Hello there. I'm Doctor Yobbo, from Doctor Yobbo's World of Bollocks™. Not many people realise that in 'real life', as it were, I do happen to be an actual Doctor, as well as being an actual Yobbo (my caps).In my practice as a Doctor, Men's Health is obviously of vital importance. We have a stack of copies of the thing out in the waiting room, and if you're interested in reading about how to make yourself even more of a metrosexual softcock who loves his own reflection almost as much as he loves drinking wheatgrass juice rather than beer, eating tofu rather than red meat, and having intercourse with himself rather than pretty ladies, I would suggest Men's Health as the publication for you.
However for the rest of us, those with functional testicles, finding reliable information on how to keep all the functional bits in proper working order is far from a trivial exercise. The recent month of Mo-vember has illustrated the great amount of interest the general public have in issues surrounding men's health and wellbeing... what, you didn't know there was actually a point to everyone growing daft-looking carpet extract on their upper lip? No, it wasn't just about trying to look like 1980s cricketers - and, to be perfectly frank, most of the bumfluff cultivation attempts I have been unfortunate enough to witness over the past month have looked less like Mervyn Hughes and more like Freddie Mercury. Particularly Greg Murphy from the V8 Supercars. In my considered medical opinion, he looked like a complete arseburgler.
As my professional duty as a medical science communicator is to both inform and entertain, I have taken on the responsibility of providing a series of brief synopses of information that I would claim is essential for your average male reader, most of you being very bloody average at best, to survive and indeed thrive through important periods throughout your lifetime - watersheds, if you will. It will address issues surrounding health, wellbeing, and methodology that will permit you to function within today's sophisticated, mature, 21st century world, while still protecting your inalienable right to think, feel and act like a chauvinist bogan pisshead with a mental age of 14.
This series of lectures is entitled Dr Yobbo's Guide to Important Bloke Stuff, otherwise known as the Yobbo Survival Manifesto. Here I present Volume 1 in the series, entitled:
Preparing For Fatherhood:
If You're Reading This, You're Not Bloody Ready Yet
If at first you don't succeeed, try try again
(and get her to stand on her head afterwards)
Trying, otherwise known as 'the fun bit', usually consists of endless, sustained sessions of unprotected sex at all hours of the day or night. Naturally you should seek to make this phase last as long as possible. To that end, we offer the following tips:
- Swap your nice airy boxers for a set of Y-fronts one or two sizes smaller than required.
- If you ride a pushbike or motorcycle, we recommend doing so with the seat ratcheted up a few notches higher than is comfortable. And aim for bumps.
- From a dietary perspective, coffee, alcohol and large amounts of red meat have all been shown to have a detrimental affect on the fertility and viability of sperm. So make sure you get stuck into those then.
- If all else fails, have someone kick you repeatedly in the love spuds.
So you're going to be a dad! Apparently. Eventually.
So you're four to eight weeks in and you've learned that you're going to be a father. For the sake of argument we're going to assume that you do intend to acknowledge that the child is yours. There are a few things you need to remember at this early stage. First of all, remember pregnancy is a marathon, not a sprint. Nine months is a long time, as any South Sydney Rabbitohs fan who's had to sit through an entire NRL season of home games can attest.
The second point we need to make is one which has to register with prospective new dads very quickly, so we'll be as clear as we can about it:
You are wrong about EVERYTHING, because you are a MAN.
Or to paraphrase: because you are a man, you are wrong about everything. That is to say, you know nothing. Your opinion is not relevant and will not be credibly valued by your partner, her family, friends, healthcare professionals, childbirth educators, random people who stop you in the street, and/or annoying salesgirls in those ridiculously massive baby paraphernalia shops. You will be marginalised, ignored, and reduced to the level of an accessory whose only role is to follow your partner around, carry the shopping bags, and of course, produce one's credit card on cue.
If you've recently been through a wedding, you should be already quite familiar with this.
