Sausage and Chickpea Stew

One pack of sausages (I use Cumberland style by default, but works with veggie ones too). 2 Onions, peeled and chopped 2 Potatoes, peeled and chopped 3 Carrots, peeled and chopped Handful of white mushrooms, chopped in half 2 tins of chopped tomatoes 1 tin of chickpeas 2 heaped teaspoons of chopped garlic (for the lazy, pre chopped from a jar) 3 heaped teaspoons of paprika 1 heaped teaspoon of cumin 1 teaspoon of worcestershire sauce 1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard A few chilli flakes to taste (you can add a couple a it'll give it zing without most kids noticing) 1 mug of stock (real stock if you like, but a veggie stock cube will do) 1 big oven-friendly cast iron pot

Method: Fry onions and mushrooms in some olive oil with a knob of butter in the pot. Meanwhile preheat oven to 200 degrees C / gas mark 7 /390 F.

Once onions are soft and slightly browned, add the sausages and cook until they start to brown.

Add the spices, stir until they coat everything, then add the chopped vegetables.

Add the tomatoes last.

Add the stock and worcestershire sauce. They should cover the veg.

Place in the oven with the lid on. Cook for about an hour, removing the lid for the last 20 mins. Sauce should be thickened/reduced and not too wet.

Serve with couscous, rice or crusty bread.For a family of four you should end up with about half left to portion up and freeze for later.

So, second time round it's different. I've been off on additional parental leave since my son was six months old, so the bulk of the weaning has actually fallen to me. This means I get to experience the fun of vomited up butternut squash and half choked on rice cakes... More seriously, the joy of watching a baby experience new food is great! The keen-ness and excited waving of hands when a baby when it wants more of a new taste is wonderful to behold.

So there's certain things that are useful in weaning, especially at the early stage it's baby rice and pureed vegetables all the way. Kit-wise, get some silicone ice-cube trays. These are ideal for storing frozen pureed vegetables and much, much easier to get stuff out of than the solid plastic ones. Get cheap ones in multiples, Wilkinson's or a pound shop for real value, if you buy the official "Annabel Karmel Weaning Tray" you'll get ripped off. A cheap hand blender is pretty essential too.

Freezing pureed veg or fruit allows you to break out a few cubes and microwave them for any meal (make sure it's cool before feeding it to the baby!) in varying combos. Half a butternut squash will fill a tray, so it works out as a very cheap way to feed and an easy way to store the food. A weaning guide of some sort is useful, if nothing else than for inspiration and knowing which foods to avoid early on. You can borrow those from a library though and a good for tips on quick mixing recipes (it's where I picked up butternut squash, apple and cinnamon as a good combo).

Feeding wise, my most useful tip is when trying something new, mix in a little of something the baby has already tried. This can lead to odd combos (banana and mashed potato!), but avoids too many looks of utter disgust when a new taste is encountered.

With all this pureeing, we've steered away from shop bought pastes and baby food; too many of those would bankrupt you anyway. The only real exception to this are Ella's Kitchen (warning, sound) or Plum pouches, which are pretty ideal for stuffing into a change bag when heading out for the day. One thing we did do, is sign up for every baby club in sight when our son was born, this meant that just before weaning we got a vast number of vouchers for free or cheaper baby food. Bananas though, being easy to carry and easily mashable are similarly useful on outings and a lot cheaper.

Overall weaning is going well so far. My son is now moving on to yoghurts and other tastes. Hopefully his good mix of early foods will stop him being too picky when older...

So, what did you use and find useful when introducing your baby to solids? Post your tipes in the comments!

Oh, yeah. And its always worth reading the government guidelines.

Seriously, you can faff about with optimising the correct combination of blankets and tucking them in just right and then watch them kick the layers off with the ease of an escape artist... Or you can just invest in one of these mini sleeping bags. The child stays a consistent temperature, they don't kick off blankets and thus have more chance of sleeping. Which also means you have a better chance of sleeping, which is a win for everybody.

As a first time parent, you worry about all sorts of things that, really, you don't need to. You take too much to the birth ("Pillows! We need Pillows!"). You agonise over a birth plan (Really, a plan? What were you thinking?) You focus on the event and not the afterward. When they arrive, you hover over every one of your child's moments as if it may be their last, ("is it breathing! Check! Just in case..."). You worry they might be ill, or be feeding too much or too little or the wrong kind or amount... You worry if you will identify with a child of the opposite gender. Your partner agonises over if they've breastfed long enough, after all there are STUDIES! You fall prone to the media scare story of the week. You panic at the onset of a sniffle or the sight of chicken pox. It's all a great big unknown.

