I feel like one of the strongest contrasts between a first time and a third time parent is quantity of kit. New parents are absolute suckers for the marketing man or woman and the erroneous if understandable belief that the more paraphernalia they buy the less terrifying the rollercoaster will be. I write this as the window closes on what is by far my favourite period of being a parent and unfortunately it only lasts about 8 weeks.
Our 3rd was born 7 weeks ago and he is, I'm glad to report, thriving. That is baby speak for growing and getting milk drunk as many times a day as he wishes and he wishes A LOT. While it would be an exaggeration to say that he has doubled in size where once there were sparrow wings and fretwork veins now there is chunk and ruddy cheeks.
All of that means that I am glumly counting the days until I can no longer safely and comfortably tuck him under one arm and go for a decent walk. Obviously, if it really came to it, I could probably give a prop playing teen a firearm's lift if their life depended on it. What I'm talking about is a leisurely stroll without perspiration or real effort.
Most firstborn parents enter such an intensive nesting phase that it's not uncommon for this entire golden period to be gobbled up without the baby so much as leaving its home. And if they do there is anxious zipping, swaddling, hatting and the accursed pram. It was a blessed moment in my life when the pram was finally banished from the hall when it was deemed that No. 2 could jolly well walk and a moment of some dismay when it returned to block, obstruct and generally encumber passage in and out of the house.
What the pram most particularly does is separate the baby from you and from the world and if I believe in anything it's in connection and not separation. Don't get me wrong I love a bit of a sky view but if you're just arrived in the world surely you want to see it and its people? For that reason I'm even a bit unenthused about slings and not because, like Piers Morgan ludicrously sling shaming Daniel Craig, I think they are unmanly but because I want my baby to turn out not in.
Unless you've done it it's difficult to describe the contagious joy and goodwill that is engendered by taking a tiny baby for a walk in your arms. Even surly faced men well versed in London's rules of studied disregard for strangers will stop you in your tracks to wish you congratulations. Walking past a full bus had the same effect on the passengers as if I had just walked past with a million pounds in cash in my hands.
More importantly the baby gets to see all these people and to see the world at its gladdest and most welcoming. If it takes a village to raise a child the village needs to see the child even if that village is to be found on the mean streets of North London. It also goes without saying, if you're a dad that is, that taking the baby out gives the mother a break and teaches the baby that it is just as safe, well and homed in the hairy arms of its dad as the more familiar ones of its mother.
Lastly, and most positively for me, there is the enormous impact on the father's wellbeing of spending time with a baby like this, mano a mano, not as combatants, obviously, but as collaborators. I was extremely interested to read recently a piece by Jonathan Kennedy in the Guardian which explained that fathers that engage in this kind of bodily contact and care experience a rise in their levels of oxytocin. Anecdotally I can absolutely attest to the amazing feeling of calm and wellbeing that is spurred by perambulating without the pram.
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