Antenatal? That's so negative. Why can't it be pro-natal?
In the modern era, it is usual for first-time parents to book into antenatal classes in order to be lectured about pregnancy, childbirth and baby rearing by a smug, patronising, belittling childbirth educator who is an expert in the field, on the basis that they have done it at least once themselves and have read through Pregnancy for Dummies enough times to get a pretty piece of paper from Tech. Your childbirth educator will be a much better mother than anyone in the class, as she will demonstrate when she shamelessly one-ups the new parents who return to the class to show off their babies and talk about their experiences. These individuals are invariably members of the Breastfeeding Mafia, who seek to discredit and undermine the evil forces of the Formula Feeding Conspiracy; you will find without exception that most childbirth educators have breastfed their children to at least the age of five and a half, view this as perfectly natural, and can't quite understand why their little darlings get bullied mercilessly for being over-indulged little mummy's boys, as they should be. However, being a man, do not bother expressing any opinions whatsoever about such matters, as you, as we have observed, are wrong about EVERYTHING because you are a MAN.
The most useful resource in your antenatal class will be the other prospective parents, as many as half of which will be males such as yourself, slightly bewildered about the flood of information they're being asked to process, while also starting to get just a little bit dicked off with being belittled every time they ask a reasonable question. Our tip is to buddy up with your fellow bogans. They'll quickly identify themselves as they'll be the ones copping most of the patronising invective from the childbirth educator, other than yourself of course. The main reason to buddy up with these fellows is because in the near future, you'll need someone to take up golf with, as all new fathers are obliged to do. Studies have shown that 93% of all golfers picked up the habit as a means of getting the Jesus suffering fuck out of the house and away from the screaming shitfight that constitutes their household on a Saturday morning. Then again 68% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Finally, we would emphasise that despite the likelihood that you will be surrounded by a dozen or so abundantly fertile women at the height of their reproductive prime, it is generally not appropriate to use your antenatal class as a place to check out other chicks. Nor is it wise to get their phone numbers 'just in case it doesn't work out with this guy'.
The Adventures of the Incredible Self-Inflating Woman
Like garage clutter and the latter years of Marlon Brando, your partner will soon expand to entirely fill the space available, and then some. She will be said to be 'glowing', largely because she will be always about three degrees away from a complete thermonuclear meltdown. She is likely to be very sensitive about her distended shape, which will not exactly be helped by every second person stopping her in the street to buoyantly tell her how absolutely HUUUUUGGGE she looks, in a way that even Darrell Eastlake
would consider over the top. These comments are well-meant, but will inevitably cause your partner anguish. The correct response to such comments is as follows: 'Wow, thanks, and you've got a head like a smacked arse, you fat fucking cow!' Then gob on them.Towards the end of her pregnancy, your partner may despair that she's 'as big as a house'. The only response to this which is reassuring while still retaining credibility is to say that she's definitely not larger than a house. Maybe a doll's house. Certainly no larger than Hawaiian Tropic Barbie's Maui Beach Shack™. If you play your cards right, your favourite little doll will be most flattered and reassured, and old Ken might get to park his pink Ferrari in Barbie's garage, if you know what I mean, and as a medical professional, I think you do.
Weird shit
Pregnancy causes otherwise rational people to do some rather peculiar things. There is a roaring trade in expectant mothers getting casts of their pregnant bellies. To use for what useful purposes, one wonders? To smuggle beer into the cricket? Likewise, some new parents, clearly delusional from weeks of broken sleep, have made the decision to have casts of the little one's tiny feet and hands made, to be sprayed in gold paint and displayed in a case, with the result being somewhat reminiscent of one of Fat Bastard's hunting trophies.
Our advice: save your money. You're going to need it. Because...
