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  The Turnover is quickly followed by Cleanup (self-explanatory). And, having negotiated the Cleanup, we move on to a crucial stage of the change: the Indiana.

  The Indiana is the most delicate part of the operation, as it involves the removal of the soiled diaper and the instant swap with a fresh one. It is exactly the same maneuver that Indiana Jones uses in Raiders of the Lost Ark when he has to switch a golden idol for an equivalently weighted bag of sand. Indy gets it wrong, and the shit hits the fan. Don’t get this bit wrong or the shit will hit the fan, the walls, the carpet, and the dog. Seriously, if the thunder comes now, you’re fucked.

  There is one more step to take, perhaps the most vital of all the steps but one forever underestimated. The Retape. This is normally the time you notice that you’ve got the diaper on the wrong way round. It’s fucking always the wrong way round. Always. It is almost impossible to tell the front of a diaper from the back. The back is just a bit bigger. Diaper manufacturers, in all their wisdom, have a tendency to put cartoon animals on both sides rather than what is needed, i.e., big letters saying the word “FRONT” on the front and “BACK” on the back. For some reason they think that parents are standing there, mid-change, admiring the frolicking elephants rather than thinking: Please, God, be the right way around, this baby’s going to shit on my hand.

  Of course, if you really are struggling with the whole diaper-changing thing, you could try the “no-diaper approach.” Yes, this is exactly what it sounds like, and, yes, it is as insane as its name implies.

  The idea is that, rather than making the child wear a diaper, you should try to spot when a baby is about to crap and hold him or her over a bowl or a toilet. This is an example of one of those bat-shit ideas that purport to be a return to a more natural form of child-rearing. Proponents of this method trot out the usual stuff about how we “didn’t have diapers when we were living in caves.” And, while that may be true, we didn’t have fucking carpets either. The book Baby-Led Parenting says to expect a “lot of misses” as well as “the catches.” . . . You don’t say? The truth is, within a week your house is going to look and smell like a kennel. Instead of changing diapers, you will be mucking out once a week and wondering why all the visitors have dried up. (Incidentally, what the hell do you do when junior is roaming round Best Buy?)

  This is just one of many bizarre theories when it comes to baby crap. At the beginning of this chapter, I mentioned how the NHS suggested that you try not to look disgusted when diaper-changing for fear that you will disturb your child. Other experts take this further, to suggest that you should discuss diaper-changing with your newborn, tell her that she has pooped or peed and why you are changing her. And that, if you follow these simple steps, diaper-changing can be a “lovely, intimate time together.”

  Well, each to their own, but I for one prefer the time when I’m reading The Snail and the Whale to Charlie, and I’m not about to feel guilty just because I can’t treat his diaper-changing as a fun social event. Likewise, I’m not going to feel bad because I sometimes show disgust both by facial expression and by screaming, “Sweet Jesus of the fucking Orient, boy!” when I unveil a monster. I’m certainly not going to feel inadequate because I don’t want to entertain the idea of our boy wandering around the house leaving shitty little gifts everywhere.

  A BRIEF WORD ON TWINS

  I’m well aware that some people reading this will be the parents or the expectant parents of twins. And they will chuckle with contempt at this whole chapter, and probably this whole book. Let me be clear: I am in awe of parents of twins, particularly when I think about the whole waste thing.

  A friend of mine is father to two sets of twins, and when I spoke to him about the difficulties we were having with diaper-changing, he just laughed. He said that watching one while changing the other was difficult, but when they synchronized it was like Apocalypse Now. As piss fired from one, crap would fly out of the other. Changing diapers became just a containment exercise, like playing Whac-A-Mole. He made it sound like Armageddon. Another friend, Gavin, was there while we discussed this and came up with the simplest of solutions: just choose your favorite twin and let the other one sit in its own filth. Gavin doesn’t have kids. But with that kind of problem-solving acumen, he’s going to make a hell of a father one day.

  SO . . .