Second time round you know what works for you. Which bits of the mountain of contracdictory advice are laughable and which are key. You're more confident in your parenting. Oh, and you have a toddler wandering round and demanding your attention, so you have less time to worry.

It's best not to worry.

Second time round you find your grove quicker and just get on with it. What else can you do?

Wish I'd known how to do that first time round...

For comparison, originally we had a more bulky model we inherited from a relative. While it looked the height of luxury with it's padded seat, solid construction and so on, we found that really hard to clean (and one thing weening produces is a lot of mess) and took up a lot of space. So even if IKEA isn't your thing, I'd err away from any model with padding or similar. More hassle than they're worth.

I made the decision for a variety of reasons. The first was an entirely selfish one. I didn't want to be the dad who missed his daughter's formative years due to work. I was strongly of the opinion that I didn't want to get to old age and regret not spending more time with my children as they grew up.

The second reason was to avoid that horrible cliche of the woman going back to work part time and man being the "breadwinner". Yuck! We wanted to share the childcare as equally as possible. So we decided to both go part time and see how it went.

I was fortunate in that my employers were very flexible. I was actually moving jobs at the time, and both old and new employer were very understanding of my wishes. So, I think my main message to other dads here is that employers are more amenable than you expect. To be in the position of being able to ask a potential new employer to work part time, when the job was not advertised as such and get the result you want is a great feeling. We're maybe slightly worse off financially that we might have been, but it's not impinging hugely as we still have two salaries.

It has certainly been an adjustment. The first few months took a fair bit of getting used to. My daughter was about 9 months old then, and I tended to stay at home and just enjoy spending time with her. It took a while to get into the habit of going out and about, and being more proactive doing things. But over time I've developed a repertoire of fun places to visit and activities to keep my daughter amused, from sock puppets to a trip to the local farm shop and restaurant.

Balancing work is a certain art. It's very tempting to let it spill over into the 5th day or the odd bit of evening. So one of the skills to develop is an iron will to avoid opening work email, tricky when you're somebody who takes their job seriously. Made harder for me as I chose Tuesday as my day with my daughter and so there's a stop-start to the week that requires me to structure certain bits of work dependent on others more carefully.

Overall the experience of being a dad with some more time to spend with my daughter has been excellent and I don't regret a moment of it!

She's so interested, that we use an ablative layer of books to protect the DVDs on the TV stand as they distract her from causing too much chaos!

One of the first things we received when she was born was a Bookstart pack. It's a great idea, getting books into the hands of parents and kids early and encouraging parents to read to their offspring as soon as possible! It's certainly something I can recommend both as a good shared experience and a satisfying feeling of achievement for a new parent.

I started reading to her very early on, within the first few months. In those early Sunday mornings when I was the one doing the baby shift so my wife could have a break. I read her Mister Magnolia, which is a fun Quentin Blake poem I remembered from my own childhood and that my mum had given to us. The rhyming sounds really seemed to click with her, even if the book is way too advanced for that age really, I knew the words off by heart and that was an advantage to finding the right voice.

Later on That's Not My Bear and its many companion books were the reading material of choice due to the touchy-feely patches and easy to turn pages. We had lots of luck recently with Dear Zoo and Hide and Seek Bunnies - though these were once she'd got enough motor control to lift the flaps (about 9 months onwards). You'll need to get a little less squeamish about books being damaged though with those though as infant hands are imprecise tools...

So anyway, the key thing was really to start early and make it a part of routine. At a year old she practically demands a story is read with her before bed, I'm immensely pleased by that and hope it's the start of a lifelong love of reading!

So what tips and advice do you have for reading with baby?

This took 3-years to write

I have been trying to sit down and write this story now for the best part of three years. This morning I woke up super-early with one thing on my mind, so with a bit of procrastination, here we go...

Nearly three years ago, Janette and I were expecting a baby (to be fair, Janette was doing all of the work, I was just expecting). Five weeks before Elizabeth was due to be born, I had an exhibition stand to run in Birmingham. On the Saturday evening as I was walking back to my car to drive home, Jet called me to ask when I would get home - slightly unusual as she doesn't normally do that sort of thing after a show - I said I would be back by about 6.30ish. She said that she had a pain, so once I got home we went straight to the hospital (Leicester General).

