It’s been a little bit of a difficult week as Ness has managed to injure her foot by simply walking a little too briskly to the train station.
The doctor reckons it is going to take as much as 6 weeks to heal. It s hard enough for her dealing with many of the thirty two (32!) common complaints that women get during pregnancy, but now she is in pain as well. Of course it’s making her worry about the birth, so we’ve had a few tears here and there. I’ve also been away on business for most of the week so I haven’t been around to comfort her. No amount of phone calls, texts or emails beat a thirty second hug when your lady is at this late stage of pregnancy.
By the weekend I thought it best to forget that Premiership football was back in action after the international break and to have a really good weekend of doing baby stuff to keep her mind off her damaged foot. Who says men don’t understand sacrifice during pregnancy? Actually if I’d felt any more of a martyr I would have been picking splinters out of my hands and feet.
We started by unpacking some of the items we had previously bought, such as the Moses basket, a few bath items and the pram/ buggy and car seat. I’d read somewhere that it was sensible to practice fitting the car seat as it can be quite tricky and if you haven’t got it fixed properly when you are ready to leave the hospital they can actually refuse to let you take the baby home.
As with most goods sold internationally, the instructions were in picture form with arrows and numbers. After about twenty minutes of literally trying to wrestle the bloody thing into the car I realised that the seatbelts in my Renault were nothing like the ones in the picture. As I sat next to the baby seat in the car trying to compose myself and resist the urge to yank out the seat and throw it across the road in a Hulk-style rage, I got thinking about the babies name again.
As I mentioned last week we have chosen a name and as I’m quite a tattooed man I began thinking about whether I should have it inked on me. Thing is, this is a different proposition. All my current tattoos are of Aztec origin and all fit nicely together. The last thing I want to do is end up looking like a character out of Ross Kemp’s Gangs TV show - you know the type, shaved head, white vest, babies name and face tattooed on his back, a bit mental – also what if it is a boy? A boys name on me? Hmm…
I decided that I had four options:
Option 1 -The Angelina Jolie – she has the longitude and latitude of where each of her four children was born. Thing is, it’s quite glamorous if it’s Cambodia, but I’m not sure if I want the precise geographical co-ordinates of Kent hospital permanently etched on me …
Option 2 – The foot/ hand print - Have you seen this one? You take a foot/ hand print of your newborn baby and have that done with the date of birth. A bit twee and soppy for my liking, and lets face it, it’s chavtastic.
Option 3 – The classic name on a ribbon wrapped around a heart – perhaps if I was in prison.
Option 4 – Do it the other way around and tattoo MY name on the baby… just kidding.
I suppose there is a fifth option and that is not to get anything done, but I kind of feel compelled to have his or her name somewhere about my person. Maybe it's just because I think having 'Jesus Lucifer Payne' written on my forehead would be a great ice-breaker at parties.
Next week: O Brother Where Art Thou?
Dads Space contributor Simon Payne loves going to rock gigs, adding to his collection of Aztec tattoos, good wine, football and his PlayStation. He's also the co-founder of Mind Adrenaline, a team building and events company that specialises in organising creative days out for organisations around the globe.
He readily admits he is a bit of a late starter.