My Birth was fairly normal.

Ok, two weeks earlier I hadn’t been moving around much inside Frowny, but then, why would I? I didn’t have any particularly pressing engagements and I was perfectly happy thank you. Besides, Flower Girl hadn’t moved much inside Frowny either – it’s not exactly cavernous in there – so it was hardly anything to worry about. Still, to be on the safe side they hooked Frowny up to a machine where she had to press a little button every time she felt me kick. If she tried that today she’d be black and blue and have repetitive strain injury from pressing the button – I’ve certainly made up for all the lost kicks since.

As for the birth itself, I was very glad to see they hadn’t gone in for any of that ‘natural childbirth’ nonsense… I mean, what’s normal about being dropped head first into an inflatable paddling pool as your first life experience? Smiley was there with the camera – oh the indignity! Naked and covered in afterbirth – would you want your photo taken like that?

But feeding? Now I knew something wasn’t right about this; I was absolutely ravenous but had the most excruciating heartburn and indigestion. I tried screaming the place down but no one paid a blind bit of notice because apparently ‘all babies do that’.

We stayed in hospital for three nights and then I was unleashed upon the world. And I can’t say I was particularly impressed. Well I didn’t actually notice much of it at first as I just couldn’t shake off the heartburn, then on my first night out we were invited to a barbeque of all things. Now I’ll admit that I was still fairly naïve at this age but I wasn’t born yesterday; even I knew that the world had progressed beyond the hunter-gatherer stage and that April in the UK was too cold to be eating outside. I was having none of it and cried all night. Frowny and Smiley were going to have to learn who was in charge sooner or later so they may as well start now.

As for all this bonding malarkey, I still reckon that’s over-rated. I could tell even from this age that people come and people go and quite frankly they’re all much of a muchness. Some are nicer than others but that’s as far as I’m willing to go with commitment. Besides, it was still very early in my relationship with Frowny and I didn’t want to commit myself too early.

Anyway a few days went by and I still had the heartburn. This couldn’t be right, so I tried displaying my concern with the only communication tools I had available to me: I screwed up my face as tightly as it would go, balled my fists, and screamed as loudly as I could the whole time. I managed to keep this up for several days – even I was impressed with my stamina – but unsurprisingly this also made me sick… what on earth did I have to do to get some attention? That’s when I first began to suspect that my so-called parents might have Special Needs. Either that or they were both extremely dim. I was beginning to hope I was adopted.

There was also a ