‘Daddy pro’ David Caren hits the shelves with a baby book designed for information-starved Irish dads-to-be
‘WE’RE PREGNANT!” has to be one of the more irritating phrases uttered by a certain breed of expectant fathers.
Of course we’re overjoyed to hear there is a baby on the way, but less of the “we” please. Yes, we know you played your part by planting the seed but it is your female partner who is going to do all the hard graft.
That is not to deny it is a shared journey to parenthood, along which men are going to have their own particular concerns.
David Caren was not the first man to feel sidelined during his wife Ellen’s first pregnancy. “You are a spectator for nine months, you’re not carrying the baby. I accept that.”
Like many an expectant father, he wanted a bit of reassurance. Working in Waterstones in Cork at the time, he was certainly in the right place to pick up a relevant book. But while there were plenty of titles aimed at pregnant mums there was little for dads – and certainly nothing for Irish dads.
“What was there, as I recall, were very laddish books, which certainly didn’t settle my nerves,” he explains from his home in Rochestown, Co Cork, where he is now a “daddy pro”, with two daughters and a son, aged six, four and two.
The realisation that there was a lack of information and advice on the baby business written from a male perspective led him to set up the website dad.iein early 2009 and then produce a handbook for all new members of the "expectant fathers" club: The Irish Dad's Survival Guide To Pregnancy ( Beyond), which was published last week.
The "fraternity of fathers" that he got to know through dad.iewere happy to share some of their emotions and experiences for the book but only on the basis of "no surnames".
The Irish dad, it seems, still doesn’t want to be upfront about his feelings, yet some of the most moving passages of the book include a man talking about seeing his daughter who was delivered dead at 24 weeks.
“We are a kind of a private species when it comes to family,” says Caren (38), who also makes it clear that “I never wanted to do what other ‘dad writers’ have done and make it autobiographical.”
When Caren went to the hospital with his wife for the baby’s first scan, he noticed how he and the other men were “just sitting there, not engaged at all”, while the women chatted away in the waiting room.
“Were we not entitled to be there? Are we not entitled to see what happens? Is it not our baby too?”
During the scan “you might have a million questions but you are not going to say a word”, he says. “You are there to hold the bag.”
When it comes to the culture of Irish fatherhood, he believes much can be blamed on the absence of paternity leave. Ireland is one of very few European countries without paid or unpaid statutory paternity leave.
“I think paternity leave has a lot to do with readjustment and finding your feet as a new dad.” If you see an Irish man on a street during the week with a pram you think either he is a stay-at-home dad or he is unemployed.
“In Sweden and you see that, you think absolutely nothing because they have months on end of paternity leave and are encouraged to take time at home with their children.
“They don’t reduce their paternity leave in the hope of getting a promotion. They stay out to get a promotion,” he says. “It is maddening to think a Government that is predominantly male, mostly dads and granddads, but still no . . . ” It is ironic that the few TDs who do see it is an important issue are female, he comments.
Obviously now is not the ideal time to be campaigning for paid paternity leave, but why didn’t men shout about it even during the “boom” years?
“We don’t give out about it because it only affects those dads who are expecting, so you’re a niche group from the start,” he points out. And the reaction of other men in work is likely to be: “I never got paternity leave and I got on with it.”
In his case, they were “blessed” first time around because Waterstones is based in the UK, where men are entitled to two weeks’ paid paternity leave and his (female) manger told him he could take that, along with a week’s holidays.
“We could find our feet and get into some sort of routine before I went back to work. But I know dads who have had babies on a Thursday morning at eight o’clock and they are back at their work at lunchtime.”
While we may not be Sweden yet, there has been a significant shift in recent years towards more hands-on and emotionally engaged fathering. And Caren believes that male celebrities have played a part.
“In the 1970s and 1980s there was no way you would get Georgie Best putting a [baby] sling to his front and walking around. Now you just look at the Daily Mail and there’s Becks sitting at a basketball game with the kids. It is giving the right impression for dads-to-be: this is a cool dad and this is the way to do it.”
That is why, he suggests, you now see dads in Mothercare on Saturday mornings, kicking the tyres of buggies.
Caren’s contention that there is competition between dads as to who drives the best pram sounds suspiciously stereotypical from a man who promises, in the introduction to his book, that there will be “no flippant laddishness which undermines the greatness of the event”.
“Laddishness” may not describe it, but there is no mistaking that this is a book for blokes written by a bloke, with talk of postnatal “boob envy” when your partner is breastfeeding and seeing her in a different light: “The dads that say after witnessing the childbirth they would never consider going south again – seriously, how long did that last!”
