Where Do Babies Come From?

The Twenty-Eighth of September Two Thousand and Eleven. Wednesday.

That used to be one of my stock gags. Whenever I was at a talk or discussion and the speaker finished with 'any questions?' if the mood was right I would jump in with the high-larious non sequitur 'where do babies come from?'

Twelve years ago today I found out.

My girlfriend and I and I had been going out for just over three years. She was working as a bus driver in Scarborough, and I, well, I was getting the best use possible out of my Creative Arts degree by microfilming documents for minimum wage in Salford. Actually, don't knock that job - it was one of the most enjoyable I've had - good people there, the thing that makes any work bearable. I'll have to blog about it some day. I had a bachelor flat (ha-ha!) in Walkden and between the Unit 4 cinema and Davardi's pizza restaurant where you could bring your own bottle I was poor but happy. But I was miles away from my better third (thank you Andy Fachau for coming up with that one).

Distance is an excellent contraceptive.

We decided I'd move over to Scarborough, get a place together and see how we went on from there. I managed to get a Christmas job, we found a flat - a maisonette really, it had an upstairs and two loos! - and proceeded to make the most of our DINKY existence. It didn't take long...

'Twas the night of bus company Christmas do. It was upon the high seas, on the Regal Lady, the boat that ran pleasure trips out of the harbour. I was my customary seasick self, but I was in good spirits as I had won 10th prize in the lottery - a tin of biscuits. I think buoyed by this we proceeded with our experiment in gene splicing.

Oh, that line on the indicator stick. The way you double check with another one and it resolutely says the same thing. The rest of your life mapped out by a short straight line. One of the pregnancy tests was inadvertently left in the downstairs loo, so I think grandfather-to-be knew well before we told him. The best way to break this sort of news, I feel.

I had a couple of temp jobs over the pregnancy before I landed the one at the station where I continue to labour until this day. The summer of 99 was spent as a conductor on the sea front buses. When Shu Shu was rushed to hospital near the end I was picked up by the bus supervisor at the terminus and whisked away. Turned out to be a false alarm, but the whole thing was a bit uncertain. Two weeks after the due date and it had still not arrived.

I say 'it' - we had decided not to find out the baby's sex. The things we had got in preparation were all neutral colours - not that I have any truck with gender stereotypes - pink and blue are just colours.

I'll spare you (and Shu Shu, the mother) the horrific details of the labour. Suffice it to say, we held off pain relief as long as possible and there was a spurting blood incident with an IV. I think we'd all had enough when the mother, out of her tree on gas, woozily announced 'right, that's it - the baby's coming'. The actual delivery didn't take that long. And at 1.36am on the morning of the 28th September 1999 it all got a bit Johnny Mathis and our son was born. We had boy's and girl's names ready. When he arrived we said hello to him. He had a bit of trouble breathing so he didn't really say anything back. He can't have been that bothered to see us cos he buggered off to the ICU almost straight away. And we'd waited all that time too...

A little later, I went to visit him in his incubator. The nurse encouraged me to put my hand in and this tiny creature grabbed hold of my little finger. A friend of mine has just had her fifth baby. A relative and another friend are about to have their first. By definition it's an everday thing. Yet every meeting between parent and child is magical and unique. My life got bigger and better that day.

When we all came home a couple of days later we spent the first night sleeping downstairs on an inflatable with baby next to us in his Moses basket! We were that nervous and unsure. Twelve years later a lot of that has subsided - not completely, mind. Today, I'm happy enough to enjoy my son's smiling face as he unwraps his presents, the worries about his infant years behind me. With secondary school just started, I'm grateful for this breather before I start worrying about what he'll get up to in his teen years...

More soonliest.