“I’ve just been to the Doctor’s and told I’ve only got nine months to live!”
“Really, what’s wrong with you?”
“My girlfriend is pregnant….”

When you first find out you are going to be a father a number of emotions cross your mind. Joy, fear, anticipation, fear, pride, did I mention fear? Being the Peter Pan like figures that we are, we digest the news as if the Wendy Lady herself has just told us that it’s finally time to leave Neverland and grow up.

The reaction from your friends, your fellow lost boys is mixed. Naturally they are all delighted for you, but one or two have that look in their eyes that simply says ‘your life is over mate’. Others say that they didn’t think you had it in you. You are not sure, which you prefer.

And so the nine months of waiting and preparing begins. For the first few months nothing changes much, apart from the odd scan, increasing visits and phone calls from family members and the odd moan from the expectant mother (actually, no change there .

As ‘B’ day draws nearer though you start to clear a space in your life and your home for the impending bundle of joy, and soon realise that for something so small, this baby is going to take up an incredible amount of space. OK, you’re no Jesus, but replacing that pool table with a cot, or your Roland digital drum kit for a dresser and changing mat certainly seems like sacrifice at the time. It will all be worth it though… won’t it?

For the final three months of the pregnancy it seems like everything is on hold. The baby could come any day now, in fact your family seem disappointed on a daily basis that he, or she is not out, walking, talking and thinking about a family of it’s own yet. Any twinges? No. Any sign of her waters going? No. You’ll call me as soon as there are any developments. Yes.

The cravings of your partner reach their peak. In her normal, unpregnant life, my other half is a vegetarian, except for chicken and fish. Although I often joke that this is like claiming that you don’t smoke, except for cigarettes, I accept that it is quite common. In the final month of pregnancy however, she became a vegetarian, except for chicken, fish and steak pies. Now, I’ve not double checked on wikipedia, but I do believe this is stretching the concept somewhat…

And finally, the day arrives, although not always on schedule. Our big day was in fact, 9 days later than originally forecast, my unborn child it would appear inheriting my punctuality, or lack thereof from the word go.

After an 18 hour labour, this baby seemed reluctant to meet the big bad world and eventually had to be delivered by section. Although we had decided not to find out the sex of the baby before birth, my partner was convinced all the way through the pregnancy that it was going to be a boy. They say a mother’s instinct is never wrong? well, not this time, as our baby boy turned out to be a baby girl and Holly was born at 7.15 on Friday 30th January 2009.

The feeling I had when the Doctor declared ‘congratulations, you have a daughter’ was quite incredible, like nothing I had ever experienced before. I guess it is a real ’spec of dust in the eye’ moment for any new father and when you hold your baby for the first time it just gets better.

It’s now 4 weeks since the birth and already I feel like a veteran nappy changer, feeder and burper. Life becomes a whirlwind, with days merging into sleepless nights, indeed I write this while waiting on a bottle to warm for the 2am feed.

Life may never be the same, but far from being over, a wonderful and exciting new chapter is just beginning, which gets better every day. So what is my male perspective on becoming a father? Quite simply, it’s the greatest thing in the world.

Women like to talk. Sorry if I’m pigeon holeing here, but you do. In those old BT adverts Bob Hoskins told us “It’s Good to Talk”, but sometimes we all need a bit of quiet time, a chance to collect our thoughts.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good conversation as much as the next man. You’ll often find me locked in debate in the pub, furiously animated as I argue with my drinking buddies over the Kit Kat’s status as biscuit or confectionary. For the record, I class it as a confiscuit, neither biscuit, nor confectionary, but somewhere in between.

After a long days work though, we just want to sit down, relax, switch the telly on and pretend we’re not really watching Property Ladder. Unfortunately for us, 8.00 is exactly the time when women like to offload every little thing that’s gotten on their nerves during the day into their partners ear.

Now, evolution is a wonderful thing and the modern male has developed a defence mechanism, which stops our brain from deciding that death can’t be any worse than the incessant noise which is driving us to despair. It’s called ‘mmhhhmm’.

