Pregnancy

Break out the champagne! It’s that time of year again. The neighbour’s daughter has been officially declared pregnant.

That’s right. In a few short months, her amniotic sac with rupture and her waters will break. First thing tomorrow morning, I’m building myself an arc. At the rate she goes and with all the rain we’ve been having recently, I don’t think the country can handle that kind of deluge.

Heed the Chipster’s warning: head to high ground!

I don’t mean to sound negative about this ‘blessed event’ but the girl takes liberties with the definition of fertility. Tribbles breed more slowly. In the neighbourhood, she’s been nicknamed Texaco, on account of her being open 24/7 like the local service station. I don’t understand the reference myself. I do know that it’s simply amazing how a womb can recover so quickly. Dunlop would be proud to invent a rubber so elastic.

I’ve yet to have the precise dates when the little bastard is due – forgive my lapsing into the technical term for a fatherless child but I believe in reporting the facts accurately – but I’m sure I’ll be blogging about the child as soon as he goes womb-free. I’ll have to. I won’t get much chance to sleep.

Have you ever tried to sleep with ear plugs? It’s torture. You can hear every beat of your own heart. That’s not fun. Try drifting off to sleep while you’re aware of your own mortality. It's like trying to sleep though X Factor. Yet the alternative is to listen to somebody else’s child screaming through the night, which is also like listening to X Factor. And the only person it seems to affect is me. Its grandparents sleep in a different room. A screetching baby doesn't seem to bother them. And the mother won’t be there. She’ll be out looking for another mate with an opposable thumb. The father, naturally, doesn't live with them. He needs his sleep in order to continue his career as a thug on the local sink estate.

There’s something sadly Darwinian about the way that these people reproduce. They are a breed apart and one doesn’t like to ask questions in case they show you pictures. Not that questions of paternity are ever raised. Discussions about ‘the father’ are politely stepped around. It’s the new politeness. The only thing I’m sure about is that it’s not mine. The only way I’d become involved is if it involved artificial insemination and I was the last fertile man on the planet. Even then, I can’t say I wouldn’t try some one-on-one action with a dairy cow first, just in case by some miracle involving an understanding God, it works and produces a human baby.

I just hope this child doesn’t look like the last. I’m not saying that her previous child was ugly but the first thing the midwife did was to slap its face and stick a dummy up its arse.

Ah, the miracle of childbirth!