Revenge of the Inner Adult

22nd July 2005

REVENGE OF THE INNER ADULT

About 14 weeks ago the observation of a thin blue line announced that Mrs Kumara and I were to embark on the time honoured journey from conception to birth and beyond.
Unpredictable, exhausting, nasty, rewarding, involving weird bodily fluids ….
and that was just the conception.
Following that it will just get harder. Omnipresent blog legend Russell Brown told Mrs K at a gig recently that I would change and that when his partner got pregnant he went crazy and learnt to cook. I already know how to cook so for me it’s reading. I will attempt to read my way out of trouble. Mind you I’m not the sort of person who is going to go out and buy 10 books on parenthood. No.
Ten books is not nearly enough and I can get some from the library.

So it was... that I found myself at the previously unmolested pregnancy and parenthood sections of the central library trying to look both cool and dad like.
On to my stack immediately was this book...

Why not? I may not be a complete idiot but have have worked hard and am some way there. If I combine this book's moronic wisdom with titles such as "The New Zealand Pregnancy Handbook" then I may achieve a degree of balance in my fresh baby education.
I was also advised by thoughtful relative that Bill Cosby had written a book..

But really, his jersey attrocities preclude me from having anything to do with a publication with his name on it. In case you don't know what I mean or have forgotten, I reluctantly include the photo below to jog your memory. In the name of all that respresents good taste and for retina safety I have removed all of the (very many) colours involved..

DAVID BAIN'S ALLTIME HERO

I also got out a book called "The Bastard on the Couch" which is mainly shelfish New York guys making excuses for their indulgent lives.

While I am going through theoretical and attitudinal changes, the changes Mrs Kumara is going through, and will go through, are marked and very real. Let's face it guys, it is the mother who has to go through the crap to produce the miraculous bundle of joy and I really have no time for anyone who bemoans “The lack of attention given to the man in the pregnancy process”. Why should they? what do we have to do, really?
Yesterday, I read about an Episiotomy, the gory details of which I won't go into here, suffice to say that the thought of it would have even the inscrutable Colin Meads screaming in terror.

Body morphing expansion is the most obvious change and Mrs K body is changing and exploding at a frightening rate. We went to the shop to buy a bra the other day and they refered us to a german parachute factory.
I have been around eh.. (mostly on the internet -ed) and I know what double D means but what the hell is an "F" bra?!
The mind boggles. The mind also wonders if it is Mrs Kumara who should have the website instead of me. MRS K'S WONDEROUS BREASTS - BIGGER THAN BELGIUM.

The visit to the bra shop was overall, comprehensively embarassing. I know some men may regard the lingerie shop as a ideal environment, providing the opportunity for rampant voyuerism and perving, but I'm not one of them. The only person who looked more uncomfortable than me was an island guy in a Warrior's jersey (poor bastard). We gave each other support across the room with the universal silent Polynesian hello (nonchalant demeanour, the raising of eyebrows and head simultaneously) and went back to being uncomfortable. As I was leaving he was perfecting his cloak of invisibility and reading an Australian Vogue.
Anyway Mrs K now has the best support the luffwaffe can offer and because I am forbidden to make fun of Germans anymore, I will just say that I know the bra will work because they dont make crap because it's illogical.

Generally I can say post-conception "times they are a changin' " and I am sure that "F bra lingerie shop debacle" will not be the last time this experience will take us out of our comfort zone and into the unknown. I often joke that I don't have an inner child, I have an inner adult. Well if that's the case, the inner adult has initiated an insidious overthrow of the prevalent regime in something of a Coup d'Etat.
Our lives will not be the same again... and I can hardly wait.