The gospel according to Noah
Week 1
This is the story of Noah. No, not that one. My son, Noah.
He weighs 6 pounds 5. He has my wife’s cheeks and my nose.
When he’s handed to me, I think of all the poetic first words fathers say to sons in movies. I go with “hi gorgeous”.
That won’t be entering the pantheon of greats. He’s not even objectively gorgeous (yet). He’s much redder and his face is more squashed than the babies in movies.
As any good journalist would, I mark the news events that pass the day of the big event. Israel and Lebanon sign a truce. A strong start to Noah’s life.
Then my baby defecated, and I thought he had a medical issue. I had read about stomachs the size of marbles and millilitres of feeding. But my baby’s output spread from the back of his upper thigh to the middle of his back. It definitely didn’t seem to match the input.
There are in fact, multiple sizes of nappy, I would soon discover.
On day five, Noah smiles at me for the first time. Turns out he’s just passing wind. That’s how much he enjoys it.
Life is a series of occasionally connected events. It’s all about the order in which they come. Wake-feed-change was not an order that worked for Noah. Wake-change-feed was a pattern he much preferred. Correction: wake-change-cry-feed-excrete-feed more.
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Everyone knows hospitals are sad places. They are often incredibly tedious places too. Especially when you have to sleep on a chair for several nights.
What do you normally do between 1am and 3am? Sleep, I imagine. What would you do if you couldn’t sleep, and had at least one arm occupied at most times?
I watch a successful England cricket team in New Zealand. Batsman Harry Brook is dropped five times. He then hits a six so big it clears the pavilion. These are the kind of things you remember while you’re forcing yourself to stay up basically 24-7. Much like the pandemic, sport was a godsend, particularly sport played in time zones that suddenly became waking hours.
Jane Moore is the first to be eliminated from I’m A Celebrity. That was my wife’s sanctuary. Thinking that I’ve already subjected myself to more than enough screen time, I buy a paperback book of Wordle puzzles, and get through the whole thing.
I also buy Alan Bennett’s lockdown diaries, assuming this would fairly approximate the kind of solitude the first few months of child-rearing brings. I reason the two experiences are thematically similar for a number of reasons. Both involve long periods of not going anywhere. Both involve a surprisingly large administrative burden if you do want to travel. Both involve seeing only a select few people, a blessing and a curse.
Both also involve an interminable temptation to snack. People’s well-meaning gifts are invariably of the chocolate variety, or else clothing. Piles of both mount at an alarming rate.
I am looking after a baby. But I am also looking after a mother who has just had major abdominal surgery. Trying to make sure my wife eats enough when she feels - her words - like a cow, is a constant challenge. I resort to launching grapes in her general direction.
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Bennett’s use of the word detumescent makes me laugh out loud. My baby continues crying, not understanding the advanced wit.
One entry in Bennett’s diaries in particular stands out for me: “As an over-seventy, I am officially exhorted to remain isolated and indoors, which is to say that my usual going-on now has government endorsement.”
As someone in their mid-thirties with many of his friends now scattered to the winds and to children of their own, the parallel with my own descent into social isolation - and therefore the lack of change since I have become a parent - did not pass me by.
I also read some David Sedaris, a man who narrates the comic mundanity of everyday experiences better than anyone, as well as Ann Patchett and Elizabeth Strout, fine people watchers in my stead.
Still no one quite prepares you for quite how mundane the early period can be. Spilling a smoothie on the carpet is the most exciting thing that happens to us on day four. We remark how fortunate it was we had bought carpet cleaner a few weeks earlier, anticipating spills by a baby, not an adult.
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I have already misnamed my own flesh and blood on several occasions. I’ve become so used to being around another new child in recent months that his name automatically spills out. Negative dad points.
My mum asks if Noah had any middle names. I say we haven’t decided yet. That, evidently, is a lie. We have. I just don’t have the heart to tell her that we have decided to double barrel the surname, with my wife’s coming first - I worry she will take this as a personal affront.
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I mark the news events a week after Noah’s birth. The Israel-Lebanon truce is fraying. What’s more, conflict in Syria has resumed. Noah’s grip of geopolitics is slipping.
