He has been with us since Monday and it already feels like it’s been both a hundred days and ten minutes since we met him. People will tell you, I know because they told me, that you cannot prepare for the love you will feel when you hold your child in your arms. What I wasn’t prepared for was how much of an understatement that was.

I cried a lot, I laughed from time to time, I stared for hours at his face, marvelled at his fingernails and how much hair he had. I also stared in awe at my wife who shouldered the responsibly to carry our son for nine months and then safely deliver him to the world. She will always be my hero.

Lets just put this out there as well, being a man in all this is easy. Wait, let me rephrase that. Being a man in the delivery room is easy if you can avoid the landmines, don’t make things about you and keep your eyes on your wife and not on the business end of proceedings.

We have a responsibility to take care of our family which can be stressful and frightening and those feelings should not be ignored and it’s important for men to talk about how they’re feeling throughout the process. It is frightening to look after an infant by yourself when you’ve never done it before.

You have to learn on the job.

I’ve also checked on him about 50 times since I started writing this. He’s fine.

As I’ve said before, this blog is supposed to be about what it’s like to be a new dad and a football fan so here’s my football update for this week. I saw the Dundalk game against Bohs last week, I don’t remember any of it. I saw 35/40 minutes of Man Utd v West Ham the other night, don’t remember any of it or even what day that actually was. It feels like it was weeks ago but the calendar tells me it was a few days ago. I watched Real Madrid v Barcelona the other night and I would genuinely struggle to tell you what score it finished or anything of note that happened in the game.

I was asked a couple of times if I was going to try going to Oriel on Friday for the Pats game. There was absolutely no hope that I was going to be going but I did think I’d get to watch it on LOITV. That didn’t happen either.

We had visitors which was lovely and when they left, they took a lot of our energy with them and included in the energy that was lost was the ambition to disturb the sleeping prince, go upstairs, get the laptop and pay for a game that was already ten minutes old.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on it anyway. How could I? There is a brand new life in a tiny but surprisingly heavy body sleeping in my arms. Every noise that he makes, every twitch in his sleep, every attempt he makes at opening his eyes, every time he headbutts me because he thinks I have food for him, everything reminds me of how important it is that I’m here for him, for my wife, for my family because this is when I’m needed most. There will never be a time like this ever again. My first born will never be a few days old ever again. This is where I belong.

Still. Would have been nice to be in Oriel on Friday. 5-0 wins don’t happen every day. Mon the town.