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MARCH

‘I think that I see something deeper, more infinite, moreeternal than the ocean in the expression of the eyes of alittle baby when it wakes in the morning and coos orlaughs because it sees the sun shining on its cradle.’

VINCENT VAN GOGH

Friday 1 March

REASONS TO BE HAPPY

1 I am a father.

2 I am still alive.

3 Isabel is still alive.

4 Jacob is still alive, he is two whole months old already and no longer looks so fragile that he might not make it through the night. According to the health visitor, who appears to have accepted that we are, in spite of everything, not about to end our child’s life at our earliest convenience, he is now above average in height and weight. If we play our cards right, this means he will be a successful rugby player and I will get tickets for Twickenham internationals through his club.

REASONS TO BE UNHAPPY

1 Due to the pressures of modern life as well as the relentless marketing that children are exposed to from a very early age, we won’t have a chance to play our cards right and Jacob will become one of the nine out of ten children who are morbidly obese by their fifth birthday.

2 We have a bath in our living room. This means I can’t open the sofa bed. This means I can either sleep back in the bedroom with a fidgety baby and a fidgety wife or I can sleep in the bath.The bath, due to its annoying egg shape, is uncomfortable to lie in.And it’s pink.The ‘present’ Alex and Geoff have given us comes with a television crew attached, so it wasn’t really a present at all.

3 And I am not talking to my best friend.

4 Every time I think about sex with Isabel, I feel terrible because she’s the mother of our baby. She’s vulnerable. She wants protecting and looking after and help with the whole mother–baby thing. Not sex. She says otherwise, but I’m pretty sure she’s pretending to make me feel better. It’s confusing.

5 This is having an effect on kissing, too. And I was already worried about the kissing.

6 I only have seventeen Facebook friends, only one of whom is a real friend and he’s gone to Sudan for two weeks while we’re in the middle of an argument.

Saturday 2 March

We still have a bath in the living room. It is still pink. I am sleeping in it.

Sunday 3 March

Isabel’s mum has volunteered to baby-sit for a couple of hours to give us a break. This seems very early in Jacob’s life, but frankly, the thought of two whole hours without a child makes it worth the risk. Isabel has borrowed a breast pump from Caroline. I don’t know how I feel about this. Weird, probably. All the same, it is astonishing how long Isabel’s nipple becomes when she uses the pump. I find myself wondering if the same is true of Caroline’s nipple.

‘Couldn’t we buy our own nipple pump?’

‘I want to try it out first. Some people find they can’t use them. And it’s a breast pump, not a nipple pump.’

‘Right. Doesn’t that hurt?’

‘Yes. Now pack the bags. We need to leave at 12.47 p.m.’

We arrive half an hour late, which is some sort of record. We’ve never done it in under an hour before. Isabel then spends another half an hour filling her mother in on every last detail of Jacob’s life, before handing over the expressed milk. She then asks me to explain how the Bugaboo works to her dad. This is difficult because I don’t fully understand it myself and her dad is too busy giving me a lecture about how, in his day, a pram was a pram, not a designer accoutrement. We then give them nine different emergency numbers and leave.

We are free. And elated. We are late for our lunchtime reservation at our favourite pre-Jacob café, but they have kept our favourite table for us. We order our favourite wine. We smile. We hold hands. And we talk about Jacob. How amazing he is with his little hands and his little eyes and his little smile. How much more amazing he is than all the other children in our baby group with their horrible little hands and pokey little eyes and crooked little smiles. And how lucky we are that he isn’t one of those children that sleeps all day and all night, that although it is, at times, challenging, we are much better off with a child who is expressive.

We are maybe twelve minutes into lunch before I say, ‘Shall we call to check he’s okay?’ and Isabel says, ‘No, he’ll be fine. Mum would call if they were having a problem.’ And it is maybe another seven minutes before Isabel suggests that perhaps a quick call wouldn’t hurt, and it is my turn to pretend I don’t think it is necessary. By the time our main courses have arrived, we have still spoken about nothing but Jacob and can stand it no longer.

‘Hi, Mum. Sorry to call. Just check—…right…right…right. Okay. Speak to you later. Thank you. Bye.’

‘What happened?’ I ask. ‘That sounded bad. Is he all right? Has something happened?’

‘He’s fine. He’s had the milk. He’s had four stories read to him. They’ve taken him for a walk round the block and now he’s asleep. She says there’s no need to rush.’

‘Was it just once round the block?’

‘Yep. Went straight to sleep, she said.’

‘With singing?’

‘Didn’t mention any singing. Now, eat faster and let’s go home and have a cuddle.’

Two things ruined my enjoyment of the remaining time we had free.

First, I could not believe that Jacob had chosen the one time neither of us was looking after him to behave angelically. All the exhaustion, the shuffling through the first two months of parenthood with that haunted, hunted look in our eyes, the desperation, would now seem to Isabel’s parents like we were simply making a meal of things. I could hear it now: ‘Jacob was a little treasure, my darlinks. He is charming. We will look after him again any time.’ Annoying.