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Style choices are very important for a baby. Dungarees, we decide, are a must. As is a Christmas outfit for his first seasonal outing. We buy a suit that makes him look a bit like a teddy bear for his first trip out into the big wide world, our effort to pop to the local coffee shop only thwarted by my inability to unfold the pram.
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I put Noah in his dungarees for the first time today. He cried instantly. This disappoints my parents, who had bought the outfit.
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Several days into acquiring Noah, we appear to have acquired a plumbing problem. I’m not sure what’s more irritating, his cries or the whine of a tap that won’t turn off.
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A friend of mine once told me that having a child was like getting high. At 4am, after Noah hasn’t gone down for two hours, I politely disagree.
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The temptation to drink is growing. We decided to buy a bottle of our favourite sparkling wine to celebrate the birth when we returned home. I believe they call it wetting the baby’s head. That bottle is as yet unopened.
I have personally taken a liking to several of the beers at our local brewery in Westerham. I agonised over which I would have first upon my jubilant return home. I last five days before opening something called Nama, which the can informed me is a 3.8% rice lager. I also bought one called Helles Belles, just in case of emergency. That is now also gone.
It reminds me of my pre-parenthood drinking. There’s always one on a stag do, isn’t there? Last year, in Prague, I was introduced to one such fellow. Relatively tall and relatively chunky, he looked like he enjoyed a drink. And so it transpired.
After landing at the airport, we were whisked off to a boat tour, our very own booze cruise. In a cool box under the wheel, our captain offered a host of shots to purchase. Our friend bought 24, two for each of us.
Most of us had one. Others two. Others said it was too early, and there was a long weekend ahead of us. This left some 10 remaining as the boat pulled back into port. Sealed in individual tubs, like how McDonalds might hand over your ketchup, we had assumed we could pocket the leftovers for later. The captain informed us that this was not an option, and they must be consumed on board.
Our friend had all ten, shouting “yee-haw” like a demented prospector high on moonshine.
Stepping off the boat, our group started walking to the next destination. Shortly after, we realised we were one short. We found our friend slumped head first again a wall, trousers around his ankles, having fallen asleep mid urination.
Later, we lost him again for several hours. We found him passed out on a Hooters toilet. The morning after, when we went down for breakfast, we found him drinking champagne.
A few months later, at the wedding, he apologised profusely for his behaviour. Before the stag do, he and his partner had a still-born child. He wanted to drown the unbearable grief.
This story comes back to me as Noah rouses from a nap.
Week 2
Has it really been a week already? Time is playing tricks on us. Days feel both brief and drawn out.
We made it to Costa today, which feels like an achievement. It was a six minute walk. We both had suitably Christmassy gingerbread lattes, my wife’s decaffeinated, mine regular. Noah slept through the excursion, missing the opportunity to add points to his loyalty card.
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Newcastle are playing tonight. My team, borne of some odd accident of being an Alan Shearer fan back in the 90s. Noah will be wearing the baby Newcastle kit I purchased mere hours after the positive pregnancy test. I’ve decided I don’t want him to be a footballer. But I want him to enjoy sports in all their glory. And to pay for my Sky subscription.
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I start coming up with insane theories as to why my baby isn’t sleeping/is crying. Is it because he prefers the blue onesie to the yellow one? The nappies with the zebras on to ones with the foxes? Being fed with my left hand to my right?
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Noah’s hair makes me chuckle. It’s grown thickest at the back, like a mullet. On top it’s thinner. It’s like he’s an 80s Australian who refuses to let his receding hairline get in the way of a timeless cut.
You can see all of his bald patch now his head isn’t covered by a hat. In hospital, when his temperature was checked, we were recommended he have one on, as he was a touch on the cold side. At home, our health visitor seems surprised to still find it on, explaining that, should Noah want to lose any heat, the only place he can do so is through his head.
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I’ve built a small chair for Noah. It wasn’t my intention to do so. He’s barely functional as a human, let alone able to sit up straight. But my work bought me one. And it is adorable. Four little legs and a backboard that reads Noah above a baby blue elephant. It will be stored in our spare room with all the other things we bought for when he’s a bit older, but will almost certainly forget are there so will end up buying again. Sorry work.
Other gifts have arrived in droves. Cards fill several of the living room shelves.
