Paul Greenwood: Your First Grandchild: Useful, touching and hilarious guide for first-time grandparents

I have been constantly delighted by people’s enthusiastic reaction to our subject. Far from having to coax information and opinions out of them, grandparents, parents and grandchildren alike have been delighted to share experiences and pour out confidences. So much so that, in the end, I found I had amassed enough material for several novels!

There seems to be a widespread resurgence of interest in the whole question of grandparenting. After a partial eclipse, the importance of the relationship is assuming its rightful place in the general consciousness. Recently, the novelist and grandparent Alice Thomas Ellis wrote (in The Times , 26th September 1998):

Social engineering has interfered with natural processes and often grandma lives far from the family and cannot assist on a daily basis. A surprising number of young women seem to regret this. Having grown out of the rebellious teenage stage they find they want their mothers … New man has not quite lived up to expectations …

This article was written in response to a new theory of evolution, hot from Dr Kristen Hawks of the University of Utah, which asserts that man’s biological success in becoming a larger-brained species was entirely thanks to grandparents:

Grannies were able to forage for roots and vegetables which they could give to their daughters when they were having babies, creating a well-nourished, thriving third generation … Grannies became so important that the menopause evolved to stop them having children of their own late in life.

Apparently, we are the only species in which the female has a menopause, which allows her to become a good, foraging granny! Well, we may no longer be in charge of grubbing for roots and vegetables, but there are still many other ways in which grannies, and grandfathers too, can help – as we have tried to suggest in this book – to create a thriving third generation.

We hope you get as much fun and pleasure from being grandparents as we do.

‘Mum? Listen! I’m pregnant. You’re going to be grandparents!’

No matter how often you may have anticipated this news and even longed for it to come, no one can be prepared for the wave of emotion that hits you upon actually hearing it. I remember clearly the moment of my daughter’s phone call – the joy, excitement, relief and slight apprehension; the feeling of being about to step into a new role, and the awareness that my genes were being carried on into the future. I remember shouting to my husband, ‘You’re going to be a Grandpa,’ and his rather startled expression.

Dozens of thoughts raced around my mind at once, because nothing can prepare you for the peculiar mixture of emotions you feel when you hear the big news. Of course, some of you will already know what I’m talking about. Questions come tumbling out: ‘When is it due? How do you feel? When did you find out? How does X feel about it? (The partner, if involved.) Have you got morning sickness? Have you told anyone else yet?’

And the unspoken questions: ‘Have you any idea of just how much your lives are about to change? How on earth are you going to manage in that little flat? What’ll happen when you’ve only got one lot of money coming in?’ There is sometimes even a little selfish demon muttering things like, ‘But I’m too young!’ ‘I’m not ready to be a grandparent yet!’ ‘What about my busy schedule?’

Telling Mum and Paul was probably the most exciting moment of the pregnancy. After my husband, they were the first to know. It was only in telling them that I really believed it myself. Before that, it was as if I had made it up – it justdidn’t seem possible. I had done four tests, as the first was very faint, and although they were all positive I wondered whether they were wrong. When I told them this, they laughed and reassured me – which, in a way, has been their role ever since.

Reactions to the big news vary in the extreme. Rather like the parents themselves, the grandparents-to-be may shuttle backwards and forwards between excitement and apprehension. One young woman’s mother and father arrived on her doorstep the day after they’d heard, bearing armfuls of flowers and champagne: ‘I couldn’t drink the champagne, of course, but I needn’t have worried, they had the lot! But I just couldn’t believe how thrilled they were. They’d taken a plane from Scotland especially. Their happiness took away any slight misgivings we may have had and convinced us we’d done the right thing.’

Another was not so lucky: ‘The first thing my mother said to me on hearing the news was, “Well, I hope you don’t expect me to look after it for you.” I was shattered. I had phoned her full of excitement and so happy and she burst my balloon. I felt as if she had slapped me over the face. I cried my eyes out when I got off the phone.’

One grandmother (in the book Grandmothers Talking to Nell Dunn ) said, ’I think the real function of grandparents is to support the parents – above all.’ A wise remark – and this support cannot start too soon, right from the moment you hear the news. If, by any chance, you have any misgivings, now is not the time to express them. Just keep right in there behind the parent, or parents as the case may be. After all, they’ve usually got enough anxieties without our adding to them.

‘My first reaction was very mixed because my son wasn’t married to his girlfriend at the time. I told him they should tie the knot right away, but he said he didn’t want anyone to think it was a shotgun wedding. Also, I suppose, because they weren’t married, I had never thought of myself as a grandmother before. It was a bit of a shock.’

It’s a good idea to vocalize your support, be it practical or financial, or both. There’s nothing more reassuring to a young couple starting out on that biggest rite of passage than to know that they have some help to fall back on. And, of course, this is all the more so in the case of a single mother. No pregnant woman bravely facing bringing up a child alone needs to hear anything negative.

‘For 11 years my daughter had told me that I would never be a grandmother because the doctors had pronounced her infertile. So of course I was utterly delighted, really over the moon, because I never expected it. And they decided to get married too. I said to them, “Don’t get married for my sake,” but they insisted they wanted to anyway. No, really, apart from having my own child, I couldn’t have felt more pleased about anything. Well, I was ready for it. I didn’t want to be too old a Grandma. I am 65.’

Another area in which grandparents (all right, perhaps more usually grand mothers ) can be supportive is in being open-minded about healthcare choices during pregnancy and the parents’ plans for the birth. These can sometimes seem very bizarre to our generation, but as will be explained in more detail later, pregnancy care and birth practices have changed beyond belief over the past 20, not to say 30, years. So if you don’t know what she is talking about when it comes to folic acid or toxoplasmosis, ask her what they mean, and don’t pooh-pooh things you don’t know about yet. I say this from experience because I was quite a sceptic until I knew better!