All of your mates are pushing prams, and everywhere you look you see nothing but dads gleefully tossing laughing babies into the air. But are you really ready to start a family of your own?
It’s an all too familiar scenario. Yet another mate tells you that he’s going to be a dad. You wish him congratulations, followed with the usual jokes about his impending lack of sex and social life. Are you really happy for him or are you secretly a bit peanut butter and jealous?
Here are 16 signs you are deep down, yearning to join your mates on the baby-wearing dad bandwagon.
1. Your partner tells you she’s late and it doesn’t completely freak you out.
2. You start to see your best mate’s kids as little humans, rather than just those smelly little pain in the arses who stole your bro from you.
3. You watch dads playing with their kids on the street and get a strange feeling… is it FOMO?
4. Your jokes are losing their edge, and you’re getting more groans and eye rolls than laughs.
5. Your wardrobe gets daggier by the day, and “fashion” becomes whatever your partner says you look nice in.
6. Your social life has peaked, and those boozy nights and hungover Sundays are rapidly losing their appeal.
7. You’re thinking about upgrading your car, and SUVs suddenly don’t seem like such a ridiculous option after all.
8. You find yourself thinking about your own dad’s parenting style, and what you’d do differently with your own kids.
9. Your interest in DIY is on the increase and you find yourself buying power tools, visualising doing your own extensions and installing extra shelving in the laundry and garage.
10. Whatever ability you may have had to dance has now completely abandoned you, but your enthusiasm hasn’t, and you now dance less like Peter Andre and more like Peter Garrett.
11. You can watch the ‘crowning’ scenes on One Born Every Minute without giggling and/or feeling nauseous.
12. You feel empathy rather than judgement for the parents of the screaming baby next to you on the plane.
13. You don’t totally freak out and run for the hills when your partner mentions that she “forgot” to take her birth control pills.
14. You find yourself “accidentally” browsing the baby section of your footy team’s online merchandise section and stocking up on onesies, beanies, and teeny tiny booties that look like footy boots.
15. You’re starting to feel the burden of maintaining the family name traditions, and “continuing the line” suddenly seems a great deal more important than it ever has before.
16. And finally your financial situation is good, so you no longer have to choose between bills, insurance, petrol and food, and can now afford all of them in the same week. Well, most weeks.
