Dads really are the unsung heroes. An unsung hero is defined as a person who “makes a substantive yet unrecognized contribution; a person whose bravery is unknown or unacknowledged”.

If you are a new Dad or Dad-to-be then I must tell you that you will take strain in ways you cannot even imagine right now. You may feel neglected and kind of useless for the first year of this wonderful new edition’s life. I am yet to speak to a Dad who found it to be ‘fun, fun, fun’ all the way. Important family members will now hardly make eye contact with you when they come to visit, they will target right in on the baby & Mom duo. Baby related topics will dominate any conversation to be had in your house for a very long time to come – be prepared to feign interest in things such as the exact circumference of your child’s head and how many poo-nappies he or she made that day. People will not sympathise with you about the insane levels of sleep deprivation, nor will they feel sorry for the abuse you are taking from your hormone-crazy wife, simply because you did not actually give birth to the child. Your role in all of this will be hardly acknowledged at all and the most you can hope for is people telling you that your child have your nose, eyes or ears. And forget about the man-cave. The man-cave will be as non-existent as sex…

But I must also tell you that you do make an invaluable contribution and that it is recognised (sadly often only in hindsight, but still). From the very beginning where you hold your wife’s hand as together you pray for a healthy heartbeat, to childbirth and labour (one brave day I will write about the improper abuse my poor husband underwent in his role as midwife), right through to where you make litres and litres of jungle juice to sustain a breastfeeding mother and nights when you are on baby-duty – your contribution is invaluable!