The hospital put a baby monitor on her, and after some time told her that she had a water infection, and things would be fine and to go home and rest. We went home, stopping off for a quick snack, and went straight to bed. Now timings go slightly awry at this point as it is a while ago, but bear with me! At about 6.30am Jet got up saying that the pain was still there, so went to the toilet. She came back quite quickly and tried to go back to sleep. A little while later she went back to the toilet (at which point I went back to sleep - generally you are shattered after an exhibition!!). I woke up about five minutes later and she still wasn't back, so I went to investigate. She was on the toilet in a lot of pain.

I asked whether she thought it was still a water infection, and she was pretty sure it was. I asked whether she wanted a couple of paracetamol (I won't tell you the response). In the end, I decided I had to call the hospital again to see what they thought. Luckily, the hospital were very good, they asked a few questions about the night before, and asked about how Janette was doing. I said that it seemed odd that the pain that Jet had was coming in waves, every few minutes when they only thought it was a water infection. Was it possible that she was in labour? At that point they asked me to take a look (!) and see if I could see anything. When I saw a head (!!!!) they then asked me whether I had phoned an ambulance! Worse still, I heard the lady on the other end of the phone pressing an alarm button and shouting for a midwife to get to the phone! At the same time as phoning the ambulance, I got Jet to get onto the bed - as she was still on the toilet - and then had to deal with slightly inane questions from the ambulance operator (They: "is your wife breathing?" Me: "can you not hear her?!").

From then, it all goes a bit blurry. I remember having to go out of the room twice, once to hear what the excellent midwife was saying to me, and second when I remembered that the front door was locked and even if the ambulance turned up in time, they wouldn't be able to get in! Both times, Jet thought I had run away! I remember shouting at the inane ambulance operator whether it was her or the midwife I should be listening to (I had two phones on the go and trying to hold a babies head with two hands and have two phones on the go is not the easiest of things especially as she kept asking whether Jet was breathing!!). She said the midwife, so I put the phone down on her. The midwife, on the other hand, was amazing. She was calm and controlled, and was excellent at explaining what to do. She told me to keep talking to Janette, to keep reassuring her that everything was okay. When things really started happening, she told me how to hold the head (at one point I remember saying the the midwife that I wasn't sure what was happening but I didn't think it was a baby coming out! To be fair, it isn't often that you see a baby at that angle, and don't really think that they eyes are a third the way down the head!). She was fantastic when I told her that Elizabeth's colour was odd - she was a bright purple, which seemed odd! She told me when the head was out to turn it clock-wise slightly to help the shoulders come out. After that, it was super quick; the body and legs made a break for it and were out in the blink of the eye. She then told me to put Elizabeth onto Jet and to keep her warm. Luckily, literally at the moment that I stood up from putting Elizabeth onto Janette, the ambulance turned up.

The midwife stayed on the phone for another few minutes after the ambulance crew turned up (to be honest, although lovely, asked very similar questions to the operator - and had no clue how to get to hospital!!). The ambulance lady asked me whether I wanted to cut the cord, which I did; Jet was given some gas and air, which although slightly late apparently was quite good! We found some clothes for Beth and Jet to take to hospital, and they went off to the General (the long way around, with Jet giving directions!). I left a few minutes later and phoned everyone I could think of on the way to the hospital - including Jet's mum who phoned me back ten minutes later to see if she had heard me correctly, and my Mum to go and start the clean-up operation! Miraculously, everything went well. Beth was fine (apparently purple isn't bad), she was breathing and although cold was absolutely fine; she was small, but not tiny. Jet was up and about quite quickly after getting to hospital - there were a few stitches needed; and got back into pre-pregnancy jeans immediately! We met the midwife who had talked me through the delivery, and she was absolutely lovely. In fact, I have to say that most of the staff at the hospital were incredibly attentive and caring. Jet and Beth were in hospital for a week, as Beth got jaundice.

The experience was amazing. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want to repeat it for all the tea in China, all the way through, I worried for Jet and Beth, the speed that everything happened (she was born within half-an-hour of Jet getting up the second time!) didn't allow for nerves, you just did what you were told. A lot of people said at the time that it would be an experience that would make sure that Elizabeth and I had an amazing relationship. I don't know how you would tell whether that were true or not - Beth and I do have an amazing relationship, but would we have anyway? Jet was a star, I have no idea how she got through it the way she did, and to sit up and be moving around so soon after giving birth was admirable.

