My shock at getting cancer cer at 38
William Sitwell thinks parenting is harder the second time around, but is too tired to say for sure
Me and Howard Donald. Men in their early (very early) 50s with fresh ankle biters. One a restaurant critic with no restaurants to critique, the other a rock star without stadiums to rock in.
This week, the Take That star bared his soul on a podcast about the struggles he’s had becoming a dad for the third and fourth time in midlife.
It’s been physically and mentally draining for him, he said, adding: “I would advise, to fathers who maybe already have children that may be in their teenage years, don’t do it.”
Howard’s comments are a little needling, I have to say. With two wonderful teenagers I also now have a two-year-old, Walter, and new addition Barney, almost eight weeks.
Is it harder, friends of mine ask. And my part-truthful answer is, I don’t know. My brain has a rather useful mechanism of eradicating various memories. I can vividly recall feeding my now 16-year-old son with a bottle in the middle of the night. But I have zero recollection as to whether I was knackered the next morning.
All I know is that I’m knackered now. On a Zoom call last week with some friends with whom I would have been shooting in Scotland, one pal congratulated me on the large number of grey hairs that had appeared since we last saw each other 12 months ago. Should I blame Barney for these, er, distinguished features? Ought he to take credit for the deeper and darker bags under my eyes?
I’m glad to see that my contemporary, Howard, is not without such grey flecks himself. But would I offer the same advice to a friend contemplating more sprogs at my age?
As Loyd Grossman used to say: Let’s look at the evidence.
Where life really is different is that when I first had children, in the early Noughties, I had an office job. Oh the joy that that prospect holds in my mind. An actual, very real excuse to leave the house. I remember the horror of being asked in for a meeting with HR where they outlined the two weeks of paternity leave I was entitled to. Is it compulsory, I asked?
Two decades on and not only do I not have an office, but as it’s lockdown I can’t even leave the house with the excuse that I have restaurants to review.
This very act of scribbling is about all the relief I have. “Darling, I’m cooking Walter’s lunch, can you watch Barney for a minute?” my wife Emily calls.
“Sorry, no can do. But I’ll be with you in 408 words’ time.”
I almost pleaded with this paper’s features editor to please make this a 2,500-word article. That could almost stretch to a couple of hours of peace.
Babies are relentless. And once again we walk around the house clutching the instruction manual, otherwise known as Gina Ford’s Contented Little Baby Book. Like a graphic equaliser we try to tweak Barney’s waking and sleeping moments in the hope of getting to that beautiful place, the veritable over-the-rainbow spot where he might “sleep through the night”.
Another key thing has changed in 20 years: now the official advice is that the baby shouldn’t sleep alone for the first six months. One of us has to be there. And as I can’t breastfeed, sorry, that’ll be Emily’s job. And there’s no point both of us being exhausted, is there?
So, while I am in the bedroom next door, I am aware of the odd scream in the night. “Yes, you fed him at 3.30am,” I’ll say in the morning, trying to make out that I also had a terrible night…
Another change is hangovers. They don’t just hurt. They are an almighty torment when faced with the task of a nappy change at dawn. The miserable pain of fumbling with little legs and sleeves and pots of Sudocrem while feeling that a pig has laid one in my head, coupled with the frankly immoral feeling I have changing nappies around 11pm while drunk, has rendered me a model of sobriety.
I pour scorn on my friends whose children have now either fled the nest or gone to university. Their newfound freedoms, their lie-ins, their drinking wine by the barrel-load, I sneer at.
While they ponder on another bottle of wine after dinner, I’m sterilising plastic ones for Barney. As they snooze on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon, developing their middle-aged spread, I’m lifting Barney out of his cot, developing my core strength.
While they ruminate gently on the future, on retirement in their 60s, I’m keeping my brain active, developing new business ideas… to pay for another set of school fees.
I’m also flexing my memory skills. Two-year-old Walter has that charming trait of wanting the same books read again and again and again. I can now recite the whole of Dr Seuss’s The Lorax off by heart.
I’m useful, I’m fruitful, I’m youthful. And yes, darling, I’ll go and check on Barney now…