Waiting for a baby to arrive/labour to start is hard isn't it!?

Wife’s been off work for 3 weeks now, bub is due today (means nothing of course!), it’s a weird feeling the ‘waiting game’ isn’t it? 😕 Everything’s as ready as it can be for his arrival, just need the little bugger to make a move! Trying all the ‘old wives’ tricks, naught having success so far…

Guess I should just be enjoying the lie-ins and frangerless shagging while I can eh? 😆

You think that’s hard???

Boy – you have a surprise coming 🙂

Go on a long ride, just when you’re at the farthest point you know it will happen!! Good luck to you both!!

That’s what I’m thinking as well Spud, make some plans for something important/expensive, that’ll get Murphy’s Law into action surely!

You think that’s hard???

More ‘weird’ than ‘hard’ I guess, it’s just a strange feeling knowing that you have no control over when it starts!

You can’t be trying that hard if you’ve got time to post on here!

Maybe if you’re pooped you should put a “Wanted: Stunt Double I the local area” ad on the classifieds! 😉

My best mate just had his first, almost 3 weeks late! They were trying everything and got tired trying… It finally came (induced) and well… They’re a LOT more tired since the baby’s arrival! Think he’d take a sore knob from too much snagging every time over next to no sleep every day for several weeks…

Place your exotic bikes on eBay now whilst you have the time 😉

What is frangerless shagging? It sounds like it involves amputees, which has actually given me a bit of a semi.

Listen to druidh. There is a BIG TRAIN coming very soon. 🙂

All the things you thought you knew? Ha…

Father of three, just about getting my life back after 20 years.

Top tip; don’t look too hard at the business end.

What is frangerless shagging?

Noun

franger (plural frangers)

1. (Australian, slang) condom

Not the same over here eh? 😆

HARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!?

Christ wait until you’ve been through 5 days of labour (latent labour if your are a pedantic midwife type) then tell me that 5 days and nights of no sleep at all whilst consoling a distressed wife are easy.

Fingers crossed the baby slides out like a greased pig. If not, be prepared for the long ride.

Make sure you get your sandwiches made by a competent sandwich maker. My oldman made mine, and for my final meal before the baby was born, I had about 1cm of butter with a chunk of ham between the bread he bought at the local corner shop – bless him, that was his ideal sandwich. made ,me gag though,

Good luck mate, it’s a special time 🙂 Would echo the comments above though. For us it got easier about six weeks in….

The BIG TRAIN comment is spot on. It is how I described how much life will change to a colleague who was of the view that 2 weeks after the baby arrived she would be here there and everywhere carrying on as usual and just bringing the baby along. How we laughed.

As for hard… sleep deprivation is hard. You’ll get to find out soon enough 🙂

Hope it all goes OK.

Would echo the comments above though. For us it got easier about six weeks in….

Did you have crap sandwiches as well?

I’m going to be my usual twuntishself and make a really bold suggestion – if your missus is breast feeding, get yourself a decent set of earplugs. I like the EAR silicon ones.
Babies aren’t quite when they sleep, partners/wives aren’t quite when they breastfeed. If the odd nappy change is due, get up (ear plugs still in place) change nappy, hand baby to mother, got back to sleep.

I can feel the 21st century dads all getting worked up, but it is what made our life bareable for the first few weeks or so (still wear ear plugs now) as the person who has to get up to work, the missus agreed that there was sod all use in me being up during feeding, and she appreciated the nappy changes, which was normally when I woke up for a pee before the little one started crying anyway.

IF you are bottle feeding, bad luck, not a chance you are getting away with that.

6 weeks – agree on that. but we were really lucky with ours.

As for hard… sleep deprivation is hard. You’ll get to find out soon enough

You will discover that you can function on 3-4 hours of broken sleep, and will become more than slightly irritated by those who get 8 solid hours and still complain about being tired.

Another top tip; to other people, it’s not the baby Jesus, just another kid…

In the same boat wife was due yesterday contractions started last night and then all quiet again today, trying every trick in the book including acupuncture.

