Ani

I am proud to announce that our second daughter, Ani Fflur* was born on Friday 19th August at 1.30am.

She is beautiful and she is big. 9lb 12oz at birth to be precise. So big in fact that she could not be delivered in the normal manner. She was born by cesarian.

Its a bit being like ordering a sofa, only to find upon delivery that it's too large for the front door. There's a lot of humming and harring; huffing, puffing and head scratching. Finally, after a protracted struggle you realise that the front window will have to come out.

The Lady in her usual insurpressable manner is back home, running back and forwards, dancing with our one-year-old in the kitchen and vacuuming the floors, the walls, the celling and my face.**

Being a big baby, Ani is very settled. She is feeding well. In fact that is all she is doing: feeding.

This has caused me to ponder, "What would it be like to have an obese kid?" I mean, I'm not exactly svelte myself. I've put on a fair bit of pork since I heard the words, "Jake, I think I might be pregnant," and faced up to fact that I could no longer live my life in the manner of Keith Richards on a stag weekend.

But a big fat kid?

You do see them, don't you? Fat families. Pastie munching parents in wide corduroys, making lightsabre noises with their thighs; their arses - a strange undefined entity between their back-fat and leg-spread - gently swaying in the breeze; with junior in tow, pounding the pavements with his fat feet: a needy whine emanating from his chocolate stained gob, reiterating the fact that his brittle, under-exercised ankles are simply not up to the job carrying his gallumphing heft the full distance to the sweet shop. Come on, its bad enough a child having to grow up with the stigma of a massive dad and a fatty mum without force-feeding the bugger so he grows toffee-tits by the age of ten.

The other angle, I suppose, is the bloater amongst the sticklebacks. The fat kid in the thin family. How embarrassing would that be? "I'd like to introduce you to my daughter, Mary. Unfortunately, she is too fat and hideous to be seen in public, so instead I have brought a marionette of Chancellor Schroder to the christening. Look, I can make him dance..."

Yes, I know, I've been a bit cruel to the fatties. If we all become hideously distended and wobbly-boated in the future I probably deserve all I get. Who knows, next time I move house I might have have to remove the window just to get the bloody kids in.

One thing is for certain though, big or small, fat or thin, there's nothing like looking at your new-born daughter fast asleep in you arms and just trying to imagine just who that person will be.

Promise. Hope.

All just magical.

*Pronounced Annie Flee-ur. Fflur is the old Welsh word for flower.

** Well, I was foolish enough to eat musli.