Division of Labour

There are two sides to every story and with a child there is the fun side (playtime) and the not so fun side (nappy changes!). As a couple you have to split the responsibility for the nasty middle of the night nappy changes as well as the tickle fights!

Nichole and I tend to have heated discussions about the amount I do to look after Mabel. All couples will have this discussion and there are many counter arguments. I have to go to work in the morning! is one of the best. I am out of the house over 12 hours of the day and in that time Nichole looks after Mabel, so when I get home or if it's the weekend, Nichole feels that I should then take responsibility for our little bundle of Joy. This is where opinion differs and we will always hit an impasse. It is one of the questions that the sexes have been fighting over throughout the history of time, which amounts to more staying at home or going to work? What hurts more a kick in the nuts or childbirth? Well I have devised a point system to solve it. You get +/- points for the things that you do that surround the child, the partner with the most points, is right!

	Female	Male
9 Months of Pregnancy	1
Caring for Pregnant spouse for 9 months		1
Drinking and not having to drive		1
Being allowed to complain	1
Listening to pregnant wife moaning about being pregnant		1
Child Birth	1
Having your innocence cruelly snatched away		1
Learning that girls are not made of Sugar and Spice		1
The pain oh god the pain	1
Breastfeeding	1
Nappy Changing	1	1
Feeding	1	1
Work		1
Staying at home	1
Total	8	8

Cuddles before more playtime

In our family the division of child care falls on me and I must say it is an amazing thing, but you can get frustrated with your partner if when they get home they do not join in to help. Doug works full time and commutes a silly amount, this means during the weekdays I take on everything, but what he fails to realise is that childcare is not the only thing I do at home, I also work by running a household making sure all the chores are done from laundry and hoovering, to doing the food shopping and getting dinner on the table. I have failed a little bit at this recently but that is because being so heavily pregnant I am unable to physically do things, and I do try. Unfortunately this is when I really need Doug to help out and take on some of the duties in looking after Mabel and some of the housework, instead of using the excuse of ‘But I go to work’?.

I think we both find it hard to understand where the other is coming from. It is easy to think you have the harder rub of the green and this becomes harder to comprehend the more tired you get. It might not be clear but I would swap in an instance. If roles were reversed, staying at home and caring for the kids would be something that I would bite your hands off to do.There may be an element of my underlying belief that it is easier or at the least you are more in control of your day than going to work, but it is still the case I don't enjoy commuting, working, gardening, DIY or reading the gas meter as much as I enjoy spending time with our child, however these things have to be done and as the man of the house I feel it is my responsibility to do them. A lot of Nichole’s frustration comes from being isolated at home or that is what I believe, she has no escape from the noise, mess and general chaos of children. While she sees me head off to work, where I spend 12hrs out of the house meeting with colleagues and friends, her and the kids are out of sight and out of mind if that is what she feels. She has no escape, over the 1 year and 6 months of Mabel’s life I would be surprised if I had to spend more than 12 hours total with her alone! This is not my choice! I try to encourage Nic to see friends but I believe the year away from work has made her feel isolated, and now some fear is preventing her from getting away from finding an escape that we all need. This then manifests itself in frustration when I am unable to take the initiative, which I admit I am terrible at taking, the only time I will take control is if it is necessary. If there is someone else who is willing I am happy to sit back and coast, this does not just apply to child rearing.

When it comes to looking after Mabel there is the fun aspect in playtime and taking her out for walks to explore the world, but there is feeding, dressing, nappy changes, bath time, night time routines and also now having to control little tantrums that occur. I often have to push Doug to do things in order for him to learn such as when does Mabel eat? What does she eat? How much to give her? If I did everything all the time regardless of Doug working full time then our family bond would be somewhat disconnected. Yes bringing home money is crucial to living, but the most important thing for me is that Mabel has both her Mother and Father looking after her.

Mabel helping Daddy with work  

I seem to have moved away from the subject at hand and it has opened up to a larger more complex topic. To be totally honest I am not sure how we divide the household work but it does get divided and it gets done, but from my experience the standard doesn't count, you have to step up and do the extra things. To make Nichole and Mabel feel as the important part of my life as they are, I have to move away from the responsibilities that I have assigned and pick up extra things outside of this circle. This is something I haven't done in the past, but with the new arrival on the doorstep I will need to make these changes in the future.

