Heinz - Tinytums

Dad's story

'For the man there's nothing going on for ages'
Alan, 32, says that he didn’t know how to feel.

‘My partner and I hadn’t so much decided to have a baby immediately, we just decided to stop using contraception.  I imagined that it would take a year or so for her to fall pregnant, but almost immediately I found that I came home from work one day to find her grinning like a cat.  When she told me she was pregnant it was a really weird moment.  It’s one of those moments in life which you kind of hear about all the time, so you don’t really know how you feel, or how you’re supposed to feel.  I suppose I was a bit shell shocked.  It’s funny as a bloke to get you’re head around it at first, because there’s no physical change for ages, so it’s like nothing’s happening.

‘Then, slowly your missus starts expanding in all sorts of areas.  And she kept reading stuff.  And I didn’t really have the same drive to find out stuff like she did, I don’t really know why, I guess for her it’s like things are happening in her body that she can feel, but for the man there’s nothing going on for ages.

'The scan was quite scary, you go there and you're just waiting, hoping for the docs to say "everything's alright".'
‘I guess the things that started worrying me first were whether my partner would be alright, if everything was going okay.  The scan was quite scary, you go there and you’re just waiting, hoping for the docs to say ‘everything’s alright’.  That’s pretty much what you’re looking for all the way through, people to tell you that it’s all going fine and that it’s going to be alright.

‘Once it starts getting close, then it’s funny, and it’s stereotypical I guess, but I really started worrying about how I was going to support a family.  Whereas before it had always been just me and my partner, now she was planning to stay at home and we were going to have a baby.  And I didn’t really have any idea how much a new baby was going to cost.  But I was finding out pretty quick.  Cots, painting the room, a new carpet, allsorts.  It was like a never ending list of stuff that this little new person is going to need.  Things to put him in in the car, prams, pushchairs, everything!

'Obviously most of the advice came from our mothers.' 
‘But I suppose you just live up to your means don’t you.  We got quite a few hand me downs which helped out.  People were great.  And we painted up the room really well.  The other thing that I think was really useful for me was the ante-natal classes.  They were great because they basically covered for me all the things in the books my partner had been reading about.  And it meant you could ask dumb questions, and actually talk to some other poor souls who were going through the same thing!

‘Obviously most of the advice came from our mothers.  But half of what they were saying was contrary to the ‘official’ advice the midwives were giving you.  I guess times change don’t they.  It’s all cool though.  My life’s changed fairly dramatically, but I absolutely love being a Dad.  And as he’s getting older it just gets more and more fun.’