Ask the “experts”

This week marked Marley’s fourth month with us. It’s a fairly short amount of time, really, but it feels like we’ve already been through an enormous amount of changes with him.

He’s smiling, laughing, and trying to talk already – it’s sometimes hard to believe that he’s the same little thing that arrived with us in June. 

Having said that, four months hardly makes us experts. 

Far from it, in fact.

So it was a bit of a surprise when our NCT teacher (still don’t know what NCT stands for…) invited us to go back to one of her classes, to meet some expectant parents, provide some details of our birthing experience and offer some general advice to the soon-to-be mums and dads.

NCT Classes

When we were attending the classes before Marley was born, one of the most helpful ones we went to was when the parents of actual, recently born babies came along and shared their experiences with us. It gave us the chance to ask all the important questions; what do we take with us to the hospital? Will we ever sleep again? Is it all as absolutely terrifying as we think it’s going to be? 

Although they didn’t actually provide us with any satisfactory answers to these questions, the very fact that they were there, with their babies on show as living evidence that they’d got through it, was good enough. 

So we agreed to go back, and re-pay the favour – and as usual we were provided with the complementary tea and biscuits. 

When we were last there, my wife had just been diagnosed with gestational diabetes and she therefore couldn’t have any of the biscuits. Bad times. 

So I (kindly) agreed at the time that, for the duration of the pregnancy at least, I would abstain from them too. 

Except I forgot….

Death stare

Well, we went to the class, and the biscuits were being passed around, and the chocolate ones just looked so good. A chocolate digestive was already in my mouth when I spotted her, across the room, glaring at me – as only she can. I hadn’t even known I was doing it. 

Anyway, the diabetes was thankfully over with as soon as Marley was born, so when we returned to the class, she could have as many as she wanted. 

I’m not sure how much help we were to the expectant parents, and I must admit there was a little feeling of pressure in being the ones to offer advice on being a first-time parent with only sixteen weeks experience ourselves.

But it was a fantastic reminder of how far we’ve come in that short space of time with little (big!) Marley.