Fatherhood: Year One

It’s seventeen months since I became a father but it’s taken me this long to get my head together enough to write about it, so here goes …..

When I set out to have a baby I had no idea that there was an international conspiracy of parents who are all sworn to uphold the terrible secrets of parenthood. Once sworn in we are duty bound to pretend that all is rosy, make a few anecdotes about lack of sleep and say how wonderful our children are lest we put the continued viability of the human race in jeopardy by telling the awful truth.

I have however decided to break this silence and I think the best way to do it is to tell my own tale. Unlike the few vacuous books concerning fatherhood in bookshops (there’s usually about two stuck in the back somewhere amidst the 50,000 books on motherhood) I want to try and detail the internal processes that went on in my mind as fatherhood unfolded rather than just recount some tale like a story told down the pub couched in football analogies and bravado. This is what the few books I read attempted to do and they were useless to me especially given that I know nothing about football and comparing things to the offside rule just bewildered me even further.

So to kick off (damn thats a football reference isn’t it) I thought I ‘d go right back to the beginning ….

Conventioneering With Tiny People

I just got back from a two week holiday attending various Science fiction conventions. Actually I got back on Tuesday but between being so tired and having to go back to work, its taken until now to be able to write about it.

I’ve been to lots of SF conventions before, but this holiday was a first on two counts. It was my first time attending a really big convention outside of Ireland, and my first time attending a convention with a child in tow.

Makka Pakka Akka Wakka Mikka Makka moo!

Today I was lost in the rhythmic way Makka Pakka was precisely laying out his stones and polishing them with his sponge before delicately re-stacking them like some kind of zen gardener sitting in the womb like cave entrance to his home.

I could only tolerate the inevitable end of this bliss like state knowing that I would get to see the Piny Ponk fly into view and dream of climbing aboard and slurping my Pinky Ponk juice with the Tomlyboos before getting off to sing with Uppsy Daisy or count the Pontypines. And whats more I knew I could repeat this same mediative journey every day with only some slight alterations, and if I’m lucky maybe tomorrow Makka Pakka will be cleaning his ogbog.

Am I entering a second childhood or going mad? Perhaps both, but what I’m talking about is “Into The Night Garden”. My daughter has started watching TV but only this show keeps her attention. A year ago I would have dismissed it, but in the last few days I’ve found myself spellbound by it. “Into The Night Garden” is like a bubble of calming repetitiveness that seems to soothe some part of my brain with its safe melodic world and leave me feeling very blissful just in time to sing the autumn song at the end of cbeebies.

If you’re a parent with a brain fried from looking after a toddler who thinks she’s a mini-godzilla intent on destroying everything in her sight as if its Neo-Tokyo then “Into The Night Garden” is just what you both need to chill out!

Last night I dreamt I was on the Ninky Nonk and it was the best dream I’ve ever had. Mmm.. mmm.. da-dee-da-dah-da…

Just Get Out and Do Shit!

I’ve been watching “Bringing Up Baby” the last few weeks and while the whole 1950’s Baby Torture and Abandonment Technique^TM has driven me mad, last nights show struck a different note with me concerning the Continuum Concept.

Basically myself and Mrs Monkeylogical follow a method somewhere between the Continuum method and the Spock method as shown on the show. We do the baby carrying and all that but what struck me last night was the Continuum methods insistence on getting your baby involved in all your activities and having them there with you. Now we do this to a large extent but to a degree I think we’ve both been slightly fearful of things which means as a result we’ve holed ourself up and become a bit isolated from the world at large and all our former activities and socializing.

Men are Idiotic Drunken Jealous Sex Beasts

I was reminded this week of a common stereotype about men in parenting circles which portrays fathers as mindless beasts that women need to learn how to handle correctly.

I was watching Bringing up Baby and a woman who was encouraging co-sleeping was attacked by the other “baby experts” on the grounds that the baby could be squished in the bed by parents rolling over them.

They claimed it was unsafe because “the man” might come home drunk and jump into bed oblivious to the little one. You see apparently men such as myself have no conscious control of own behaviour, I’m apparently just a gelatinous bag of beer and football who might spontaneously fall into a bar and roll home three sheets to the wind through no fault of my own.

“You’re doing great!” is all you need to say

I’m writing this because I often find myself getting angry about the way people sometime treat myself and my wife as parents.

Basically I feel that a lot of people have a difference of opinion with us about how we raise our child with regards to attachment parenting, co-sleeping and breastfeeding. That’s fine we’re all entitled to our opinions, however I’m starting to find the barbed remarks people make about it very hurtful.