If you’re reading this, first off, well done, and if you’ve already got rug rats this won’t be new information but if you don’t, here it comes:

It’s going to get a lot better, but before that, oh dear lord is it going to get worse!

Finding out you’re going to become a Dad can come in a number of forms: completely out of the blue, as a massive relief, the news you definitely didn’t want to receive, and on occasion, weirdly cryptic. Like when your ‘co-copulant’ approaches you with a fairly innocuous piece of plastic that, unbeknownst to you, she just whizzed all over, and says:

“Is that one line or two?”

and you, quite unassumingly reply

“It looks like two… Oh”.

For me, my next move quite understandably, having just met a colleague announcing they’re getting a massive pay rise and moving into your awesome corner office, I shook my wife by the hand and told her ‘Congratulations’.

Now, I knew this was a potential outcome from the activities we’d recently engaged in but up to now I’d kept a clean sheet: all Home wins but no ‘childs’ conceived. It was bound to happen, I’m a freakin’ behemoth of masculinity; all 5’ 6”, 9st and 28” waist of me, but I didn’t expect it to ever ACTUALLY happen!

This initial wave of shock wore off after about ten minutes and was replaced by fits of laughter like a Hyena who’s just come away from a particularly medicated trip to the dentist, and that lasted a good half an hour.

I settled into this new phase in our family’s transition beyond the number two, quite nicely, that is in between the bits where I completely forgot we were pregnant. From the moment I learned of my impending Fatherhood (discounting the interludes of blissful ignorance), I felt a primordial shift. Life was changing and I needed to stop being the village idiot, and start to take my role of Mayor of that particular village seriously, albeit with a degree of idiocy still in place.

I say Mayor, but it’s probably closer to the Deputy Assistant to the Deputy Assistant Mayor’s Liaison’s Waterboy.

One thing you should prepare yourself for, but will quickly adapt to is this: you will very soon cease to exist.

“How’s she feeling?”

“Not long to go now, I bet she’ll be glad when it’s over.”

“How’s the baby?”

NO ONE WILL ASK HOW YOU ARE. YOU WILL BE EXPECTED TO ATTEND ENDLESS APPOINTMENTS AS SOME KIND OF INDESPINSIBLE, BUT UNINVITED PLUS ONE.

And to be honest this doesn’t really end for, well I don’t want to say “ever” because I’m still clinging onto hope.

There is no “Midhusband”. No one cares how you feel, how high your blood pressure is, and no one asks you to drink 18 gallons of water in order to wait for ages and then lie down for 3 minutes before peeing into a weird cardboard cup. Ok so that bit isn’t too bad.

I suppose what I’m trying to get at is if you find yourself feeling a bit overwhelmed or anxious, no one is going to check up on you. So if it does all start getting on top of you and you find yourself getting a bit overawed, try and have a word with someone. Pre-existing Dads are pretty good for times like this because they’ve probably felt exactly like you do now, but it may never have thought they were allowed to mention it.

You are.

If you’re close enough to Mum to be in a supporting role you need to be OK so you can carry the extra weight and the cascade of emotions that are currently on their way. It’s a big job and it’s an important job. You might get a thanks, but it will sneak up on you, and never at the moment you think you deserve it.

If you do feel you deserve it and you’re not getting it, talk to someone you can trust, because Preg-zilla will crush you if you even consider raising your own wellbeing. And rightly so! She’s growing your next favourite person in the world inside her. You got laid a few months ago and as far as she’s concerned it’s YOUR ungovernable libido that got her in this mess in the first place; regardless of the actual facts.

If you’re feeling a bit at sea about the whole ‘talking about feeeeeelings’ thing, then I think that is exactly the sort of reason how you’ve ended up reading this, and wondering if there is a cohesive point at the end of this very very very very very long sentence. Hi, how you doing… sorry about that.

It’s this kind of no man’s land of Dadness that This Dad Can will help you with. It’s a beacon of hope  for you; a little lighthouse keeping you from crashing into the rocks, and maybe sleeping on the sofa.

This Dad did, and you will to.

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Jamie is a retired actor, failed DJ, rubbish musician, anxious stand-up comic, cat owning dog psychologist, optimistic screenwriter, husband and father of 1.8 boys (#2 due in September ’17).

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