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Noah’s sneezes are a Shakespearean act of melodrama. He shivers for five seconds, before throwing his head back, then forward again with the sheer force of his snot projection.
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We empty the nappy bin for the first time. It’s a simple but elegant contraption allowing you to twist-tie the binliner’s top after each nappy goes in, minimising nasty smells. The resulting product reminds me of a necklace, but instead of being made with pearls, it’s soiled diapers. I’m starting to decipher which of Noah’s staccato yelps are innocent and which may add to that line.
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Despite what was nominally a better night’s sleep for Noah, my tiredness deficit is beginning to build. If it were an economic deficit, the ruling government would have prescribed austerity by now. My wife has bought a book about sleep. This is for the baby, not me, I’m disappointed to discover.
To me, Noah sleeps fine. Specifically, he does so with his arms above his head, bent at the elbows. It reminds me of the pose a red panda pulls to make itself look big in the face of danger, but just makes it end up looking cuter.
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Noah’s umbilical cord stump fell off today. It is one of the weirdest objects I’ve ever seen, a crispy black wafer with a small blue clamp attached to it like a cable tidy. It’s gone in the bin after a moment of madness in which my wife and I discuss whether the done thing is to keep it.
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I’m rapidly losing track of the days. I’m reminded it’s Friday because a few of our friends come round after this thing called ‘work’. It reminds me that, had I only taken two weeks of paternity leave, I would be back in the office that following Monday.
Everything has changed since the arrival of our little one. But things like having our friends over for drinks feel oddly normal, an anchor to our former lives. The friends are besotted by Noah, the woman in the couple in particular. The man is more nervous. I remember well when that was me.
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We’ve woken up to something called Storm Darragh. To mark the flooding, Noah soaked through two outfits during the night. We’ve been told to stay at home. Fortunately we weren’t planning a holiday just yet, only a trip to the hospital for our ten day check-up.
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We get a call from my wife’s sister. Her five year old boy has just gone to see Santa. He was given a toy. The boy asked his mum whether he could give it to Noah because it would make him happy. Cause of death: cuteness.
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I’m thinking ahead to week three’s entry in this diary, fearing we are now entering a rather unexciting and predictable routine. I fall asleep during The Holiday, hardly something to write home about. My wife informs me she has booked a host of visitors in the next few days, however. My social life now resembles Freshers’ Week, with an additional baby.
We’ve already found ourselves telling the same stories about the birth, how he’s sleeping, how he’s feeding, multiple times. I’m incredibly glad that our friends will be popping in and out, but aware that we must deliver the same spiel again and again to the point of tedium going forward.
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Before becoming a parent I had a theory that 90% of parents became parents because of the outfits they can dress their babies in. Having become a parent, I can confirm that theory is 100% true. Today, my child has variously been a teddy bear, a Christmas tree, and a banana.
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It’s the little victories that keep you going. After a few hours of grizzling, Noah finally goes down for a nap. I take the opportunity to run to the supermarket for excessively priced snacks. The victory is pyrrhic: he stirs as soon as I’m back.
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Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad was toppled today. Noah’s political influence has returned, clearly.
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With all of the guests coming round, and me offering them a drink, I find it hard to refuse one myself. My steady, though not excessive, intake of a couple of drinks a day leaves me craving my pre-parenthood passion of running. I open a bottle of wine to welcome one couple, which I then have to finish the following day, leaving me trapped in a vicious cycle of mildly tipsy childcare.
I have a newfound respect for dads who have stayed in shape and not succumbed to the ‘dad bod’. I’m sure Noah doesn’t care about my weight gain, nor that I now badly need a haircut and shave. But I do.
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I accidentally describe Noah to one friend as “good as gold and better”, like I’m Bob Cratchit, and he’s Tiny Tim. But Noah is no Ebenezer Scrooge. To prove this, I’ve put a tiny stocking entitled ‘My First Christmas’ on his Moses basket. I realise I’ve bought presents for everyone except him already, and that he won’t care.
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We set up the baby monitor tonight. My wife’s ingenuity never ceases to amaze me. With no flat surface to stand the camera on, she constructed a makeshift book bridge to hold it in place. I was briefly surprised to find a can of deodorant in the cot, until she told me it was a substitute for the baby ,to make sure it would be in the field of vision.