You can have a point scoring system but I have found that it is both of us meeting in the middle that works well. Neither are wrong or right, it is just about coming together to build a stable and strong family unit where each of us at times take on a little bit more responsibility, as and when is required. Communicating with Doug and asking for help will make life that little bit easier, especially these next couple of weeks when I need to rest. After all when baby number 2 comes along it will start to get a bit manic, but I can assure you we have discussed this and will be working together to get all things done.

However you weigh up each person’s contribution, in the end it doesn’t matter. This is not something that is going to be answered completely. What it boils down to is understanding your partner's point of view, or that's what it is for us. We each need to listen and do more to acknowledge what the other does.

D & N

Parental Jealousy

Jealousy isn’t something that as a parent you think about, how could you be jealous of your partner when they are helping you nurture your baby. It is also hard to admit that you are having these negative feelings, but when you're tired and doing everything in your power to care for this little person and there is someone better that can comfort or entertain them, then there is always a possibility that you will feel this way.

When Mabel was a baby she went through a faze where she was extremely attached to me. If she cried I was the one that could settle her while Doug had to watch on. Don’t get me wrong Doug did try very hard, and for long periods of times, but after stepping in and taking over, Mabel would be settled in 15 minutes. As a new Mother I thought nothing of it. I mean that is what I am supposed to do right? Comfort, Settle and Nurture my baby. The one thing I had forgotten about and it was not brought to my attention for a little while, was how did this impact on Doug. Surely he wouldn’t mind! He is probably pleased that he has some free time! This was a major flaw for me as a loving wife, I was ignorant. To me everything was fine because my baby wanted her Mum.

It’s hard to admit a negative feeling towards your partner but I have found that over the course of the last year a couple of times when I have felt jealous of the relationship that Nichole and Mabel have. When Mabel was young, Nic would pick me up from the station at around 8pm, at which point I would try to settle Mable for the night. This would normally be the only real time I got with her, but she would just cry and no matter what I did, all she wanted was Nichole. This was hard to cope with, I was tired from work and just wanted to spend time with my daughter but all I did was upset her. I began to feel jealous of the relationship that they had and felt like I wasn’t required. It became hard to spend time with them and I felt myself withdraw.

After a little while of this Mabel soon realised she wanted us both and now she is 15 months old the tables have turned, it is all about Daddy. The amount of days/weeks and now I think it’s been months where I have had to listen to the word Dad, Dada, Hi Dad, over and over again. “Can you say Mum”? I ask her all the time, knowing full well she can, but it has become a rare treat. The feeling of jealously of always wanting her Dad and being a 3rd wheel is no sooner gone, because watching the bond between a Father and a Daughter forming is priceless, that anything you were feeling before just disappears and a love for the 2 most precious things in your life just beams out of you.

I finally got over this feeling when I realised it was neither of their fault that they had this relationship and I had a certain role that allowed Nichole to be at home full time for a year. There have been other times where I have felt jealous, it seems to center around time and the amount I spend at home. I work in London and I am out of the house from about 6 am til 8 pm, apart from occasions when Mabel wakes up early, I don't see her in the week. It seems like I was missing all the steps in Mabel's development, rolling over, sitting up, standing and walking. I felt a disconnect and it was hard to get over a feeling of loss. People would ask how Mabel was an all I could do was to refer to what I had been told, but on the other side, she is always excited to see me and I get beaming smiles.

It seems now modern day Fathers want to help in all aspects of parenting. From changing, dressing, feeding your baby to wanting to bath them, read stories, play games. Some Fathers, such as Doug, know what the best wipes are to use or what nappies to buy. It is a shift from when I grew up and it is still some getting use to. Us women are possessive, or at least I am in the fact that I have to be top dog, especially because the one thing I can achieve being a stay at home mum is being the better parent. Doug can be successful at work, so why would he want to come home and try and excel with parenting as well! Do I feel envy brewing up?

Jealousy is an emotion that comes from wanting something that someone else has, for me the jealous pangs are caused by wanting it all when it comes to Mabel. I have a relationship with her that is based more on play, I tend not to take the responsibility for making decisions when it comes to caring because Nic is around more and creates a schedule which is better for them both. This works so i shouldn’t really feel jealous towards what Nic has as I have a different type of relationship with Mabel. I get a lot of attention when I work from home and she seems to say Daddy a lot more. It might be different when our next child arrives, it will be interesting to see if those feelings of jealousy will reappear and in what situations. We will also have another form of jealousy to deal with! That will be sibling jealousy. 

