First Time Dad in 2010

Well, today was the second ultrasound (we had an EPAU scan at eight weeks) and it was amazing, when you experience it yourself you see what other parents are on about. Well the result of it is that our due date has come forward by 1 week and I am sure my darling wife is even more happy at the news of 1 less week than I am and the baby is 6.4cm which is a big jump from the 2cm at eight weeks.

Needless to say that when we where offered the photo and given the choice of a £2 pic on a piece of paper of the £5 option on a glossy card, without hesitation I had a £5 note out of my wallet.

For anyone remotely interested the measurment at the back of the neck which they take for Down's was taken, the high risk on that test is 3.5 (mm, I guess) and our result was 0.15 so well below, now just to wait for the results of the blood test. So far though bump has all its bits in the right places, now we have eight weeks to go until the twenty week scan.

First off, no this is not just another whinge about there being nothing good on TV, I tend to just turn the TV off at that point and go and do something else instead.

A couple of years ago, a study showed a possible link between watching TV as a baby and ADHD, yes there are criticisms of this study but somehow maybe it is better for Junior to avoid TV for a couple of years. Other studies have shown that children who watch a lot of TV don't read as much, which is never a good thing. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to suggest that books have a magical quality about them which fulfills you as a person, though I know some who would argue that. No, reading books does help develop reading skills (well, duh!) and those skills are important in everyday life. I have seen otherwise intelligent children fail in school because they are not good at reading.

So it looks like little junior will spend a couple of years of its life without TV and we will have to manage without also. How it will cope without the Teletubbies in the Night Garden, I just don't know. So instead it looks like we will be reading to it and listening to classical music.

Then comes the question of how old will it be when we can teach it to read for itself.

On a side note, for children old enough to use a computer, I came across a great website called Poisson Rouge it has so many different tasks for a child to do, some harder than others.

For anyone who has not brought a house of their own yet, it is totally true what they say, it really is one of the most stressful things you can do. I am so glad we are doing it now though, the thought of going through all of this hassle when I am trying to do a full time job and be a dad to a new born is just too much to even think about. At least now, I will be able to do the dad thing of preparing a nursery for junior without worrying about what the owner will say.

Plans are also afoot for building a toy chest (though it will initially hold nappies etc...). Do all dads get like this or is it just me? I do remember that my Grandad built me a toy garage when I was young.

It is that time of year again when we get to book our holidays for next year, we decided upon the French Riviera this time. So I was using the online booking system and it asks how many are going, the realisation hits home that even though the birth is six months away that 3.5cm bundle of joy inside my wife is already affecting our decisions.

Of course, it has already been affecting our lives for the past 5 weeks as my wife has been vomitting every day and we have been having to think about what she can eat and drink but the morning sickness has been getting better.

How does the human race survive? Seriously, all of these tests that are taken during pregnancy and the scans. Given all of these potential problems, it is a wonder that we are capable of walking let alone some of the amazing stuff that human's have created.

Apparently for a couple in our age bracket, the chances of having a baby with Down's Syndrome is 1 in 100 so we will have the test for it, the trouble is, this test doesn't tell you if your baby has Down's or not just whether you are high or low risk and 25% of all baby's born with Down's come from the low risk category.

Even when the baby is born, it is not over, you still have to contend with stuff they can't tell you before birth such as blindness, deafness, and countless other conditions. You also have to worry about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome!

Apparently 97 out of 100 babies are born normal but that still leaves 3 with problems out of those three, one can have its problems corrected by surgery so 2 out of 100 are born with some serious problem which cannot be corrected.

Well 6 weeks ago I found I was going to be a dad for the first time. Still excited about it. I can't believe we are already one quarter of the way through yet still so much to find out and do.