Your’re lucky, ours came 7 weeks early and i was in italy.

Ours came in the downstairs hallway two mornings ago. Ten days or so before when we thought she would be here. I’m quite pleased actually, the waiting was annoying, the tiredness was hard for the lady and even though she’s now got a significant wound down below and is sleep deprived, she’s clearly got much more energy now which is good to see.

Your’re lucky, ours came 7 weeks early and i was in italy.

I got my travel pram (jesus wept, I have a travel pram) from a lass who was 6 weeks early, in spain, didn’t know she was pregnant, and had to buy a travel system there and then.

She wasn’t fat, as skinny as a rake and from talking to her, sounded fairly grounded and held down a decent job. Just suddenly spat a kid out her fanny, as you do.

get yourself a decent set of earplugs

I would not recommend earplugs. Nothing says ‘f*ck you’ like blocking yourself out of proceedings. We had the same situation – I was working, and Mrs Grips fed the baby every time, but I was at least on hand to help if anythign needed doing or there were problems. Or I’d get up and check the babes if she was fussing between feeds and Mrs Grips was still sleeping.

^ not at all.

Earplugs for me knocked out the babies night time shuffling and tossing and turning. I suspect I am more sensitive than molgrips to nocternal noises then.

Mrs Q was quite happy that I wore them. I didn;t have much of an option between waking up and sleeping when she gets up to feed or move or change the baby (which was my job and can be done pretty smoothly in the dark), but once feeding, she saw no point in me being awake with the noise of it all.

She did for about two weeks, take the baby to the guest room to be fed. Again she saw no point in me being awake during something I couldn’t help with. If a nappy needed chagning during the feed, I would be quite aware of it, sometimes forcefully aware of it.

a fOck you? not at all. it was sensible time management, still is. Little one wakes up for feeding ~ 4am-5am still. Was it better to have us both awake, one doing sod all staring at the other feedign the baby, or have one asleep, so at least one of us got some sleep.

Fussing between feeds – ear plugs don’t block that out either, but they do allow you to get to sleep if your not dealing with it.

As I said before, we were lucky with our one, touch wood and all that.

I was pretty sensitive to the noises at first, but I learned to ignore what wasn’t significant.. 🙂

I suppose what I meant was, if you both think it’s ok then that’s fine, but saying ‘ok love I’m popping to B&Q for some earplugs’ without discussion might not go down too well, depending on your Mrs and your relationship with her!

good luck and enjoy

I can’t ignore it at all, but that is most likely down to my knackered ears and the strange hearing range I have – almost superhuman ability to hear certain noises.

Ear plugs from B&Q are crap anwyay.

But to the OP seriously get some. Even if it’s a pair each. They will save one of you from stress sometime.

The whole fatherhood thing is bizarre.

I’m sat in the house in Bangkok just now. AC is blazing away, remote control for it is long lost, little Q is sleeping beside me on the bed. She’s making little sounds as she sleeps and I check on her when she unsettles. Mrs Q is downstairs talking to the MIL and SIL about something or other.
I’m quite happy sat here, listening to music, typing crap on here, sipping a Chang and watching little Q, because that is my new role.

When she was first born, I had that whole adoration nonsense for a few days, then I had to go back to work and I can honestly say, I just didn’t get the whole baby thing.

This holiday has been the first time I’ve really been able to spend with her, and I honestly think (bar the horrendous cost of it all) travelling across the world to visit in-laws with little Q and Mrsq and letting little Q experience it all has been worthwhile.

Before we got here she was chatty, but only a bit, but within 48 hours of being here and experiencing life in Thailand, she started babbling away on an evening for hours on end.

As I said before the whole fatherhood thing is strange, I’ve just reread that last section and thought, who honestly cares other than me, and that is what is great about it.

2nd good luck and enjoy.
I took Mrs Wally for a stiff walk to start the proceedings – movement seemed to bring things on a bit. Last piece of advice – when the midwife asks you to hold what looks like a clamp on the umbilical cord – don’t look really alarmed and mouth OMG when the scissors cut through the cord. What threw me was you cut so far up the cord from the baby – it dries up to a crispy bacon thing and falls off – lovely. The meconium poop is quite horrific mind.