  It is never more obvious than when you’re changing a diaper just how pathetic the human infant is. Other species are born running, able to take shelter and recognize danger, to communicate and understand. But a baby is utterly reliant on you. It is incapable of anything, other than eating, excreting, and blowing spit bubbles.

  Realizing that you are genuinely responsible for the most basic needs of a small human is overwhelming, but dealing with the piss and shit of parenting is as much a measure of your love for them as how much you fling them around and sing about farm animals.

  And, just remember, as your child lies there on its changing mat, flailing its arms around and dipping its socked feet in its own excrement, that one day you may yourself be in this infant state again: when age and infirmity throw their cloak over your wizened body, time completes its inexorable circle, and the child becomes father to the man.

  And when that day comes for me, and Charlie finds himself now responsible for my most basic of needs, it will be with a glint in my ancient eye and revenge in my heart that I seize that opportunity . . .

  And shit myself.

  * * *

  I. Marmite is a black spread made from yeast extract (yum); it has the consistency of molasses and tastes like feet. The British eat it on toast, nobody really knows why.

  5

  * * *

  FEEDING

  When it comes to feeding your baby . . . the world has an opinion.

  You could read the vast amounts of academic research into childhood obesity, obsess over the hand-wringing advice of nutritionists, and find yourself surrounded by color-coded charts measuring the salt and sugar intake of every morsel of organic food that passes your baby’s lips.

  But it boils down to this:

  Breast-feed if you can. Don’t worry if you can’t. And when the little one moves to solid foods, try not to feed them mashed-up Cheetos and a Twix all the time. Otherwise, they’ll end up as fat and stupid as someone who thinks that feeding their kid Cheetos and a Twix all the time is okay.

  FEEDING

  * * *

  There are moments in the first year of being a parent that strike you as odd. Moments that make you realize how much of early parenting is hidden from the public gaze. And moments that are just plain surreal.

  For me, one such moment was walking into our bedroom one afternoon to find my partner of twenty years hooked up to the mains and being milked by a Willy Wonka–esque machine.

  An electric breast pump is basically that: a milking machine, apparently designed by a fetishistic, mad genius.

  In among all our other prebirth purchases, I did vaguely remember us buying this thing. But seeing it hooked up and in action was something else. All I could see were wires and tubes, which were in turn attached to a comically shaped funnel, which Lyns then held to her breast. With the accompanying rhythmic sucking, pumping sound, it looked a bit like she was playing an obscure Eastern European musical instrument.

  (In fact, the noise it makes is quite pleasant. After I’d gotten accustomed to the strangeness, my next thought was that if I could teach Lyns to play the harmonica and pop a couple of cymbals between her legs, we might really be onto something.)

  As it turns out, seeing a breast pump in action is one of the least weird things you can encounter in the bizarre world of baby-feeding. Which is saying something. What’s really strange are the opinions, judgments, and oddball attitudes of the know-it-alls, the hurtful, the disturbed, and the just plain thick.

  Now, that’s weird.

  BOTTLE OR BREAST

  In March 2016, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver shared his opinion on the merits of breast-feeding. He suggested t
hat choosing not to breast-feed can lead to general horror for your baby. Things like stunting, obesity, and ill health.

  In fairness to him, Oliver was commenting on this stuff with the best of intentions. But he was blissfully unaware that he was stumbling into the ultimate parenting minefield: the subject of bottle or breast. And, as a backlash gathered momentum, he began to realize that it would have been marginally less controversial to release a cookbook with doodles of Muhammad in the margins.

  He went on to say that breast-feeding reduces the risk of breast cancer and is convenient, nutritious, better than formula in every way, and free. Now, all of that may be true, but when he described it as “easy,” he was immediately set upon—by a group of people who argued that their opinions were more valid than those of a guy who cooks on television: i.e., women. And, more specifically, women . . . who had actual breasts . . . and had actually tried to feed babies using them.

