Snot Fair

Kit has been an easy baby who's never far from laughter, but a cold is now preparing him for a lifetime of trying to elicit sympathy for minor ailments.

Women have long mocked the male propensity for being pathetic in the face of the sniffles. Girls get colds, men get flu and are only fit to lie on the sofa, groaning, with perhaps some Carling Cup highlights and a copy of Razzle.

"Man flu" they call it, to differentiate it from actual flu and mock our feeble resistance to the life-sapping symptoms. Little do they understand how we suffer.

That's why I renamed Man Flu, The Widow Maker, so girls would automatically say "Poor you" and offer me a Lemsip and maybe a fried egg sandwich.

That's another thing that sees sympathy drain away – the surge of appetite that gives the impression that everything is alright and that in fact we might be having a great big laugh. But as my mate, Andy, says: "Feed a cold, feed a fever."

Kit is currently keeping us both awake at night, plus a few neighbours, acting like it's worst thing to ever happen to him. But that's because it is.

Men flop about in much the same way because it's also the worst thing to happen to us, keeping us from our normal pursuit of having a good time.

When I mention to Spud that I feel the foul stench of The Widow Maker's breath upon me, she is wont to bring up the 42 hours of labour she endured to produce our son. Fair enough. That makes it one-all then (I say out of earshot).

Naturally, Kit has passed on his cold to us, so now I must sign off from my death bed and see what's in the fridge. 

The Birth

It took 42 hours of painful labour to deliver our tiny baby boy, but somehow I survived.

It wasn’t easy, let me tell you. Firstly, your girlfriend, or if you’re from the Isle of Sheppey, sister, is in extraordinary pain. That means you have a simultaneous need to both be at her side and be somewhere else. Anywhere else. It’s a close as we come to multi-tasking.

“Give me a ring if, you know, you get bored during the labour,” said Scally. “I’m happy to meet you for a pint.”

Bored? Scally clearly operates in another realm of gender relations.

“Look, love, I can see you’re in agony squeezing out something the size of a bowling bowl out of a frankly unsuitable orifice. However, the cries of pain have become repetitive, so I’ll be back stinking of booze when there’s something to look at.”

It goes without saying that men would simply not put up with childbirth. We would have invented a way round it by now if it happened to us. Even Scally appreciates we got the better deal. “All we have to do is shave,” he says. Though he does point out we have to do that every day.

Spud said childbirth gave her a whole new scale of pain and I wonder how far most men would go up that scale for their baby? The pinching of new shoes? Man flu? Stubbing your toe on furniture?

I’d go as far as tennis elbow. 

Everyone thinks they’re baby is beautiful and that’s only natural. But claims that your baby is bright when all it can do is drink, poo and sleep are a little bizarre. Having said that, our baby boy did come out speaking three languages, the clever little thing.

Imagine how we laughed when he described Martin Amis’s latest novel as “flaccid”. Where do they get these words?