One thing I have taken away from the whole thing is this. That I am in an amazing and unusual position to have been able to do something that not many other people do. I have a wonderful and beautiful wife and daughter whom I love incredibly and make every day special. Thank you Jet for bringing such a gorgeous girl into the world!

Milk teeth need the same kind of dental protection as your own, so obviously the first instinct is to brush your child's newly arrived teeth. So, down the shops for a special baby toothbrush and baby toothpaste we went. The brochure that came with the special baby toothbrush suggested that you "approach the baby from behind so they don't see the brush coming". I gave that a go, but even semi-asleep babies are not that easily fooled.

After that failed, I instead opted for the reverse-psychology approach. Because, well, it's a baby: Put anything chewable in front of them and they'll put it in their mouth! So I put the toothpaste on the brush and then held it just out of reach of my daughter. One quick swipe and in it went. Obviously it was the wrong end of the brush, but hey it was a start! A bit of further guidance and she was chewing on the correct end. She was even pulling the brush in and out. Success! After a few tries she was happy to let me do some brushing as well.

Of course what you don't consider is that this new item on the parental agenda is a disruption to the normal, bath, bottle, bed formula you've perfected over 6 months. Brushing is a little too like play. So added an extra few minutes to the bedtime routine.

Plus this technique is also liable to end up with you covered in toothpaste. But you're a parent, you've been covered in worse...

The App store is full of educational and/or playful applications for kids. Like all apps they seem to vary in quality. A good example of this are the various "Flash Card" apps, where you can teach your child words and pictures. Some are hastily put together options with stock photos and bad typography and expect you to pay for it. Others like Dream Cortex's Baby Flash cards (iTunes link) have nicely designed imagery and are free. It's got nice bright colours and a baby can tap the screen to see the next card. Dream Cortex also do a fun app called Baby Piano Lite , which allows you to play tunes and animal noises on a brightly coloured piano, great for my Daughter who loves her bright plastic DJ Puppy Dog piano. The keys aren't huge though, so it can result in quite a cacophony...

Other than that. Well there's a 101 apps for naming your baby. A fair few to record feeds and nappy changes that suffer from interface overload. Some apps that claim to act as baby monitors and tweet you if they hear anything(!) Nothing else that stands out after a trawl.

Any I missed?

She still has moments of being over tired, not quite ready to sleep, easily bored, grouchy and needing distraction. Since she likes high contrast, bright colours and music I experimented with sitting her on my knee watching iTunes visualiser on the laptop.

She's quite hypnotised by it. In fact it seems pretty good at calming her and getting her to a position of being lulled to sleep. That's a tip I figured was worth sharing.

The jelly setting for the visualiser seems best, and musically old rock music like Queen and Starship seem to do the trick, though I'm sure some Chill Out stuff would do if you're musically inclined that way. Your child my vary.

As a pushchair / stroller / travel system that's suitable from birth it's pretty good. It's sturdy and stable despite its three wheels and its big wheels mean it's pretty handy off road too. It handles cobbles and gravel without any problems. It's surprisingly light and you can carry it or man-handle it up steps without too much difficulty.

The straps mean baby is always nice and secure (although ours decided that the padding on these is ideally placed to suck or vomit on). Our little one seems content to fall asleep in the Buzz most of the time, which is probably a high piece of praise...

It's a light frame and the gas-pressure system makes it easy to unfold. However, it is more bulky than it looks (largely from the wide base and wheels), meaning it can get a bit stuck in confined spaces and requires some disassembly to get in an average size car boot. You won't be visiting cute oldy worldy shops in it, well, we did and it was an utter pain. Similarly the wide base can make for interesting escapades on trains or in busy public places. Mind out for any stacked displays of goods as you go past too...

The fact that it's quite expensive and that you then have to pay for extras is the most irksome thing about the Buzz. Car seat and parasol aren't cheap, and having to pay for the under-slung shopping bag is a cheek - the rear-attaching bag it comes with barely holds the rain cover. Basically the manufacturers make the cash off in two phases, initial purchase and "actually we do need".

Speaking of the parasol, the hood for the push chair doesn't cover much, so it's useful to get the parasol. However the parasol for the Buzz, is a bit inflexible, and you end up having to constantly realign or reattach it if your aim is to actually keep the baby out of the sun.

The Buzz does offer a lot of flexibility though. Your child can face you or face the wide world and as they grow can be sat at different angles, the Buzz can be a pram or more of a pushchair. There's room for growth with the differing sizes of internal padding and movable footrest, so it'll last a while. You can also slot in your Maxi-Cosi car seat or a carry cot (though these are, yup, extra).

