Parentig Humor

Diary of a Newborn Dad: Week Four Friday, 12 February 2010 00:00 Written by bwakeling

Image via Wikipedia

It was the 15^th August 2009 when my wife, Jess, came up to me and announced she was pregnant. We’d been trying for a baby for eight months with no luck, and had almost come to expect that the little reading on the pregnancy test would be negative – so this news came as a big surprise. Now, a lot of wives/girlfriends will think of some elaborate way to tell their partners that they’re pregnant: leaving the test lying under their pillow, perhaps waiting until they’re half asleep – maybe even vomiting morning sickness chunks over their porridge, prompting inevitable questions. Not in this case. I was in the kitchen – making yet another cup of tea – when Jess burst in, waggling a urine-soaked stick a little too close to the brewing beverage for my liking, sporting a wide-eyed, almost maniacal grin.

“Benny,” she says (please don’t tell anyone she calls me that in private), “I’m pregnant!”

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Diary of a Newborn Dad: Foreword Friday, 05 February 2010 15:48 Written by bwakeling

Image by mahalie via Flickr

I once read somewhere in the nether regions of the internet that the first known contraceptive was cow’s dung, employed by the Egyptians back in 2000BC. I’m thinking that’s probably got to be the most effective contraception ever. I have no idea how it was used, where it was slathered, or how it worked, but I do know one thing: if my wife had been clutching a handful of cow poo on that night way back when, there’s no way she’d be pregnant right now.

Anyway, I have a confession to make: I’m not actually a newborn dad myself. I already have a two year-old son, Isaac, and so have been through the whole pregnancy thing before. However, each time is different – or so I’m told – and I can remember that on the many, many, many excruciating times we trawled around baby shops during our first pregnancy, lapping up impulse buys that have since gathered dust in the loft, there was not one book on the shelves that was aimed purely at the father. They were all like ‘hey, you’re going to get hormonal, but that’s fine’ and ‘don’t worry if you poo during labour, it’s normal’, but there was nothing about what I should expect, and what I could do to help. So I decided to write one myself.

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To Fart or Not to Fart? Monday, 20 July 2009 23:26 Written by steelydad

Perhaps someone else has written about this topic but I wouldn’t know; I don’t read much. I realize this might be a bit high-brow for many a Steely Dad reader but it’s important to expand one’s mind and horizons. After all, Steely Dad is nothing if not a place of culture and refinement.

Case in point.

This evening after consuming two massive triangles of a mushroom/black olive/spinach stuffed pizza that I personally garnished with sautéed pancetta and several whole cloves of RAW garlic, the following thoughts suddenly occurred to me when my digestive tract started to sound like an overactive aquarium: With whom is it appropriate to expel flatus? How long before you do so, say, in front of your significant other? Is it ever OK to blow butt breath in front of your kids and, if so, what words do you use to describe the expulsion of gas? Most of all, is it appropriate to laugh when someone rips a stinky poop cloud in your general direction?

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