Mr The Home That Made Me – The Pleasures Of Fatherhood

With Fathers Day just passing and with some of our friends about to have a newborn it made me reflect on life as a father and the build up to when I was became a dad.

Having caught Elsa from plopping down the toilet (read her 40 minute labour birth story here) and Rory from shooting out like a slimy asteroid onto the hospital toilet floor (read about his 6 minute labour here) when they were born you would be forgiven for thinking that I had plenty of experience with babies when the time came for me to keep the little bald creatures alive. The truth is, I only recall holding one baby in my life and that is when I was about 12. I was the first of my friends to have an “accident” of this nature and with no young relatives nearby my exposure was limited. One thing is for sure, like any new parent, I was thrown in at the deep end.

I remember clearly the first time I blocked a stream of projectile vomit with my face, the first time I ate some chewed up and regurgitated food that had been spat into my hand and I especially remember the taste from the first time I licked some questionable brown matter off of my finger when changing a nappy. There are many first times, second times and so on and so on until touching a fresh gathering of faeces is a daily and completely normal occurrence.

When you have a new child the challenges you face and overcome are thick and fast. After Elsa was born I would spend hours, every night, for months doing laps of our bedroom trying to get her to sleep in her cot; the fear that arises as you try to sneak out of the room after gently putting them down 4 hours after you started is like nothing you can comprehend. The occasional click of an ankle as you tip-toe out makes them wake up screaming like you had just farted through a megaphone into their inner ear, and the laps of the bedroom resume for another couple of hours.

My children are my world and my relationship with Elsa is so strong that I was always worried I would not have as much of a bond with Rory when he was born, whether it was because he was a boy or if I was worried it would interrupt our father-daughter bond I am not sure but I turned out to be very wrong. That little cheeky chap is as much of a spark of joy in my life as she is; despite them being very different it has been a pleasure for me to watch them grow from the little shitbags they were into the slightly larger but more entertaining shitbags they are today.

Now that Rory is starting to understand more than just the basics, life is only getting easier, and once he is out of nappies, sleeping in his bed all night and toilet trained Charlotte and I will have successfully raised 2 children to the point where they can almost wipe their own arse. To ensure that there are no more “accidents” I let a shaky handed GP carve up my testicles with a scalpel. I take pride in the fact that I am a hands on father but another new-born? No thanks.

The way I look at it, no words can describe the love I have for my little family and I am astonished that as two young adults, one of which had only held a baby for 1 minute prior we have managed to keep them alive for so long, we haven’t lost them and we haven’t sold them (Rory is still on Gumtree for anyone who is interested); and this is coming from someone who didn’t have a clue what was to come.

Having kids has been the most paradoxical event you can imagine, they smile nicely while creating a poonami of epic proportions and laugh hysterically while you chase them around the house to stop them touching furniture with pasta covered hands. I think you can only ever be so prepared to welcome a chubby Gollum lookalike into the family but as long as you love them whole heartedly then you can never really get it too wrong….but I will let you know for sure in a few years.

Mr THTMM x

Photo’s by the incredibly talented Charlotte Marie Photography