A “straight talking tone” is how Caren describes it, laced with humour (and lots of puns) to engage the male reader. Designed for dipping into, it is a “reassuring manual for dads, with anything you need to know in it”.
There are no gory photographs or statistical tables as it guides men through their partner’s trimesters.
Expectant fathers often have a rude awakening about their own health, says Caren. They don’t want to be the fat bloke in the corner in the baby photos.
“If your wife is watching what she eats, you should too – and quit the smoking and the drinking. If she is going out for a walk, you should join her. It will pay dividends at the other end, when you’re not getting sleep at night.”
However, men should not take their newfound drive for fitness to extremes, he warns, at a time when their partner could be very self-conscious about waddling around. “You can’t say you’re going off to do a triathlon ‘but I’m doing it for us’. You have to be very careful; you don’t want shades of ‘you’re getting big but look at me’.”
When it comes to the birth, men are going to feel like a “spare tool” in the delivery room, says Caren. They want to be able to ask stupid questions but they can’t so midwife Lorraine Andrews – one of a number of experts who contributes to the book – answers them in advance by advising on things such as where to stand, how best to support the labouring woman and cutting the cord.
The first sight of the baby can reduce stoic men to tears – or give others the urge to flee. “After being a spectator for nine months you are going to have different emotions,” says Caren.
“You might have a feeling you want to get out of that room as quickly as you can. I know dads who have done it: they are home with Sky Sports before the wife has been moved up to a room. That’s fine, that’s normal.”
Some pregnancy books just finish at the birth but Caren thought it was important to include a sizeable section on the six-week fallout: “After all, it is your chance to finally get off the sideline and start being dad.”
Along with the lowdown on how to change a nappy, wind a baby and stop a baby crying, there is advice on how to cope with sleep deprivation and approach post-pregnancy sex – not to mention essential tips on how to balance a newborn in one hand and a games controller in the other.
Caren is under no illusion that men will be rushing out to bookshops to buy his book – he is counting on the woman to pick it out for her partner when she is choosing a half-dozen pregnancy manuals for herself.
Personally, if I was starting over, I think I would like my partner to be taking this sort of information on board. But one word of advice to expectant fathers, in the interests of relationship harmony: reading one book on pregnancy does not make you an authority on the matter. And certainly, when it comes to labour, you have absolutely no idea how “we” feel . . .
WHAT KIND OF EXPECTANT DAD ARE YOU?
Distinct types of fathers-to-be are evident in the hospital waiting room when couples go in to get their first glimpse of baby at the scan appointment:
The Shuffler
You know the type of guy: the one, who cannot sit still, keeps looking at his watch while tapping the appointment card and throwing his eyes to the heavens. He’s been out to glare at the receptionist and is now off to check the parking meter even though he’s only been in the room for 10 minutes.
The Tycoon
That’s him over there with his copy of Business and Finance. Between breaks in reading he can be heard saying quite loudly to his wife, “I have to take this call, it’s important.” No doubt he’s on first names with the staff, having never met them before.
The Sleeper
Head back, mouth open, this fella is glad of the rest.
The Talker
Happy to chat away to anybody who will listen, especially the expectant mums; you could put it down to nerves but his partner’s painful grin tells us that he’s like this all the time.
The Breeder
Arrives at the appointment with all his kids in tow, followed by a very worn-out “been-here, done-it-all-before mum-to-be”. Any new expectant dad who witnesses the spectacle of crying, crisp-eating, scrapping monkeys in the centre of the floor may be forgiven for thinking, “What have I let myself in for?” Rest assured, it’s in the rearing!
The Quarterback
Sits on the edge of his chair with his legs wide open, furiously texting on his mobile phone – how many mates does this guy have! If that’s not enough, his spontaneous fits of laughter seem to drown out that exact moment that the next patient is called.
The Honeymooner
We can tolerate everyone else but if there is one dad-to-be we all share a universal dislike for, it’s this guy. We can hear him before we see him, “slowly now hun”. He enters the waiting room at a snail’s pace, clutching his partner’s upper arm. When he finally lands down in his seat beside his partner he caresses her bump-less belly and leans into her; whispering sweet nothings which evokes a giddy teenage response.
When their name is called, we are pleased to see him leave – until we realise that this same guy is going to ask a lot of questions, and I mean a lot of questions.
From The Irish Dad’s Survival Guide to Pregnancy (& Beyond) by David Caren
The Irish Dad’s Survival Guide to Pregnancy (& Beyond) by David Caren is published by O’Brien Press, €14.99
swayman@irishtimes.com