Overall : The fact that five months in we're keen to move to a lighter option probably says a lot. It's a solid and good looking design, but it loses out in some of the practicalities.

Unfortunately there's a problem there, a lot of the info aimed at men isn't good.

I bemoaned this fact to my partner and she discovered and purchased a copy of Fatherhood: The Truth for me.

I was really pleasantly surprised by it. It's an honest, thoughtful and funny book about the ups, downs and highlights of fatherhood. What's nice about it is it isn't afraid to show the bad stuff, multifaceted worries and doubts. It's got a nice dry line in humour and a tone that suited me as a cynical optimist. Of course if you're a new dad, then chapter one is probably the most relevant, but you can read ahead to know what awaits you...

So that's my recommendation. What books helped you?

Like all good ideas it boils down to something simple: get kids and dads out from under partner's nose on Saturday morning (allowing for much needed sleep), meet local dads with similar interests and eat some fried food. Sounds grand to me!

Show your interest and support by twittering (if you use such) the first three characters of your postcode and the #gdbf (see who else is interested here, I imagine more complicated geolocation shenanigans is on the way).

Kudos should go to Mike Ellis for conceiving the idea. Let's see where it goes!

Bizymoms.com caters not only to moms but dads too! So to show our love for all you dads out there we are launching a funny-fun Fathers Day special contest! Craziest tie contest!

We'll have two winners. Each of our winners will receive $50, an autographed copy of Dr Gary Chapman's new book, "Love is a Verb".

Stop.

Tempting as the retail therapy is, these are credit crunch times so better to be a little savvy. Especially as the first key thing about baby clothes is the first batch are grown out of in about a month and a half... That ever so cute newborn sleep suit has a window of about that long to entertain you, the plain one is probably better values, put the spare cash in their college fund instead.

The second key thing is that because of this temptation, there are may parents with bags of baby clothes cluttering up their houses who just want rid of them. If you're of the age when friends are all starting to have kids, then chances are there'll be somebody you know about 3 months ahead wanting to offload some nearly-new clothes. Don't feel guilty about accepting such offers, as I guarantee you'll be doing the same in about, oh, about 3 months. Either that or you'll be Freecycling them.

The third key thing is that you always underestimate the generosity of relatives, friends, work colleagues and passing acquaintances. Everybody loves a new baby, and the number of people who "saw this and just had to buy it" is both touching and will land you with a surplus if you're not careful with your own clothes habit.

With working during the day and erratic sleeping patterns for you both at night, you may end up with brief windows to actually talk properly to your partner about something other than the quality of the baby's last poo or how little sleep you got last night.

So one thing we've found useful is designating a particular "date night" where, no matter what, once baby is asleep we will make time to have some nice food, a long chat, a drink and be together.

It's a simple thing, but nailing it to a specific night and saying "it will happen come what may", is worth doing.

One thing that's consistently worked for me when my daughter gets to this mood, is to plug in a hairdryer and turn it on. You don't want to point it at the baby, just have it on and in audible distance. It's amazing the effect this can have on soothing her to sleep.

Other parents I know report similar effects from the vacuum cleaner and washing machine. You can apparently buy CDs of white noise and gizmos that generate special tones, but frankly if you have a hairdryer anyway, and it works, those seem a pointless extra spend. Though they do negate the risk of accidentally burning your house down by falling asleep yourself with a hairdryer running...

The consultant advised us that our twin girls had arranged themselves one breech and one sideways. Not terribly cooperative of them and maybe a sign of things to come. The consultant told us that basically a caesarean would be less risky for the babies but more risky for mum and a natural birth was vice versa. The decision was left to us although I felt it should be more my wife’s choice as it would be her going through with it. It seemed strange that the consultant didn’t advise one way or the other but he seemed satisfied when we decided to have a caesarean and booked us in for 39 weeks.

There were a number of false alarms whilst waiting for the caesarean date and the house was littered with bits of paper with times written on them. After the first few though we became more relaxed about it. The girls had obviously decided to stage some sort of sit in and were not coming out by themselves. We were scheduled to arrive at the hospital early, 7am I think, but someone rather rudely jumped the queue by having an emergency caesarean. Lots of waiting around wasn’t good for either of our nerves and I just wanted them to get started. It was nearly lunchtime when my wife was wheeled away and I was left alone on the ward. Later a tiny midwife took me to the operating theatre and we waited some more. I’m not the most talkative of person at the best of times but she tried in vain to make small talk as ever more midwives, doctors and students kept walking past into the theatre.

