, Daisy started cheering up a bit.
Sometimes as a partner of a pregnant woman, all you can do is love, reassure and support: be there for her, be the mental rock on which she can lean if she needs to, even if you're not always finding things easy yourself.
Us men might have it easy compared to the physical and mental strain every pregnant woman goes through, but we still have an important role to play.
That much at least has become clear to me through the last six months.
Vegan Camp Out excitement!
The following weekend, Daisy had booked us in for a weekend's glamping at the 'Vegan Camp Out' - an annual festival for (funnily enough) vegans who wanted to, well... camp out together.
It was a festival she'd always wanted to go to since it started a few years ago.
Apparently, everyone would be friendly, the street food would be awesome, there would be decent music, some comedy, and the vibe would be buzzing.
To try and make our stay there a bit more comfortable, Daisy had paid a significant amount to hire an on-site bell-tent in the posh glamping area, with a blow-up airbed included in the price. Luxury loos, suitable for a 6-month pregnant woman, were close by as opposed stinky portaloos, plus she had access to a 'pamper tent' where she could do her make-up, take it off again and charge up her phone.
While I'm not vegan myself, I totally get why people choose that lifestyle and was looking forward to going with her to the festival and discovering more about it all.
However, in the run-up to the weekend I was concerned about two things - 1) Daisy camping while six months pregnant and 2) the weather forecast, which was due to be hot, hot and then hotter still as the weekend drew on.
To me the weather forecast was a big worry. Everything I'd read indicated that heat, exposure to a fierce sun and third-trimester pregnancy were not the best of bedfellows.
Nonetheless, we packed our bags on the Thursday night, complete with 10 litres of water in a cool box, left Friday afternoon and arrived on-site around 3pm.
We checked in with a lovely man who looked after the glamping area and settled into our tent. While basic, it was roomy and airy, and I thought to myself that - despite the hot weather that was forecast - we might be ok.
I was wrong.
Vegan Camp Out fail!
Although the evening started well (the street food on-site was indeed varied AND absolutely delicious) by the time Daisy got into the camp bed at 10pm I was starting to worry.
She was in pain and started getting severe leg cramps.
The air mattress on the bed was a bit like my sex drive that evening - deflating fast.
And the noise from the main dance tent as some pretty outrageous death metal tracks were played at an enhanced volume, was not conducive to sleep (a lot of vegans apparently like death metal - who knew!)
The music stopped just after 1am but was replaced by the multiple combined noises of people puking in the nearby toilets, procreation in nearby bell tents and drunken 20-somethings stumbling around laughing, smoking weed and tripping over nearby guy ropes.
By 2am, Daisy had had enough.
Her bed had gone flat, she was tired and in pain and wanted to go home. So I packed up our stuff, retrieved the car (luckily I'd foreseen this might happen, so had not been drinking) and got us out of there.
After an hour's drive through the night, we crawled into bed at 3.30am absolutely shattered and £300 worse off, but back in the comforting surrounds of our cottage.
Being pregnant in a heatwave
The rest of the weekend passed in a haze of heat. We drank lots of water, consumed lots of freezy-pops and chilled out as much as we could before temperatures were due to peak at a massive 40C on the Tuesday.
Also on that Tuesday... Daisy had arranged to drive to Milton Keynes to meet up with her mum and do some baby shopping.
Now, while I would never dictate to Daisy what she can and can't do in life, on this one I was very clear about my feelings, saying: "I do not want you to travel on the hottest day ever recorded!!! Just put the trip back 24 hours. The risk isn't worth it!"
Even if the chances of Daisy breaking down on the A1 en-route to Milton Keynes were minimal, I kept imagining a scenario where it happened. A lone pregnant woman, stuck in her car or by the side of the road in furnace-like conditions, to me was not a recipe for success.
I thought it more sensible to avoid that possibility altogether.
After a couple of quite 'lively' conversations, in the end Daisy came around to my way of thinking and rescheduled her mummy-daughter shopping day.
On the Monday and Tuesday, we made sure the house was cool and the windows blacked out with our blinds. We drank lots of water to stay hydrated and were fine. The heatwave passed with minimal bother. In fact, the nights were more uncomfortable, as sleeping was difficult in the muggy, humid conditions.
As a quick aside, I must admit that all this talk of global warming makes me wonder what kind of world it is we're bring Sprout into.
What kind of world will he inherit and what will life be like for him when he's pushing 50, like me?
I can't think too much about that, as it makes me anxious. Perhaps - just perhaps - Sprout will be an influential person in a generation who will do the necessary to save the world as opposed destroy it, as my generation seem intent on doing.
Relegated to 'rough' sleeping on the floor!
To finish up, I thought I'd mention that I've now been relegated to sleeping on the floor.
Literally. On the floor! IN THE SPARE ROOM!
Because we're in the process of doing up said spare room, turning it into Sprout's nursery, we currently only have one bed in the house. If it were just Daisy in the bed with me, it wouldn't be a problem.
But it's not just Daisy. It's Daisy and her enormous 6ft-long pregnancy sausage-pillow, which she wraps around herself.
While this provides an excellent support for her, preventing her sleeping on her back for too long (which apparently has the potential to be bad for baby and increase the risk of stillbirth) it means there's only a tiny amount of spare room in our bed, which I can't fit on.
So it's the floor for me! And as such, I am currently sleeping on a camping mat and several duvets. But if that relative discomfort means Daisy is happy and Sprout is born healthy, then it's worth it. I won't be moaning.
Thanks for reading and see you next time!
Next time: next time I'll write about our 28-week scan, and the midwife appointment where we'll get a full assessment of how Daisy is doing. I have a feeling there might be a problem with her carrying too much amniotic fluid, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it...