“If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters.”

Nora Ephron

In childhood there are three types of time. There is the regular type - 60 seconds in every minute, 60 minutes in every hour. Then there is the super speedy variety; greatly compressed to around 30 seconds for each minute. This is the sort that you experience on those blissful summer days playing Robin Hood in the woods. Just as you’ve just found the perfect bent stick with which to fashion a bow then your mum is calling you in for tea. The final variety occurs during particularly boring maths lessons and also between the point that your mum says “just wait ‘till your father comes home” and the moment he actually arrives. It is slow to the point of torture, and should probably be banned under the Geneva Convention.

It is this last form of time that I seem to be experiencing now. The first 38 weeks of Kerry’s pregnancy seemed to fly by. Now each day crawls past at a snails pace. It probably doesn’t help that I’m finding work a particular pain in the arse at the moment, so the baby’s arrival will welcome a much appreciated excuse not to go in. Yes, yes, I’m aware that this attitude is both selfish and short sighted, but I am unapologetic. I’m going to have at least 18 years of being responsible for this child; the least it could do is give me a day off work.