  It isn’t easy. From what I’ve seen, it can be incredibly hard and quite often impossible.

  I think most people understand the “breast is best” theory. In fact, Lyns does breast-feed Charlie, but to say it is easy is just not true. And, from the experiences of others I’ve spoken to, breast may not necessarily be best if the soul-destroying effort of it drives you slowly insane, or contributes to that hatefully common Dementor of new moms: depression.

  I’m not saying breast-feeding isn’t a good thing, but there are a thousand factors that affect how healthily a child grows, and maybe the mental health of the mom is bigger than them all.

  And anyway, I was bottle-fed. I’m still alive, I’m not obese, I don’t steal women’s shoes, I’m not three foot two, I survived. Incidentally, ask around among your friends. If you can tell the difference between those who were bottle-fed and those who were breast-fed, I’d be amazed. For all the well-intentioned commentary about the benefits of breast-feeding, it is safe to say that it’s all a bit more complicated than that. Otherwise, when babies become adults, “breast is best” campaigners would be able to prove their point by putting a selection of people in a room and identifying them easily: the breast-fed ones by their glowing skin and six-packs, and the bottle-fed ones by their rickets and missing teeth.

  EASY?

  In my ignorance prior to being a dad, I also thought that breast-feeding was straightforward stuff. I thought that the process of feeding a baby was an example of elegance in the design of evolution. That nature had provided women with this natural, permanent source of food for their offspring: readily available, readily accessible, with nipply bits perfectly formed to the shape of a baby’s lips. In my infinite dimness, I assumed that to all intents and purposes feeding infants involved popping a nipple in their mouth, right up until the day they started to demand chicken nuggets. But, in reality, the design is flawed. Babies don’t seem to realize that their lips are “perfectly formed” or indeed that they need to feed at all. Babies are born utterly clueless of all these things and need to be taught. The problem is, they’re only very recently alive so are not really in the mood to learn.

  The drive to encourage women to breast-feed begins in the hospital, when a nipple becomes the focal point of everyone in the room—apart from the baby, who after all those years of evolution still just truffles around like a blind pig, lolling his head about until the pointy bit is near his mouth. He then looks like he’s about to “latch on” (a delicate term that evokes images of hooking up a U-Haul to a tow bar), but at the last minute he veers away, lolling his head around again for a bit, as everybody oohs and aahs as if he’s just missed an open goal.

  The beautiful, simple dignity of a breast-feeding baby is for later, as during this orientation period he or she doesn’t seem to have a clue, and displays all the dignity of a fish trying to hump a door.

  Apparently, there are loads of reasons why babies struggle to start breast-feeding. Sometimes the milk doesn’t come, or they struggle to latch on, or they don’t have a strong sucking reflex, or fuck knows, they can’t be bothered. We became familiar with all of the reasons during those early, frustrating days of trying to get Charlie to do what is supposed to come naturally. In the end we were just willing him to “get it.” But it was a bit like trying to set up Wi-Fi when none of the bits of equipment will speak to each other. We knew the passwords were right, all the flashy lights were on . . . it just wouldn’t work.

  Finally, any shred of dignity that remained was removed by an old-hand nurse who started to manhandle Lyns’s tits like a farmer encouraging a reluctant cow. Ruddy-faced and no-nonsense, Nurse Bennett seemed at one point like she was about to pull up a three-legged stool and start to try to fill a bucket, slapping Lyns on the rump with an “atta girl” at the slightest drop.

  But he got it. Suddenly, Charlie got it. And it was a moment of triumph.

  It seems strange to look back now and think that it was such a difficult process. Now Charlie breast-feeds like an old soak swanning up to the bar with a brandy glass. But for Lyns, as for most women, it was tough.

  What I’m not looking forward to now is him stopping. Apparently, after all that effort, babies really don’t want to give up on breast-feeding. And the advice about getting a baby off the breast isn’t much better than “Plant one foot firmly on the floor, one foot on mum’s chest, grab the kid by the ankles, and pull as hard as you can.”