Everything is more expensive than everything else
It has been scientifically proven that a nine-pound baby of approximate dimensions 500mm x 200mm x 200mm will cause your house to fill beyond bursting capacity with complete and utter garbage, much of it pastel-coloured, made of inferior-grade plastic and hideously overpriced, and your car to 'morph' from the nimble sports hatchback or V8 utility you thought you owned into a beige Volvo station wagon or a hulking great 4WD with a Labrador in the back. The monolithic, sinister, billion-dollar baby products industry (often referred to as Big Baby) have made endless fortunes on the back of exploiting the fears and insecurities of first-time parents, and the markups seen here are greater than anywhere short of a US defence contract. A point to consider: your own parents are highly unlikely to have had at their disposal a CIA-specification covert surveillance system set up to watch you sleep, incorporating a body heat sensor, four CCTV cameras and a 98dB alarm which goes off on a four second rota should the baby not move for more than five minutes. Oddly enough, you are not dead. Take this information and use it as you wish.
Some items are, of course, essential, and through the purchase of these items you will learn and discover much about economics and market forces. At your local nursery furniture superstore you will discover how much can be charged, with a completely straight face, for a series of MDF planks with wood veneer on them. Likewise a new baby will need to be clothed, and you will learn that the rule with baby clothes is broadly the same as that for Japanese consumer electronics: the smaller it is, the more expensive it is. Alternatively, you could buy pre-loved baby clothes on eBay or TradeMe. The perceived disadvantage of such clothes, leveraged by Big Baby companies, is that the effluent from someone else's baby has almost definitely erupted all over them at some stage in the past. However, these clothes will equally definitely be erupted all over again shortly after your baby is inserted into them, regardless of whether the clothes are new or otherwise. The advantage of second-hand clothes, by contrast, is that they've already proved they can stand up to being vommed on. They've been vommed on before, they will get vommed on again; maybe by your baby, maybe by someone else's. The eternal cycle of vom turns once more.
The Loch Nest Monster
Big Baby's commercial calling card is to prey upon the nesting instinct of the expectant mother. Do not, repeat NOT, underestimate this instinct. It is backed by stronger hormones than even Ben Johnson was on. Likewise, it is not wise to point out that the nesting instinct that drives them to start buying newborn nappies by three months, to spend the following six months on the internet looking for second-hand baby clothes, and to order the baby's room be stripped, repainted and filled to capacity with designer nursery furniture long before the 30 week scan, is basically driven by hormones; and furthermore that if men followed every hormonal impulse they were driven by, you'd be out bonking Schoolies chicks in bulk rather than standing here in Babies 'R' Us trying to work out how a bunch of scaffolding tubes and a couple of knobbly mini-BMX wheels constitutes a high-tech all-terrain baby buggy worth nine hundred and fifty dollars.
The name game
This is how naming your child works: she will come up with a series of names, and you will tell her why they are all bloody awful. Then she will throw something at you.
This is caused by the fact that women generally choose baby names based on how pretty they sound, whereas men choose names based on the probability of the name in question causing the kid to have seven flavours of shite beaten out of them at school on the basis that the name is either (a) astonishingly ghey or (b) can so easily be corrupted into a demoralising sledge that it'd be impossible NOT to use it. Special mention here must go to the parents of former NSW Gaming and Racing Minister, the right honourable Richard Face. For bravery, if nothing else.
Total bullshit, and how to deal with it
Now this column is called the World of Bollocks, and as a prospective new parent, you'll be hearing more than a reasonable quantity of same. Babies are this. Babies are that. Babies are nice with fava beans and a nice chianti. On a related topic, despite anything he tells you, do not seek the advice of anyone called Dr Lecter. He is NOT an accredited paediatrician.
Most of the 'helpful advice' you will hear can be classified as old wives' tales. You can defend against having to hear these sorts of stories by encouraging your partner to hang out with younger chicks rather than old wives. At the very least, this should provide you with some available options should everything go pear-shaped.
