My two weeks of paternity leave are now over and here I am back in the office.

 

Lots of interesting things going on here, of course, but I'm still looking forward to getting back home this evening.

 

My nieces came over yesterday* to have a cuddle with their new cousin. If she turns out to be as nice as they are then we'll have done well. By the time her age hits double figures she'll probably be even more gadget-obsessed too.

 

Katie got less sleep in the afternoon than usual due to all the fuss but maybe that helped her to fall asleep more quickly in the late evening.

 

 

* Well, their dad drove them. You tend to think of your parents as a taxi service at that age, don't you?

I went to the NCT (National Childbirth Trust) Nearly New Sale today - sounds so much better than Jumble Sale, doesn't it?

 

It started at 10am at a local school and I got there at 10:10am.

 

Big mistake.

 

Surely all the cars in the car park couldn't be owned by people attending the Nearly New Sale and surely they couldn't all have arrived in the first 10 minutes?

 

Oh yes they could.

 

A £1 entrance fee later, for which you get a black bin liner, and I was thrust into a world of frantic bargain-hunting mums rummaging around the racks of clothes and the tables full of toys.

 

Scary.

 

I wanted to have a look at the toys. I love educational toys. I recently saw in a shop a version of Twister that was based on a world map rather than the usual boring coloured circles - that's the kind of thing I approve of. "Put your right foot on Asia," I could envisage myself saying in years to come.

 

The toys at this Nearly New Sale were on the stage (we were in the school hall) which was accessed by walking up a set of stairs.

 

Or they would have been if the officious lady at the bottom of the stairs had allowed me up. "We have to let a few people off first before anyone else can go up," she said brusquely. Crikey, it was like being back at, er, school. So I dutifully waited only to see loads of other people walk straight up the stairs with officious lady letting them all through.

 

I could be missing out on some amazing second hand toys!!!

 

What did this woman have against me? I tried sneaking up by following closely behind another lady but we were both stopped dead in our tracks with the same authoritarian speech. Again, other people were allowed up with very few leaving the stage.

 

I gave up on the toys.

 

I turned my attention elsewhere. There are loads of charity shops near where we live and they are always rammed full of kids' toys but have far fewer clothes so, I reasoned, clothes were the thing to hunt and gather. And yet I had already wasted valuable minutes not getting anywhere near the toys.

 

I confined my search to the few racks of clothes catering for the three to 12 months age range. Newborn kit hardly fits Katie any more and we have plenty of stuff for 0 to 3 months due to cunning purchasing and lots of lovely presents.

 

I could further refine my search by avoiding anything pink. You'll always receive pink clothes as gifts if you have a baby daughter (nothing wrong with that) so I could dedicate my time to looking for other colours.

 

That didn't leave all that many items but I'm a bloke so clothes shopping for someone else is traumatic enough anyway - less choice was a good thing.

 

And £15.50 later and I was the, er, proud owner of a range of coats, tops, skirts, trousers, vests and whatever else I have managed to blank from my mind already. Excellent value. All in very good condition; they are so good they are, er, nearly new.

 

The next Nearly New Sale near us is September.

 

I'll be first in the queue.

 

PS

The NCT site has details of sales near you.

 

It may have been only pizza and baked beans but we managed to eat together for the first time since, er, well I can't actually remember.

Looks like we have solved the issue of how to get our daughter to be calm at night - take her out in the buggy.

 

Well, at least she loves riding in it during the day. We were out for five hours today and she hardly stirred except when we were having her weighed in the hospital (she's put on a few ounces and is getting close to her birth weight).

 

Would the same trick work much later on in the day? Maybe but taking her out in the buggy after dark seems a little desperate.

 

To be fair, last night went very well. Part of the challenge is keeping her mum well fed and rested too, which makes Katie's feeds better.

We went to the registry office to, er, register the birth.

 

So now Katie is officially official.

 

During the ceremony (hardly the word for it) Urs started talking to Katie and the registrar told her to be quiet because she was trying to concentrate to fill in the details. We wouldn't want an error on the birth certificate now, would we?

 

You get a basic certificate for nothing (which is good for applying for child benefit but virtually nothing else) and you pay £3.50 per full certificate. They also manage to extract a quid for a folder to put them in.

 

Dilemma: how many certificates should you get? They're not expensive and it's much easier to get them now rather than later but I've never lost mine. Until recently, though, identity fraud was hardly an issue and the passport office never used to lose anything.

 

We went for three.

 

My paranoid side says that's too few but you rarely need them. Only time will tell but it was a nice moment to sign the register.

 

In centuries to come that register entry might appear on an episode of that family history TV show Who do you think you are?

 

Or it might not.

The midwife came yesterday and today we had our first meeting with the health visitor.

 

It all seemed to go well enough. Katie had lost weight after birth, which is normal, but is now putting it back on - not quite back up to birth weight but well on the way. She seems to be too big for some of her newborn clothing already.

 

Tomorrow we're off to register the birth.