Babies to me are quite hard going because I find it rather hard to bond. I see our new baby now and I feel like I can’t wait to get to know her.. starting in about a year’s time… in the mean time there’s some fairly hard work, and an awful lot of frustration for her and us.

The meconium poop is quite horrific mind

Huh.. nothing like as bad as seeing lots of your wife’s blood splashed all over the hallway floor…

Get some bloody sleep – you’re gonna need it.

The meconium poop is quite horrific mind

Just think Marmite.

Get some sleep +1. you are gonna need it.
Pack food and toiletries for you both just in case. Some nice music to play too.
Try and enjoy it.
Ps, cord is like nylon rope inside a condom. Might take a few goes to actually cut through it.
Lastly, thank your wife, then the staff.
Try and enjoy it.

Then have a large whiskey…

Mmm, with our second a week overdue the wife felt a “twinge” at 2 in the morning! Woke me and said I’ll have a bath, take it off. 25 minutes later I had to lift her screaming out of the bath, 15 mins after that (after a wrc drive to the ozzy) and running several red lights we got out the (new) car when 30 secs later waters broke on the Tarmac. After wrestling across the car park, then admitted, she was 8cm dilated (youll learn what that is), then 10 mins later I was holding my little man in my arms. My advice, don’t rush it 😯

Wrighty, sounds familiar.

I liked the bit at 5 in the morning when your wife is having contractions and you are on the phone to the Maternity ward and they suggest ‘get her to have something light to eat then come in’

The look on her face when I suggested she should have something ‘light’ to eat was priceless. Make that suggestion when you are out of arm’s reach 🙂

Then when you get to the hospital they locked my wife in the bathroom for 10 minutes too. Once we actually saw the maternity staff it was great but try not to arrive at shift changeover time.

Good luck, the weirdest bit was going home the 1st night as a Dad with him and her still in the Hospital, the house seemed so empty. (oh and peaceful too!)

I remember waking up on the morning to bring Mrs J and Jnr 1 home and thinking that that was the last night of unbroken sleep I was going to get in a long time. I was right too.

Thankfully ours now have to be dragged out of bed in the morning. 😀

I remember waking up on the morning to bring Mrs J and Jnr 1 home and thinking that that was the last night of unbroken sleep I was going to get in a long time. I was right too.
Thankfully ours now have to be dragged out of bed in the morning.

2 years on, probably had 10 or 15 unbroken night’s sleep. Ahh well.

I didn’t mind getting up through the night. I figured that the Missus was having to deal with it all day and at least I got some respite at work 🙂

There’s nothing quite like that look of gratitude/relief when you arrive home after work too!

2 years on, probably had 10 or 15 unbroken night’s sleep. Ahh well.

Christ, that sounds hard 🙁 Not looking forward to teething I must say, as since getting her on Gaviscon at about 6 weeks Lili sleeps more than I do 🙂

Before the Gaviscon she was disturbed most of the time, which was hard for both of us. We did short shifts and when in bed my wife had to listen to an i-pod or would be constantly alert due to the crying. I didn’t need them 😳

Between 2 and 5 weeks we had the MIL living with us. This sounds like a terrible idea, but we wished it could have been longer. If you have this sort of help available, I’d advise you to take it!

Some kids sleep quite well, so you might be lucky 🙂

Christ, that sounds hard Not looking forward to teething I must say, as since getting her on Gaviscon at about 6 weeks Lili sleeps more than I do

Twins so when one sleeps the other seems not to – I guess half the chance of a single child sleeping through 🙁

I suppose so. It’ll ease off at some point though and you’ll have 2 kids who sleep well. The thought of doing it all again fairly soon is a bit scary. And my Wife wanted 5 kids 😯 That desire has been slightly tempered though 😆

I was never able to get more than about 3 hours unbroken sleep after being in the army, it set me up rather nicely for being a dad. But no matter how tired you ever feel they can still bring a smile to your face. Good luck to you, enjoy it all.