I was dressed up in scrubs and then escorted in where a little stool was waiting for me by my wife’s head. She was surprising cheerful, but told me she had had lots of drugs. I couldn’t believe how many people were in the room. There was a huge blue screen across the bed so we couldn’t see anything, but there must have been 10 or 12 people. The operation was over very quickly. The bed swayed surprisingly violently and I had visions of the babies holding on refusing to come out. A small cry was soon heard, quickly followed by another. They bought the babies for us to see one at a time and I shall never forget my first glimpse of their little faces. I was then escorted out back to the ward. I had a long list of people to phone and text to say everyone was ok and what the girls weighed. I felt slightly removed from everything that was happening and none of it was really sinking in. Only when they all arrived back on the ward did it start to seem real and it was a strange feeling of excitement, fear and smugness.

The advice is this: Try and stay relaxed. Even if it is 3.30am and you've been up for the tenth time that night. If you are relaxed you'll probably get back to sleep a little quicker. If you're awake most of the night but have managed to stay relaxed there's also more of a chance you'll cope with the day ahead a little better.

Of course, if staying relaxed is more than you can manage, console yourself with the knowledge that my children have, between all three of them, managed to keep me and my wife awake most nights, for most of the night, for the last seven years. We're still here to tell the tale but damn, I'm tired!

Tick.

The consultant and midwives disappear.

Tick.

I'm left alone in a very empty room. Crap, it's hot in here. Sweating.

Tick.

They said in a minute right? Starting to pace.

Tick.

Oh, a midwife! Can you... Oh, she's just picking up some paperwork. They'll come for me in a minute. Right...

Tick.

What if something's gone wrong? They mentioned something about emergency c-section didn't they?

Tick.

I'll take a look outside, there might be somebody in the corridor I can ask. May as well have some tumbleweeds there.

Tick.

More pacing. Mild panic. Where the heck is everybody? (Language somewhat edited at this point).

Tick.

"Ah there you are, we'll just take you through."

Tock.

Five minutes later I had a daughter. Those five minutes went considerably faster.

Until a few weeks ago this wasn't a problem. However suddenly I  need soothing songs at 4am for a new baby that's griping. Turns out, this is less of a problem than I first thought. Babies aren't picky, so any song, sung at a reasonably slow speed, with a certain depth of voice and a soothing intent seems to do the trick.

Currently - my random gibberings jazz-fusion improvisation aside - I'm finding that 80s TV themes and early 80s/90s alternative rock seem to work really well. The theme from The Littlest Hobo, Lovecats by the Cure and Hope Street by the Levellers are the current favourites.

Even though I made sure I got a decent night's sleep the night before the baby came back home, it still shocked me how utterly draining the first night at home was. It's the combination of your own and your partner's lack of sleep, with a baby that is more active at night because that's when the milk comes. Add to this a baby's stomach that can only hold a thimble of milk at a time, so needs more every hour, and you can probably see why new parents look so haggard.

Combine this with the "baby blues" that commonly kick in for your partner in the first few days and you have a recipe for a whole new brand of fun. Oh yes, and you no longer have a collection of qualified midwives just the other side of the room if you need them.

Suddenly, you're the key support structure. You'd better be ready for it!

Now this situation is made even more problematic by the fact that breast feeding is the way to go health wise and as your partner can't express milk in the first few weeks, meaning only she can do the feeding. So what can you do?

Everything else. Seriously, the more weight you can take off your partner's shoulders the better.

Of these, the biggest help I found I could be was as a distracting soother. Dad's presence can provide a sleep window for your other half. It's amazing how some swaying, rocking and a few half-remembered song lyrics can keep a baby from griping for a couple of hours even if they won't sleep when left alone. Those few hours of sleep for your partner will be valuable.

Plus, those moments of soothing are a great opportunity for bonding. The first time you rock baby to sleep in your arms is a memory to treasure.

It's the "should I start this, or wait?" problem. At any moment you might have to drop whatever you're doing and disappear off to hospital (or more likely, disappear off across town to home and thence on to hospital).

Don't start that bit of work; ignore those friends; don't do that DIY; life on hold while you wait.

You get anxious. Jumping at the phone when any call could be the one. Anxiety bleeds over into the rest of your life and makes you snappy. This gets progressively worse as time goes by.

So there isn't much advice here, just a case of: be aware of the waiting is having an effect on you.