Like cats, we have learned to detune ourselves from the key of ‘woman’. Some time ago, perhaps when we were still living in caves, we learned that those funny creatures without the beards, which we had nothing in common with but were strangely attracted to liked us to agree with them.

We learned to focus our attentions elsewhere, but to listen for the gaps in noise and to fill them with ‘mmhhhmm’. Unfortunately this wasn’t quite good enough. Those women were cleverer than we first thought and soon spotted the pattern, thus was born the phrase that every male dreads…

“You’ve not been listening to a word I’ve said”.

The words on their own are enough to drive fear into the heart of the bravest of men, but when combined with “the face” (you know what I’m talking about), many a good man has lost his steel and been forced to indulge in the hell that is a two way conversation about the queues in Ikea.

Fortunately, there is a way out of this that doesn’t involve murder or Hari Kari and that is to combine ‘mmhhhmm’ with bullet points.

If we work on the simple basis that it takes a woman around 3 and a bit minutes to say what a man can in one sentence, then a 10 minute stream of consciousness will normally involve 3 main points of discussion. We have learned to look out for keywords, for example: -

“My mum’s”
“Argos”
“X Factor”

Now, deep down our girl probably knows that we’re not really listening to her, but when faced with “the question”, if we can quickly reel off 3 or 4 key phrases then it is normally enough to throw her off the scent and allow us to get back to Kirsty and Phil.

And in the end everyone is happy. Our girl has had her rant, she’s happy she’s got such an understanding boyfriend who is always there with a sympathetic ear, and we have learned how to move from a 1 bedroom flat in Manchester, to a semi-detatched in Bristol for under 295,000 pounds. Domestic Bliss.

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This male perspective was inspired by Limmy’s fabulous Mmm-hmm video. For more information on the ongoing confiscuit debate, check out Philosophy and Biscuits.

Just about every girl I know loves to shop. Whether it’s a new pair of shoes, a new hat, or just window shopping and oggling the latest styles that their bank balance tells them they can’t afford, most girls love nothing more than a lazy Saturday afternoon wandering through their local shopping centre.

For us guys, however, a Saturday afternoon (indeed any afternoon) spent shopping is our personal version of hell. Each hour spent shopping is an hour of our lives wasted, an hour in which we could have been doing something constructive, such as playing online pool, or rearranging our collection of Bruce Willis DVDs.

You see for me, shopping is not a leisure activity (and I believe I speak for most males here), it is a necessity. If I need a new pair of shoes I will buy a pair of shoes, but I will ensure that no unnecessary time, or energy is expended in the purchase of said footwear. There is no need to try the shoes on, I’ve been a size 9 for 10 years now. Buying a new pair of dress shoes, goes like this for me: -

1) Leave my house
2) Train to town
3) Walk to Burtons
4) Quickly scan dress shoes under £30
5) Find my favourites
6) Ask for them in a size 9
7) No, I don’t want to try them on
Yes, I am sure
9) Walk to cash desk
10) Pay for shoes
11) Walk to train station
12) Train home

I have the whole operation down to military precision and can be back in the warmth and safety of my house within 45 minutes of leaving it. The process can be cut to 11 steps, by substituting 11 and 12 with “Walk to pub”.

I’m pretty sure that we’re not built for shopping. I can run about a football pitch for 90 minutes and still be going strong at the end, but 15 minutes with my girlfriend in Primark and my legs ache, my head pounds and all I can think about is curling up in a corner and crying myself to sleep.

And to make the whole experience worse, I am always asked my opinions. Yes, I like that bag. Yes, it goes well with that hat. Just buy the thing and let’s get out of here while part of my soul is still intact. Too late, she’s decided it’s not quite the right shade of aqua marine.

So ladies, give your man a break this weekend. It’s not just him, it’s all of us. The mantle of hunter/gatherer has passed to the female, you were built to shop, we were built to drop.