It is wonderful to see your loved ones enjoying each other's company. There are always going to be some negative feeling or frustration, but by being open and honest can help to build a strong bond between us as a family unit. These feelings tend to get worse when they are left unresolved, we each have a role in our little family and it is about appreciating what each party brings to the table that will allow us to continue to grow from strength to strength.

D & N

"Would A Rose By Any Other Name Smell So Sweet"

You take on a lot of responsibility as a parent. Decisions are made that have a lasting effect on your child's life, but only a few will be with them for eternity. Whatever they do or become will be attached to there name, Neil Armstrong, Ada Lovelace or Englebert Humperdinck (Arnold George Dorsey) it doesn’t even matter if they change it, in the world we live in today, the original will only be a google away.

We are only months away from our second little girl making an appearance and the time is fast approaching when we will have to name our bundle of joy. With our first daughter Mabel, I remember it being a piece of cake, there may be a touch of narrative fallacy here, but like a troubled second album we are having difficulties. A self inflicted pressure is applied that we have to give our daughter a name that will suit the person she will become, and a purely selfish motivation that we need to get the same comments “ Oh what a lovely name” that we received when Mabel was announced. Although I am sure people say this to everyone and I need to get some perspective.  

Doug might think in his eyes it was easy naming our first daughter but for me I found it incredibly difficult. Even now going through the process again I feel frustrated. It is time consuming to find a name that is right. There is a book on the shelf that I have gone through over and over again. A baby name book. By the time I have got to the end of the D’s I have given up, so this is where I would randomly suggest names, such as Skye, Willow, Meadow, Isabella, Arrabella, even to go as far as to suggest Katniss (from the Hunger Games).

How much does a name influence a child's developments, is an unanswerable question which I honestly haven’t directly pondered, but I have considered what names that are in the frame rhyme with, hoping to reduce the school chants and alike. I also go off on tangents and think about how it will sound on the graduation, wedding day or if the mood take me when being announced at a court hearing.

When naming our first child Mabel Frances Goodland it had always been a recurring joke name as my dad and Doug use to go for a drink in London in Mabel’s Tavern. After going through endless lists of names that neither of us could agree on, we would always come back to Mabel. As it is an old fashioned name we thought it was about time to bring it back. Frances was picked by randomly coming across a friend with that middle name on Facebook, and putting it together with Mabel it sounded right. (I am pretty sure it was only a week or 2 before she was here that we finally agreed on it).

Trial and Error is the best method I have found to parenting but this doesn’t work for the big decisions and so when we do venture into the discussions on the subject there can be a lot of frustration as this is purely an emotional decision. When names are rejected there can be no specific reason for it, and this can cause frustration on my part. Both times we have started this process I have felt a pang of personal rejection when a name has been blocked and I’m not sure why, but I think it is because of the value I put in this decision. This is the first gift you bestow on your child and it will be one of only a few things that she will keep for the rest of her life.  With Mabel we had the name Skye signed off but for some reason we felt that the image in our heads of a “Skye” would be blond haired and blue eyed, and the chances Mabel being this way was slim. You may disagree with this image but like word association, an image appears in your ahead as soon as someone says a name.  Social media adds to this, as old friends or acquaintances  who surprisingly all have names adds to the mental image for suggested names, and these are just images, they have depth, comments and opinions. All this makes the Web of names and connections even more complicated.

So here we are in this stressful but amazing position, and yet again I feel disheartened that I can’t agree with Doug on a name. A few have been thrown about but then you have the problem of deciding on a modern but unusual name, or choosing another old fashioned name. Doug likes to make lots of suggestions but I shoot them down one after the other. I don’t know what it is so I can never give an answer to ‘Why?’, which I think makes him frustrated, but everyone has different tastes, and I just don’t want to call my child that. I however know that in the end a name will be picked that we both agree on and love, I just wished that it was easier for me to decide.

In my youth I use to say that I would number my kids until they were old enough to understand and I could use the threat of a terrible name to keep them in line. "1 stop hitting 3 or you'll be called Ovula" Maybe not the best approach to parenting!

In the end we will name our second daughter, I can promise you that and although I can't predict if it will have an adverse effect on her development, what I can say is that it will be a name given to her by two loving parents and that surely is all that matters, that the name we choose for all it's meanings will be indicative of Nichole and I, the two people who will raise her and influence her development. Instead of it being the first gift it is more the first marker of the love and care that we will continue to provide over the coming months, years and Decades.

D & N