Yummy Mummy - [Seven Weeks]

According to The Yummy Mummy Survival Guide, my regular all-black attire will have to change once I have to look after a baby.

There will be just too much food, shit and vomit flying about to keep black clothes looking decent. I suppose I’m going to have to buy some dishevelled denim outfits. Luckily Retro Man Exchange shop at Notting Hill Gate do decent denim stuff.

Daydream Believer - [Six Weeks]

The news has put a severe dent in my research. I too feel legitimised at not buckling down to work. Daydreaming about what our life will be like is now actually important.

And keeping up thinking about names. American Woman has not mocked, or even commented, on any of my suggestions until invited to. I’m ranging widely, and mainly over boys’ names.

Slumbaland - [6th Week pregnant]

American Woman is sleeping a hell of a lot. Just comes home from work, crashes on the couch for hours.

I’m not completely convinced that it’s down to the pregnancy. She gets up for work at 5 every day, so was always tired before, and always had the capacity to sleep a long time on weekends, but her finely honed guilt reflexes never used to let her sleep in the evenings. She always had things to do.

Now she has legitimisation, and she is taking to it with a passion.

Weetabix - [6th Week Pregnant]

American Woman’s never asked me for Weetabix before.

I’ve got a vague memory of her disliking it. Certainly I don’t remember her ever eating it before.

But that’s what I’m sent out to get.

Education, education, education - [6th week pregnant]

I’m reading stuff online and in books compulsively.

Stuff about pregnancy and parenthood, but more stuff about how tough it is to be a stay-at-home-father.

Apparently it's much more accepted for fathers to be the primary caregivers, but there's loads of little issues of language and society that cumulatively gets extremely demoralising.

House husband? Stay at home father?

It’s all so freaky because we’ve both known for a while that if we ever got pregnant, I would be the one to stay at home to raise the Bubby, at least initially.

The Host earns almost twice as much as me, so that’s that. Our jobs are location-specific, and the new job she’s starting this summer means we will be out of commuting distance.

So we were prepared to have a more-or-less weekend marriage when it was just two of us. But now that we’re three, we will all have to move close to her work near Cambridge.

Paradigm Shift

I wake up looking forward to a great Notting Hill sunny day. Reading the papers, getting some breakfast from Portobello Market (the crepe stall, or the new bread shop, Gail’s?), watching Spurs Arsenal at the pub, then showing my Australian aunt and uncle around London. But by the end of the morning, we have been to Sainsbury’s, got two pregnancy tests, dipped them in a cup of urine, and my life has veered off into a new direction.

When she gets up, American Woman mentions again, just like she did two evenings ago, how sore her breasts are. This time she says she reckons it’s in reaction to her period being a few days late. Obviously, my ears perk up at that! But neither of us take the concept of pregnancy particularly seriously because we both know how little sex we’ve had in the last couple of months.

[Defensively] The lack of recent sexual activity between us (as opposed to independently) is because of an unusual combination of recent factors. It’s not the usual - me being a morning person and her being an evening person.

• She’s been most ferociously busy taking online courses in an attempt to become qualified for a particular job within her organisation. She got the qualifications, just in time to get the job.
• We went to Sicily with her mother, to track down ancestral relatives. Because of costs, we all stayed in the same room throughout the trip (two double beds). My, THAT was fun . . .!

Anyway, I type ‘sore breasts’ into google and it’s soon clear that that’s a major sign of pregnancy. American Woman doesn’t believe it’s possible, really, but my brain goes into overdrive. We get the test, I read the instructions while she unconcernedly puts the groceries away, I convince her to bring me a cup of fresh pee, and then conduct my experiments. It’s instantly positive.

We talk for about an hour, rather happily and excitedly, and then she urges me to go watch the football at the pub. We agree to keep texting each other during the match. Rather irritatingly, Spurs draw in the final minute, but this doesn’t dampen my mood. I walk back up Portobello Road, collecting calamata olives and bread for American Woman.

Then when my aunt and uncle arrive, we go to Evensong at St Paul's Cathedral. We hold hands, and every now and again, think a couple of garbled, silent prayers.

This is followed by a seven mile walk across London (across the Milennium Bridge, along the South Bank, across Westminster Bridge, eat a picnic in St James’ Park, up past Buckingham Palace to Hyde Park Corner, then across Hyde Park to Notting Hill in the dusk).

Because we’re at tourist pace rather than normal pace, it takes a long time, so we have a chance to have a few words when we’re not pointing stuff out to my aunt and uncle.

But those words are mostly always the same. It’s what we’ve both been thinking all day, sometimes negatively, mostly happily: ‘Fucking Hell!’