One thing you realise is how much longer it now takes to do anything. A neighbour kindly lent us their car so we could drive to see Ursula's mum. Normally we'd just get in and drive off but now we have to get Katie sorted too. Plan the feed and nappy change, get her in warm clothing, sort out the car seat, get the buggy in the boot and prepare all the paraphernalia (changing bag etc). Only then do we have a chance of setting off.

 

Even eating dinner together is a challenge when you have a baby who is fine during the day but more challening once the sun goes down. You think you know when she'll calm down and get some sleep so you can prepare the meal to be ready by a certain time. Along comes yet another severe bout of wind (Katie, not me) and sure enough you eat separately again. A small price to pay in the long run, of course; it's just different from what you're used to, although a bit of quality time with your partner would be nice. The curry was excellent, in case you're wondering.

Sunday night was a toughie. I eventually got Katie to sleep at 2am while sitting in front of the TV.

 

It was a nice moment to have her fall asleep in my arms but I can appreciate that one and a half hours of rolling TV news (at a time when nothing is happening - just the same Oscars build-up over and over) is enough to send anyone off to sleep.

 

If we subscribed to Sky Movies I could have watched the ceremony live, of course, but we don't and our old sofa is so uncomfortable that I had to stand up - cue Katie waking up again.

 

Monday night was much better. Perhaps she knew the midwife was coming today.

Katie had such bad wind that we just couldn't get her to settle last night.

 

I was up til 3.30am with her while mum got some sleep. She took over and after a feed things calmed down a bit.

 

She had been so good until then, meeting her other granny and her uncle Rob.

 

Ah well, can't expect it to be plain sailing every minute of every day.

 

Must be time to go shopping, I haven't bought anything for almost 24 hours...

You think you're a savvy consumer.

 

You think you've got everything you need.

 

You think these surveys that say that raising a child will cost you £300,000 or whatever it is these days don't apply to you; you're simply too smart to spend so much money.

 

And then it turns out there's always something else you need.

 

And off you trudge, back to a well-known dispensing chemist (check its share price to see if I'm having an impact).

 

Nobody seemed to remember me as 'the syringe guy' so at least that's something.

It had all been going so well.

 

Katie decided she didn't want to feed properly and so we finished at about 2.30am dropping little amounts in her mouth with a syringe (guess they did come in handy after all).

 

She fed a lot better at 6am though.

Some lovely flowers arrived courtesy of my work today.

 

There was also a box of Belgian chocolates and a bottle of Champagne.

 

This is the latest in a line of gifts, cards and e-mails that have been arriving in a steady stream over the course of the week.

 

I've added a pic of the flowers and another of the cards to the photo gallery.

 

Whatever else happens, I know that Katie has the best wishes and goodwill of so many people who matter to us. Very touching.

My parents visited the other day.

 

They're very experienced in the world of grand parenting - Katie is number six.

 

We were having some problems getting Katie to settle into her basket/cot thing (what is the right word for that?). We thought perhaps she had taken a dislike to it.

 

Granny suggested warming it up with a hot water bottle as the baby was being moved from a parent's cuddle to a much cooler basket/cot thing. And what do you know? She goes to sleep straight away (Katie, not granny). NB: remove the hot water bottle before putting baby down.

Regular readers will recall yesterday's post where the great British public caught me wildly celebrating the fact that my local supermarket was selling mega ten-packs of Murphy's.

 

Well, after that I went to a well-known pharmacy and asked: "Do you have any syringes?"

 

The assistant looked me straight in the eye for an uncomfortably long time. Cue silence in the queue of shoppers behind me.

 

I added: "You know, syringes so that a mum can drop milk into a baby's mouth."

 

"Oh," replied the assistant. "I thought you meant syringes with needles."

 

 

Do I look like a drug addict?

 

Let's see: bags under eyes, unshaven, hair all over the place, grumpily shuffling round the shops with a mangled plastic carrier bag under my arm. Hmm...

 

 

 

(Turns out that we haven't needed the syringes yet anyway)

The midwife who visited yesterday said that Ursula wasn't getting enough calories so I was duly dispatched to the supermarket to find stodgy foods for mum.

 

A weird experience: I don't usually go along the aisles checking for calorific values and rejecting the items because they have TOO FEW calories in them.

 

The midwife also suggested Ursula drinks a can of Murphy's a day. How brilliant is that? I wasn't sure that our supermarket sold Murphy's so I let out a yelp of delight: "Oh, result!" as I spotted a ten-pack on special offer. Cue disapproving looks from other shoppers who presumably thought I had an alcohol problem. I decided to avoid saying: "It's not for me, honest."

...is to be recommended at all times, no doubt. On this occasion it involved me and Katie - part of the midwife's suggested bonding tactics. Not sure how successful it was but I suppose we're both a bit cleaner now.

We had a plan this time.

 

It seemed to involve me doing a lot of sleeping and mum looking after Katie.

 

I got the 6am shift which went fine.

Phew! Tough going.

 

Can we fast forward a couple of years? :-)

Hurrah!

 

Weighing in at 7lbs 10 Katie is our first child.

 

I could go into detail about the labour and all that but I won't.

 

She and mum have been in hospital for a few nights but should be coming home today.