I’m a three-time stay-at-home dad of two: a
seven-and-a-half-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son. That sentence has way too many hyphens in
it. Where was I? My first stint as full-time carer for my
daughter was by choice; I’d been freelancing in the marketing/PR field for a
while and earning well, so when my wife’s maternity leave ended, I decided to
take some time off to bond with my 9-month-old daughter.
This was in mid-2011, before shared parental leave became a
thing in the UK, so it was in many respects an odd experience. My daughter and I certainly bonded well, but
it was hard work looking after a baby
as she said her first words (“Mummy”, predictably, even though I was the one
with her all the time) and took her first steps (in the gardens of Hampton
Court Palace, no less). Many were the
days when my wife would step off the train home to find us waiting outside her
carriage, with me thrusting our little bundle of joy at her and begging to be
allowed to go see my friends down the pub as I just couldn’t take it
anymore. The feedings, the attempts to
get her down for naps just so I could have a break, the nappy changes – and oh
GOD the projectile vomiting and poo!
On the other hand, the cuddles, the way her face used to
light up whenever she saw me after a nap (except that time I had a haircut and
she burst out crying when she saw me afterwards), sharing toys (and half-eaten
food), her lifting my glass to feed me a beer of an evening, watching as one
word became two, then three, four, and her first attempts at sentences. In short, getting to experience every moment
of her changing from a crying, poo-ing blob of helplessness into a real person
with her own personality: these experiences are priceless.
There is nothing that can prepare you for the reality of
looking after a baby or infant full time.
It is relentless. It will reward
you with the highest of highs and sucker-punch you with the lowest of lows
(sometimes from minute to minute) and it has to be experienced to be believed
and understood. The best analogy I can
think of - and I mean this in the nicest
possible way - is that having kids is like being in pain: I can tell you how
much it hurt to have my appendix out, and you can understand that on an
intellectual level, but until you have
had your appendix out you simply can’t truly understand.
For all that, though, the experience was an incredible one,
well worth finding myself almost always the only man at the packed-out soft
play centres and play groups. The
understanding it gave me of the tough, tough role that has traditionally been
thought of as the mother’s has, I believe, undoubtedly made my marriage – and
indeed our whole family unit – a much stronger one than it otherwise could have
been.
The following two times I’ve been a stay-at-home dad,
including as of this writing, have not been by choice. This is not because I didn’t want the
experience again, but rather to droughts in the amount of contract work I’ve
seen hitting my plate. Such is the life
of a freelancer: it’s either feast or famine.
But these days, I note with pleasure and approval that I’m far from the
only dad doing the school run, or joining the play groups, or running around
the soft play centres and playgrounds.
I’m not the only dad stopping the inevitable fights, cleaning and
bandaging scraped knees, consoling a bumped head, and swapping childcare war
stories. This can only be a good thing,
and I hope all these, and future, stay-at-home dads will benefit in the same way
as I did from this unbearable, but unmissable, experience.
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