D- Dads

I am very lucky. My partner is a "hands on" dad! A good'un. A grafter. A star.

I know women have the hardest of hard jobs; carrying the baby, giving birth, making the big decisions and then all of the "new baby" politics that take place afterwards. It helps if we can think that the Dads have got it easy, but if you stand back and think about what it's like on the outside, it must be quite hard.

The dad will never feel a comforting kick from inside his tummy, never understand the ecstacy a mother feels at the end of childbirth, never comfort a baby with his own milk and he rarely gets to spend the first night with his new family. Sent off home. Alone.

A new dad will get two weeks off (if he's lucky) with his new child and then he has to be the first to leave, the first to say goodbye, the first to return to work and step out of the bubble and back into reality.

But in this modern day society we expect them to do everything that we do. We expect everything to be equal ,to be shared. And if you've got a good one - it is!

The father of my sons goes to work everyday so I don't have to. He comes home later than he ever did and works through his lunch hour, he sorts out all the bills and sometimes even does the weekly shop on his own, to save me a job. And in return fot this? He is still on the outside. He was working when they crawled for the first time. Not there when they took their first steps, tried their first food and babbled their first words. He misses out on taking them to school on their first day. He can't get time off to watch them in their first nativity play. He won't be there to cheer them on at their first sport's day. He's busy at work so I can do all of these  wonderful things.

For all those Dads who are rolling up their sleeves up, making life easier for us Mums. -Well done and thank you.