I know what you’re thinking: “Dermo’s posted more pictures of a kid! Quelle surprise!” Well this kid is different, because he’s mine!

That’s right, at 0840 this morning and after a protracted labour, Áine - my beautiful wife - gave birth to a gorgeous baby boy. We’ve named him Finn Brian and he weighs 7lbs 9ozs (and not 9-plus lbs, as our doctor had estimated at one point).

Finn was the culmination of a grueling experience for Áine - she started to have contractions at around 10pm on Sunday night, we went to the hospital at about 1am on Monday morning and she finally gave birth this morning (Tuesday). I left the hospital this evening for home at around 9pm. In all that time she hadn’t slept - first because of the contractions and later because of what I can only presume was an extended adrenaline buzz following the birth of our baby son. The last time she slept was Saturday night into Sunday morning - we got up at around ten, which means that she stayed awake for approximately 50 hours, assuming that she finally went to sleep at around 10pm this evening, as she had planned.

Finn himself is a dote - he has a mop of fair hair, the colour of his mother’s and is as quiet as a mouse. He wailed once - when he lay on the gurney immediately after being delivered from Áine’s womb - and hasn’t emitted a cry once. When I left this evening he was much as he has been all day: contentedly snoozing in his swaddling, mitts up. Even when I woke him to change his nappy and allow Áine to feed him, he barely whimpered, stretching and extending his fingers with the indignity of it all.

Over the past seven months that Áine’s pregnancy was common knowledge and before that (to a lesser extent), many people who have been through the experience have told us that becoming a parent and giving birth and being present at the birth is life-changing and life-affirming. I was mulling this over on the way home this evening and it occurred to me that although people have told me this, I didn’t actually know what they were saying. I do now. Seeing a child - your child - being born is one of the most amazing, humbling, glorious things that it is possible to see. It is deeply affecting in a way that I have never ever experienced before. Seeing Finn being born was - bar none - the single greatest moment of my life. That’s a hoary old cliché but, like most clichés, it’s only a cliché because it’s true. The only thing that comes close is the moment when I saw Áine for the first time at the top of the aisle on our wedding day.

In fact, so in awe was I of Finn being born that for a moment I was overwhelmed and stood in the delivery suite staring at him and not really taking in what I was seeing. There’s a moment where you don’t even breathe, you’re just looking at this grey and purple child lying on a bed. And suddenly its eyes pop open, its arms jerk out straight, fingers splayed and the child emits the most beautiful wail you’ve ever heard and you breathe a deep sigh of relief: everything is okay, the baby is okay.

For a moment both Áine and I just lay and stood there - Áine composing herself after that final push, me just happy that everything seemed to be okay and waiting to be told what I have to do next. “Well!”, says the mid-wife, “what do you have!”. I jolt out of my little reverie and look - “it’s a boy!” and suddenly the two of us were bawling crying, then laughing, then bawling and laughing at the same time, huge sobs wracking our bodies even while we giggle insanely and hug and kiss. Then the baby was put on Áine’s chest, under her shirt. It’s like a switch has been flicked and millennia of instinct kicks in - she’s no longer Áine Williams, my amazing wife - she’s now Áine Williams, my amazing wife and Finn’s super mother.

This week’s photo of the week is a twofer. I liked both of these pics of the young fellas playing guns so I decided to post ‘em both.

I took these photos at Alex’s birthday last week, Thursday 7th February. He got a Wii. The two little lads spent about two hours running around with their guns before finally tiring and deciding that they wanted a go of the Wii as well. Of course, given that they’re both only three, the concept of “waiting your turn” meant absolutely nothing to them - they wanted a go now, damnit!

The two bigger lads, on the other hand, took to the Wii like ducks to water. That said, they seemed to be more concerned with setting up their Miis than they were with actually playing any of the games. Hilariously, they had a brief but fierce spat about which nose was the best. Not which nose most resembled Alex’s or Ben’s - nope, which nose was the best in general.

“The Road” has a straightforward plot. It’s set in an American mid-west that has been devastated by an unnamed apocalyptic event. Fires burn intensely and randomly across the land, destroying everything in their paths. The air is so choked with ash that no plants or animals other than humans and dogs survive and so little sunlight is able to permeate that the world is engulfed in an endless winter. Those few humans that have escaped this disaster have reverted to a nightmare medieval existence; some have banded together to form cannabilistic gangs whilst others hide themselves away in fear, slowly wasting away from hunger and cold. Across this forlorn landscape, an unnamed father and his young son wander - aimlessly, though the father is loathe to admit it. They push all of their worldly posessions in a cart and must scavenge for food in the various abandoned houses, shops and garages that they come across.

“The Road” is the first book I’ve ever finished that I wanted to re-read immediately. Everything about it is fantastic and makes me want to gush absurdly. It’s one of those rare books that will stay with me for a long time. Despite the anguish that it describes, the hopelessness of the situation that the main characters find themselves in, the sheer nightmare hellishness of this post-apocalyptic world through which they walk, it is still a book about hope and, for some weird reason, I found it spiritually uplifting in a way that I can’t remember ever experiencing in a book before. I guess that that’s what happens when the previous book you read was a dumb space opera by Peter Hamilton.

To continue gushing, even the prose was perfect. There wasn’t a single needless word and the lack of any punctuation other than full-stops simply served to undermine the bleakness of the world that the central characters inhabit. The moment where the father and son discover the people in the basement whose body parts are being harvested for food by their captors actually made me flinch with horror and I distinctly remember measuring my breath during the passage where the man and boy watch the marauders march by. That’s how convincing McCarthy’s vision is.

I’ve read rumours that this is to be filmed and that Viggo Mortenson is in the frame to play the father - the only way that that could be any better is if they have David Cronenberg direct it.

It’s a bit late but here’s this last week’s Photo of the Week:

Pretty presumptuous, eh?