Birthday Bonanza

The birthday bonanza is once again over for another year. Last week, we celebrated my daughter’s seventh and The Toddler’s third birthday. I wondered why on earth I didn’t do everything possible in the labour ward on January 21st 2006 to stop The Toddler from arriving to share his sister’s birthday. I should have pleaded with the midwives, got down on my knees and begged them to give me large doses of Oxytocin. I simply had no idea what it would be like to celebrate two children’s birthdays on the same day post Christmas in the middle of bleak January.

This year was also more made more difficult because The Toddler now fully grasps the concept of birthdays and presents, having had much practice the previous month. We agreed that they would both open their presents at teatime in one mammoth opening session, accompanied by a joint chocolate cake with carefully divided candles to allow for individual blowing. We sang two rounds of Happy Birthday and our son kept a brave face as he watched his two siblings jointly celebrate their day.

Then we came to The Party. Thankfully, we managed to persuade The Toddler that he would absolutely love to do a spot of pottery painting, or splodging, with a couple of close friends, whilst his siblings were at school. He went along with it still oblivious to the world of Musical Bumps and Statues, surrounded by a mass of tearful pre-schoolers all accompanied by their tea-sipping parents. My daughter, who spends the entire year building up to her big event, decided she wanted a disco. She also wanted to invite her entire class of 24. Therefore the celebrations continued throughout the week and the excitement levels escalated. With flashing lights, loud booming music and Wayne from Groovemix at the helm, the children danced their small legs off. My husband was as excited as the children and enthusiastically joined in alongside my daughter shrieking, “It’s like the 21st I never had.”

That evening, we were exhausted and barely managed to keep an eye open to watch Casualty. It had been a week of birthday jubilation with an abundance of presents, cakes, cards and balloons. My daughter now felt a little deflated although instantly pulled a notepad out and began party planning for 2010. Meanwhile, The Toddler looked up from his bed and sleepily said, “Mummy, why didn’t Father Christmas bring me my stocking?”

Expectant father

You have spent the last nine months obediently attending every antenatal class, studying blurred scan photos of your little ‘peanut’ gradually growing month by month. You have reassured your wife that she looks radiant and not at all like a large pack horse, and handed her tissues when you find her sobbing on the sofa over Animal Hospital whilst tucking into her fourth Cadbury Cream Egg.

Finally, the momentous occasion arrives. The Bag is packed, the contractions are becoming more regular and you try to remain calm whilst driving to the hospital desperately wishing you had paid more attention to the classes rather than wondering what the football score was. In the delivery room, you see a side to your better half you never thought existed. You try rubbing her back, to which she yells, “Don’t touch me.” You offer words of support telling her how brave and clever she is, to which she screams, “I don’t want to be brave. Just make it stop!”

Ninety percent of fathers attend births in Britain and I feel rather sorry for them. It must be very hard watching someone you love in so much pain and be utterly helpless. A friend’s husband was so tense and stressed at the birth of his first child that he fainted. The room promptly filled with medical staff who wheeled him down to A&E leaving my poor friend alone in her delivery room, riding the ‘wave’ of her last few contractions. Now she is about to have another baby and was more concerned about the ‘energy bars’ she was packing for her husband in the Bag than about the cotton wool and new born nappies.

I have to confess, I came under the ‘utter wimp’ category when it came to childbirth and the midwives must have dreaded me coming. I arrived in hospital in plenty of time, ended up in labour for several days and demanded epidurals at the first twinge. My husband, on the other hand, rather enjoyed it, particularly given the wonderful delivery rooms at Dorchester Hospital. With birth number three, he really settled himself in. He lay on the bed glued to daytime television, whilst I continued with my laps of the delivery ward in an attempt to speed things up. When it looked like the baby might finally decide it was time to arrive, he knew not to stroke my back, wipe my brow or utter a word until I turned to him with relief and handed him his new little bundle.