The truth about MANternity leave: One father reveals what it's really like to be left holding the baby while his partner goes back to work...
and the magical story of what happened next By Chris Dean and Ailsa Leslie Published: 21:14 EDT, 12 June 2024 | Updated: 04:27 EDT, 13 June 2024 e-mail 46 View comments He was standing knee-deep in the leisure centre pool: a 30-something, unshaven man holding a chubby baby boy. My spirit soared in joyous recognition when I spotted him — here was my first fellow solo dad in the wild. I had been taking my baby daughter Astrid to swimming lessons for several weeks, always surrounded by a sea of mums.
They hadn’t excluded me — many had gone out of their way to be friendly — but amid chatter about episiotomies, maternity wear and breastfeeding, I had felt a little left out. Astrid, our first child, was born last August, and after six months of maternity leave, my partner Ailsa had returned to work, leaving me to take over for a further six months. Baby Astrid, Chris Dean and Ailsa Leslie's first child, was born last August and the couple decided to split maternity leave evenly Mothers on maternity leave tend to have built up some friendships from National Childbirth Trust (NCT) classes and the like.
But dads rarely have a similar network and I often felt like I was ploughing a very lonely furrow. Still, after a month as the odd one out, here was another dad at last. Did I cling on to him like a life raft? Did I unburden myself? Did I.