Two particularly dubious pieces of accepted wisdom are worth exploring in greater detail, one of which is the concept of the 'due date'. The most common question you and your partner will get, other than 'Are you sure he's ready to be a father?' will be 'When are you due?' To which you'll inevitably quote the exact date your lead maternity caregiver has provided you with, as you were obliged to do when your partner was making her request for maternity leave from her employer and in numerous other situations. Indeed, the entire premise of pregnancy rests on the validity of the due date. Which is a bit of a problem, as the due date is completely ignored by the most important participant in the process, your little mate up the duff, approximately 96% of the time. Statistically, it's no more likely that the Bump will turn up on the so-called 'due date' as they are on any day out of a 24 day period spanning it. And that's not even part of the 68% of statistics that are made up on the spot. So instead, when someone asks you when your baby is due, it is entirely appropriate to merely narrow it down to either football or cricket season.
The other old chestnut requiring a definitive roasting is that relating to pregnant women suddenly transmogrifying into insatiable nymphomaniacs who simply can't get enough. This is an old ruse that has been perpetuated for years by women desperately trying to get their male partners enthusiastic about pregnancy. This is a myth. The revelation that this is a myth will likely disappoint those of you who get off on the idea of having sex with pregnant women. You people are sick motherfuckers (literally) and I for one would not be queuing up to buy you a beer.
You are wrong about EVERYTHING because you are a man.
Just a reminder, in case you'd forgotten.
Birth: not just a movie where Nicole Kidman plays a child molester
To use the vernacular, let us cut, pray, to the chase. You WILL be there. You won't want to be, but you will. You will be there knowing that you will almost definitely see things which you'll never be able to wipe from your subconscious, things that will colour your view of your partner and your child forever more, but given that this is the 21st century, your chances of escape are nil. Maybe you should have been in the generation before, where they waited downstairs, or just went to the pub. Indeed, there is a movement gathering strength in the UK for a return to such practices, due to the alarming number of new fathers presenting clinically with psychological conditions alarmingly similar to battlefield post-traumatic stress disorder, as a result of watching their partners give birth. It seems they're very intelligent and perceptive over there, disregarding of course Wayne Rooney.
For a further UK-based comment on the topic, you need go no further than Scotland (technically part of the UK) to that great hairy-arsed Glaswegian philosopher Billy Connolly, who put it quite plainly:DON'T GO.So, all that said, if you do choose to walk through through the gates of hell, don't attempt to protest that you weren't sufficiently warned, like some birthing suite version of Shoaib Akhtar. For what you will bear witness to will be some twenty to thirty-six hours of screaming, swearing, crying, personal abuse, blood, excrement, effluvia, adult themes, drug use and the use of sharp pointy metallic objects in terrifyingly close proximity to your beloved's most vulnerable areas, somewhat reminiscent of a cross between Hostel and a German porn movie gone wrong. Then again, that statement would presume German porn movies ever go right.
It is NOT a spectator sport.
Clearly, birth is something a man should only ever need to see once in his lifetime, regardless of the number of children he fathers; the point that all men are bastards, as well as being wrong about EVERYTHING etc, is made on a single viewing. Why most antenatal classes choose to play videos of other people's births, like a snuff film played backwards, remains beyond the comprehension of this medical professional (I did mention I am a medical professional did I not? Anyway, I am.) Why on God's green Earth do they show these dreadful films to prospective parents? Do they show Wolf Creek to English backpackers on outback tour buses? I would hazard a guess that they do not.
We close this discussion with a handy hint. If the worst occurs in the birthing suite and a Caesarean is called for (so named because they cover the baby with lettuce, parmesan, bacon, croutons and dressing), it is politic to heavily suggest that your understanding is that epidurals are often not enough to mask the pain of what is indeed major invasive surgery, and you fear that a general anaesthetic is really the only safe and humane option. As the only non-hysterical person in the room, your opinion will have more weight than your partner with the only individuals in the entire pregnancy oeuvre who will listen to the opinion of a man - the obstetrician and the anesthetist, who will both be men. Then, once your partner is safely 'under', go to the pub. Make sure you have them 'text' you before she wakes up, however, or you will be very much in the poo. As you may have been anyway, as statistics show 90% of labours result at some point in an involuntary 'dookie'. That was not part of the 68% of made-up stuff; I got it from Scrubs.
