Matt Rudd - William’s Progress

‘Morning. I’m the health visitor.’

‘Morning. Hi. Come in, come in. How are you? Can I get you a cup of tea? Or something stronger? No. Silly. Of course not. Don’t know what I’m saying. Tea? Yes, right away. Isabel and Jacob are in the front room. Okay. Fine. Right. Okay.’

Brilliant. The same guilty ramblings I spout when I’m going through customs. Which is why I always get searched. And now why this health visitor is going to take Jacob away from us.

‘Here’s your tea. Hahahaha. Can’t remember if you said white. Or black. So I’ve brought both. I mean milk. I’ve brought milk.’

Calm down, you idiot.

The health visitor tells Isabel that she shouldn’t co-sleep. It’s dangerous.

Isabel tells the health visitor that it isn’t and that it’s up to her how she raises her own child.

The health visitor makes a note.

This is going badly. I explain, apropos of nothing, that the bruise was an accident. She makes another note. Isabel rolls her eyes really theatrically at me, as if to say, ‘Why on earth have you mentioned the bruise?’ I throw back a ‘What?!’ face, as if to say, ‘What?!’ The health visitor makes another note, so I pretend I have some e-mails to answer.

Ten minutes later, the coast is clear and Isabel reveals that the woman asked if I was abusing her. Apparently, they have to ask. Apparently, Isabel saw it as a good opportunity to make a joke about our marriage. ‘Only mentally’ she had answered, laughing. And instead of laughing, the health visitor had made another note.

I think we have a routine. Bed at 8 p.m. Awake at 5.30 a.m. Naps at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. This is fine. This is survival, at least. And Isabel and Jacob seem to be sleeping rather beautifully together. I know this because I still can’t relax. It’s not just the whole panda thing; it’s the responsibility. The sheer mind-blowing responsibility of having a baby totally dependent on you. Well, us. Well, her. But at least we have a routine.

We don’t have a routine.

The routine is that I have to get up at 5.30 a.m., even though I haven’t slept, and read Thurber to Jacob while Isabel sleeps. She’s still recovering. He prefers Thurber to Hardy – I can tell by the way he dribbles faster. Isabel reckons I should stick with The Hungry Caterpillar but Jacob finds the inevitability of the caterpillar’s descent into teenage obesity depressing.

I can’t do it any more. I can’t go shopping, tidy the house, change eight thousand nappies, make tea, make coffee, bounce Jacob to sleep, bounce myself awake, tidy the house again, attempt to write thank-you letters to all the people who have sent us chintzy flowers, lurid babygros and mindless, noisy, cluttery plastic toys. I can’t then tidy the house again, make breakfast, lunch, dinner, a second dinner (because, as I think we’ve established, Isabel is breast-feeding and needs all the energy she can get, even if this means matching the caloric intake of an Olympic decathlete) and a midnight breakfast, and tidy the house again. I can’t do it.

I love being a dad. I’m delighted we’re all alive and that Jacob appears to be not just growing but taking an interest in serious literature. Honestly, though, this is even worse than the third trimester, when Isabel was at her itchiest, her most disconcertingly oversexed, her most bloated and her most intemperate all at the same time.

It’s not worse than the third trimester. I have slept. Hallelujah, I have slept. True, I have been forced from my own bed, but this is understandable. They need each other. I need sleep. The sofa bed: my new salvation.

Isabel’s mum has decided that Isabel’s decision not to buy a pram because she wants to carry Jacob everywhere is a silly one. ‘You are not a hunter-gatherer. You are not toiling in the harsh conditions of the African bush. You are in Britain. Your mother didn’t escape from the tyranny of Communist Poland and marry your fine upstanding English father in order to produce offspring that behave like they live in a hut. So, darlink, I have been to John Lewis and have spoken with the lady who is expert in prams, and I have bought you a Bugaboo.’

The Bugaboo is the four-by-four of the pram world: excellent for pushing up a mountain, but something of a handful if you have a small house and you confine most of your pram-pushing to standard-width pavements. Still, it looks cool. And Caroline, the most vocal of the NCT baby-group mums (yes, they have formed a gang and she is the leader), has a sister who claims her children are five centimetres taller than all the other children at her nursery solely because she used a Bugaboo. This, pontificated Caroline, is because it’s the only buggy that allows the child to lie flat. This helps their bones to stretch. When I pointed out that it might be genes, she replied that it might…but was it really worth the risk? Was it really worth having a buggy – or a sling – which could stunt the growth of a baby?

‘I bet the Hunchback of Notre Dame’s parents didn’t use a Bugaboo,’ said her husband, in an attempt to diffuse his wife. And then the conversation moved on to torn perineums.

Only two days until I go back to work. Bravely, I volunteer to take Jacob out for an hour on my own to give Isabel some morning ‘me-time’. I aim for the park, proud new dad pushing quite grumpy baby. Grannies smile as I lift him out of the buggy to show him what our local trees look like. In a few months, he’ll be on those baby swings. In a couple of years, he’ll be on the next swings up. Then he’ll be on the big slide. Then he’ll be snogging another teenager over there. Then he’ll be smoking cigarettes behind the hut over there. Then he’ll be sitting on this bench with his own baby, thinking about the future.

This is it now. This is my life. It is all mapped out. My plans to resign from my boring office job, retrain as a sailor and enter the Vendée round-the-world yacht race have been put on hold indefinitely. Ditto resigning and moving to a yurt on the Mongolian steppe. Or resigning and moving to Buenos Aires to drink heavy red wine and master the tango. Adventure and unpredictability have vanished, or rather, they have been condensed into the child looking up at me right now. I think this is probably fine.

‘Are you looking for salvation?’ A man in an anorak is peering down at me through milk-bottle glasses.

‘Sorry?’

‘You look sad. Are you looking for salvation?’

I notice he is clutching a pile of pamphlets entitled Let Jesus Save You . Right now, this seems unlikely. Can’t a parent sit in peace mulling over lost freedoms without being God-bothered? I tell him I’d love to be saved, but I have a nappy to change and it’s going to be a big one. So he leaves.

Alex, newly gay and newly full of joie de vivre , has popped round with Geoff to give us our baby present.

‘Surely the tropical rainforest you sent over was ample?’ I ask innocently.

‘Don’t be silly, dears. This is the greatest moment in your lives – ever. Flowers alone would not suffice. Geoff and I have been talking and, well, we’ve decided we would like to give you something very special indeed.’

Oh, God.

‘Something to mark this wonderful time in your lives.’

This is going to be bad.

‘Your three lives.’

He grips Geoff’s hand, and then Isabel’s. Like he’s Madonna about to walk on stage.