  BREAST-FEEDING AND THE WEIRDOS

  If there is a certain amount of controversy about choosing between bottle and breast and how “easy” it is to choose the latter, this is nothing by comparison to the controversy that surrounds breast-feeding in public. Every few months some celebrity will chime in about how they find it “disgusting.” Or some backward restaurant or hotel will destroy its own TripAdvisor rating by demanding some poor woman “cover up” (as though she’s naked and streaking past the buffet rather than feeding a baby).

  In the UK, comments from Fox News commentator Katie Hopkins about breast-feeding women are typical:

  They don’t have the right to put everyone else off having milk in their tea. Put it away, girls.

  The UK’s biggest Trump fan, Nigel Farage, apparently agreed when he suggested that maybe breast-feeding women should “sit in a corner.”

  How about that moral arbiter of good taste, porn star and topless model Katie Price? Who despite being permanently exposed herself said:

  I don’t want to eat my dinner and see a woman’s boob out.

  Which is a bit rich given that, for the best part of a decade, the whole of the UK hasn’t been able to have so much as a round of toast without seeing hers on TV or in a newspaper.

  Even social philosopher Kim Kardashian has waded into the debate, using her notoriously wide-ranging vocabulary to tweet “Ew,” when a woman began breast-feeding near her.

  Ew, indeed.

  There is something monumentally depressing about a woman making a great effort to feed her baby and then being discouraged by these odd opinions and very public declarations of disgust. And, to be honest, I genuinely thought that, in real life, this discouragement was a myth. That realistically, apart from a few rare examples, there was no way that people who held these views actually existed . . . and then you realize that they do.

  I wrote about the moment I found this out on the Man vs. Baby blog:

  Breast-feeding and the Weirdos

  I know this has probably all been said before, but who are these fucking crackpots who have a problem with breast-feeding in public? Or these weirdos who say they “don’t mind it” as long as it’s done “discreetly.”

  Erm . . . show of hands . . . has anyone ever seen breast-feeding done indiscreetly? I for one have never seen a woman begin breast-feeding by ostentatiously unveiling her nipple-tasseled tits to the hard-house remix of “Here Comes the Boom.” Or attach her baby to a rotating target and, to drumrolls, squirt-fire the milk at the child from six feet away.

  In fact, come to think of it, I’ve never even seen a nipple when a woman has been breast-feeding beca
use . . . (and here’s the science bit) . . . that’s what the baby feeds from. So, the nipple is, by its very design, covered by the child’s mouth. (Maybe I’ve not been gawping hard enough like these freaks who are so appalled.)

  What you actually see when a baby is breast-feeding is . . . the back of their fucking head. And if you’re disgusted by the back of a baby’s head, you should see what comes out of their ass.

  The strange thing is that it seems to be both men and women who have a problem with it, but again, who are they? Who are these women who are so delicate that the possibility of seeing a breast will make them keel over. . . . And who are these men who are so sheltered that seeing an uncloaked nipple might cause them to have an instantaneous stroke (and not the good kind).

  It’s odd. . . . These are people disgusted by a child having its dinner . . . usually while they are eating their own . . . really . . . what is so terrifying about the possibility of glimpsing an areola while simultaneously eating soup?

  The ironic thing is that, if I’m describing you, you’re probably the biggest tit in the restaurant. And you’ll no doubt be the same jerk tutting when the baby cries because it is hungry.

  So why am I banging on about this now?

  We’ve just been for a pub meal and the couple across from us clearly had a problem with Lyns breast-feeding . . . (they used the international language of dickheads: i.e., “eye-rolling”). This is my first experience of the open hostility toward breast-feeding (I genuinely thought it was a myth).

  So . . . I didn’t say anything, but to piss them off I did take my shirt off and ate the rest of my chicken dinner topless. (And after overindulging over Christmas, I’ve developed quite a decent rack.)