Leigh Sanders: A bump in the road

"I’m definitely pregnant.” The amount of times I heard those words in the lead up to my other half Leah taking the test, meant when that little cross appeared in the window it wasn’t much of a surprise.

Why wouldn’t she know what she was talking about? She knows her own body better than I ever could. So I had already started to begin the acceptance process before we had ‘that moment’ first-time parents talk about.

Scientists talk at length about the Big Bang Theory creating the universe as we know it. We’ve all been in science museums watching the screens as that mahoosive explosion creates stars and planets and emanates general chaos before our very eyes. I imagine that is what the inside of my brain looked like for the first few weeks.

Every thought hits you at once. ‘I don’t earn enough’. ‘I can be a good dad’. ‘What if I drop the baby?’ ‘I hope it likes football’. ‘I’m not ready’. ‘She will be the best mum’. Positives and negatives slap you about a bit like in the movies when protagonists have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other.

If you are like me you may sometimes shy away from making any big decisions. Ignore it and it may go away, that kind of thing. I get that from my mother. But nobody can make this decision for you.

Finally, your brain kicks into life and you prepare yourself to take the challenge on.

I’m 30 now, time to start behaving like an adult. In fact we found out around my birthday, so I saw it as an extra, life-changing gift.

Friends and family were a huge help to me to the point I’m at now. Those who know me well may have been surprised that I would be one of the first of the school gang to become a parent. Because of this I was worried about some of their reactions. I feared that their faces would tell me I was doing the wrong thing.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. The positivity that met our revelation made me realise how blessed we actually were. Of course it will be difficult. As one new parent here at E&S Towers told me: “You will have something to do every minute of the day.”

But I now feel I have that support network parents crave, and suddenly my fears are being drowned out by excitement.

Those first few weeks are strange. As a first-time expectant father, you really don’t feel like much is happening at all. Your partner is the one experiencing physical and hormonal changes. They battle sickness and nausea on a daily basis. along with back pains. There is very little you can do other than offer support and try and make this time a little more bearable. It’s like you are outside the ‘circle’.

And then I did experience ‘that moment’. It was the first scan, at New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton. I knew nothing about these beforehand.

And I had assumed baby would be asleep in a somewhat comatose state and not really up to much.

So when it leapt around on the screen with the energy of a newborn puppy I felt a lump in my throat that I really hadn’t expected. I felt paternal. I was involved. Finally.

Now we are close to finding out the sex, and the next lot of planning and excitement can begin. I wouldn’t know where to start with prams or cots. So no doubt I have some more surprises awaiting me round the next corner.

It still feels a million miles away (well, six months at least).

But I know that in the blink of an eye I will be rushing with Leah to the hospital, and I will be crying out for those calm winter days when our biggest worry was when to start buying dummies.

What I quickly found out as a first time expectant dad:

• Maternity pillows are the work of the devil. Ever shared a bed with a pet and been pushed out to the edge? Times that by 10.

• People still knit. I assumed this pastime had largely died, but suddenly grandmothers and all their friends are preparing all manner of clothes.

• You feel guilty about alcohol. The look in your partner's eyes when you open that beer shoots straight through the heart.

• Nappies can bankrupt you. I walked down the baby aisle for the first time when we found out. I wished I had a bigger savings account.

• You are now less important. When your mum asks how your girlfriend is before you on the phone, you know you've reached parenthood.