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Weight training with baby
My wife often gives me helpful feedback on what I’ve written. “What you wrote last night,” she said, “it seemed … disjointed, somehow. I was waiting for it to come together, and it never did.” It feels daft that I could lose the ability to write coherently after drinking half of two bottles of beer, […]
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No room in the fridge
My wife continues to bake; with the help of everyone at the office, we made it through half the cookies from last night, but there are still the other two dozen, along with a roasted raspberry bake and a pasta dish two of our friends very kindly brought round. There’s almost no space in the […]
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Cookies (it’s a hard life)
Although I was very happy to welcome my child into the world, I did feel a little hard done by. The reason for this was that last Sunday I bought my wife an oven, (not because I’m trying desperately to reinforce 1950s gender stereotypes, but because she kept asking for it) but with labour commencing […]
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Where you from?
When, as the child of foreigners, you get a birth certificate in Singapore, it has the words THE CHILD IS NOT A CITIZEN OF SINGAPORE AT THE TIME OF BIRTH printed on it, in a space marked For Official Use. If one of your parents is a Singaporean citizen (and as long as that doesn’t […]
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Classification
Yesterday I registered our daughter, using a government form that was meant to take 12 minutes to complete, but that left me and my wife confused and baffled. But perhaps that’s the hormones kicking in.
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Permanent jet lag and reading materials
I have moments of lucidity, some time between mid-afternoon and early evening. I wake up at a decent time in the morning, but that means nothing as I’m useless until I’ve gone back to sleep for another hour or so. I knew already that I don’t function well when deprived of sleep, but this is […]
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A new arrival
Our daughter, Felicity Foreman, arrived at 11:13pm, six months before Christmas Day, which may very well be the optimal present-distribution-distance. Childbirth is similar to war; nothing much happens for quite a while, then punctuated by moments of stress or triumph.
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Baby on the way
About ten minutes after I lay down to sleep, my wife started shuffling around on the bed, and shortly after that we realised her waters has broken. The hypnobirthing term for that is "membranes releasing" but I think that makes it sound like she’s some sort of weird jellyfish, so I avoid calling it that.
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More hypnobirthing
This evening we had our second hypnobirthing class. Last night we experimented: my wife listened to the relaxation music while I watched a violent film with The Rock in it, and then we both slept peacefully. I didn’t get socked in the face with my wife’s fist, she didn’t wake up at 5am. Which makes […]
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Dazed and confused
As part of our hypnobirthing preparations, we’ve been listening to a recording of music and positive affirmations designed to calm and relax. My wife is out like a light by the end, but twice now I’ve been unable to sleep for a,good two hours after the soporific sounds and voice have ceased. I’m sure that’s […]