Do not attempt this at home, or anywhere else
For those of you who would consider themselves sensitive new age metrosexuals, we would simply proffer the the words of the great Australian fast bowler from Skithouse: 'Don't be a poofter'. In other words, man up. The following is a list of things that, under the pressure of expectancy, you may feel you should do, with reasons why you really shouldn't.
- Do not say, whether out of 'solidarity' or any other form of presumed kinship with your partner, that you will voluntarily give up coffee, alcohol, amphetamines or any other thoroughly enjoyable pastime which is considered a no-no for your pregnant partner. This is patent insanity. By the same logic, you would be waddling off to the slashers five times a night, you would be compelled to maximise your credit card with utterly superfluous trinkets and gadgetry, and you would be getting three months' paid leave from your workplace...
Hang on a minute, there may be something to this after all. - Do not, under any circumstances, make the preposterous claim that you 'feel her pain'. You do not. Try carrying a watermelon around up your jumper for nine months until it gives you scoliosis, and then as a grand finale, attempt to squeeze it out through your arsehole.
Oh you have? Ah well, never mind. What happens on rugby tours stays on rugby tours. - Finally, do not, I repeat NOT, film the birth. Seriously, who the fuck is going to want to watch that?
German people don't count.
The end, and afterwards
Congratulations, you are a father. The horror (sorry, the wonder) of birth is complete. Now you need merely face the horror of three to six months of absolutely no fucking sleep whatsoever.
Good luck with that then.
However, when you're faced with that tiny, smiling, squinting face, looking up at you with adoring eyes, all the pain, anguish, expense and frustration that led to this point will be worth it.
Apparently.
The kids are alright. It's the OH&S nimrods you need to worry about
There are many, many reasons why being a kid today is palpably more shit than it was in my day, or in your day, or in your old man's day, or in pretty much any day you could name that wasn't the Industrial Revolution when being a kid largely involved being sent down t' pit for tuppence a millennia with nowt to eat but a cup of cold sick with a pube in it and when we came home after 25 1/2 hour shift to hole in t' road with wet newspaper over't we had to lick road clean wi' tongue and our Dad would thrash us to death with a broken bottle etc etc etc.
That minor discomfort aside, being a kid now sucks more than at any stage in the past fifty years. Because people are always THINKING about you. 'Oh won't somebody think of the children?' will howl a veritable battalion of pious screeching mavens, and yet that's all people - punishing, straightening, gimlet-eyed anti-fun people - seem to be able to do. Kids these days might get iPods and designer smack but they also have to put up with milquetoast bullshit the likes of which had never even been heard of ten years ago. Time out. Naughty steps. Peanut allergies. Jesus Christ, whatever happened to sorting out your differences behind the bike shed and still having time to get in a quick game of backyard tackle footy before Mum saw the state of your school gear and kicked your arse from here to Christmas.
Eventually, though, things reach a tipping point. Eventually, society reaches a Rubicon, a point beyond which there can be no turning back.
People of the World (of Bollocks), we have reached that sorry, sick day. We have reached that point of no return. And it is called Springfree™.
Designed by gimlet-eyed God-bothering Cantab fun police, Springfree claims to be the world's first springless trampoline, and as such, the world's first completely safe trampoline. No rusty springs, no rotting eyelet hooks, no exposed bare steel frame. Netting to catch the offspring before they spring off. Padding on every available surface. In short, no possible way for your darling little angels to hurt themselves in any way, lest they take in the Nerf bats and try to go each other UFC styles.
I think you can see where I'm going here.
