I WAS hoping to use this column to pass on some advice to my fellow dads-to-be and just one month in I’ve already ruddy got some!

Every time my wife and I went baby shopping we’d go a bit mad.

Basically, there’s too much stuff and too many variations of that  stuff. I don’t know if the Super Snug 3000 baby cosy is better than the Super Snug 2000 baby cosy.

To be honest I don’t really know what half the stuff even does.

We’d go shopping, get flustered when we didn’t know what to buy, have a row because I probably made some rubbish joke about just putting him in a cage and then go home feeling a bit stressed and upset.

Our solution was to eliminate the element of choice. I have a colleague that my wife and I call Eggnog, but whose actual name is Eoghan.

He became a dad a little while ago and we basically bought all his stuff off him. It’s great stuff and smells nice (I assume thanks to Mrs Eggnog) and most importantly it’s now cluttering up my house instead of his.

So that was good and we both felt a bit happier.


But with each new day comes a new challenge and so my second bit of advice is this: Don’t ask seemingly mundane questions to your pregnant wife.

Vicky’s now given up work and is pottering around our house (slowly) and sending me funny videos of baby pandas sliding down slides.

A couple of nights ago I arrived home from Echo towers at about 6pm. I was tired and hungry as I always am.

Vicky excitedly showed me the nursery which is rapidly looking less like Gotham City and more like a nursery. She gave me a list of stuff that was going to go in it, to which I responded “are you sure we’re going to have enough room?”
I might as well have punched her for the look she gave me.

“Why are you trying to ruin this for me?” she shouted before stomping out. It’s quite hard for her to convey anger in a walk because she just looks so lovely at the moment, and walks in quite a funny way.


It was only later when she’d calmed down she admitted she might have been a bit unreasonable.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Just ignore me when I’m like that.” It was a welcome offer but not one I’m going to take up because I’m a bloke and I can’t comprehend what mothers go through.

Even though she constantly spills food down her top, I think she looks more gorgeous then ever before. So this is really a thank you to mums and if you want to shout at us sometimes then that’s OK. We’re just stupid blokes who don’t even know what Super Snug 3000s are.