WHAT
THE FUCK
IS THE
FUCKING
POINT
OF THAT.
THE FUCK
IS THE
FUCKING
POINT
OF THAT.
This thing absolutely fucking horrifies me on multiple levels, two of which I'd like to shout at you about here. The first is the most obvious, to me at least. And it's a serious point. If kids can't hurt themselves, how the hell are they meant to learn what's safe and what's not?
Busted, rusted, verging-on-collapse trampolines - of which there was one in every Australian backyard by some form of legislative writ possibly dating back to Hawkey's first term, or maybe even No Pants Fraser - taught the nation's youngsters a lot of very valuable lessons. Primarily about risk assessment, hazard mitigation and accident avoidance. Just as sure as you knew not to ride your bike off stormwater drains because it'd cause you significant injury, or into the surf at the beach because your dad would, you knew, because you learned pretty quickly, what not to do on a trampoline. You KNEW not to bounce on the sides because you'd fly off into the paperbark trees. You KNEW to stay away from the springs, because down that path lay significant groinal trauma, and detaching one's prepubescent scrotum 
from a partially distended trampoline spring is not an experience that one should need to take into adolescence with them. You KNEW to stop doing drop-in bombs off the overhanging tree-branch after reaching your teens because touching down on the bricks underneath is not the kind of surprise your kidneys like to have. You KNEW not to look up the dress of your older cousin's cute best friend when she came over for a bounce during Xmas hols, because you'd get slapped, regardless of whether it was totally worth it or not, which it was. And you KNEW not to double-bounce your little brother into the stratosphere such that on his return to Earth he plummetted into the frame head-first, because claret would ensue, and you'd inevitably get unfairly blamed for his lack of spatial awareness, and/or consciousness.In short, you knew how to identify hazards in your environment - like your parents, after pitching your bro into the undergrowth - and mitigate them - by running the fuck away and hiding at your mate's place. How the hell are kids going to get that sort of real-life training with this confection of unmitigated arse? Make no mistake, people, Springfree is child abuse. It's sending your children out into the world without the proper training, instruction or experience to deal with it. The real world isn't fucking 'Springfree', people. If it was a trampoline, it'd be a rotted old piece of shite with no pads, a collapsing frame, and rusty springs laced with tetanus, scrapie and TEH AIDS. That's right, parents. Buying this unmitigated pile of driftnet-lined arse is akin to INJECTING YOUR CHILDREN DIRECTLY WITH THE HIV-1 VIRUS.
I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like responsible parenting to me.
But secondly, and far more importantly... I don't see how the fuck anyone is supposed to use this bastardized whitebait net for the most important role the backyard trampoline is pressed into, later in its life, as the kids start growing into teens and the grass starts growing around the long-abandoned frame-base of the tramp. That is, as backstop and automatic wickie for the all important World Series of Backyard Cricket. Every backyard cricketer knows that if personnel are limiting, you don't waste fielders on wicket-keeping. It's a shit gig anyway, standing at the back and collecting all the crap other people miss. You're telling me the goalkeepers in football get all the roots? No. Any gig where you can be replaced by a wall, a garage door, your Mum's camellias or, as world's best practice, an old rectangular trampoline tipped on its side and offset slightly from the stumps to account for right-handers batting on off stump (which, being a wheelie bin,
was technically also middle and leg), is a pointless and thankless gig not worth doing by anyone. Even Gilly. Even Havock.And yet these child abusers from C*nterbury Uni want to take that experience away from kids, and force them to crouch ad nauseum over a stinking wheelie bin in the middle of summer, miserably watching and waiting as their ex-grade cricketer mate tonks their other ex-grade mate's appalling excuse for leg spin over cow corner and into the neighbours' veggie patch.
To which there is only one rational response.
Set fire to the Springfree factory. The address is on their website.
Better burn down C*nterbury Uni as well, just to be certain.
The Doctor (I AM a Doctor you know) is OUT.
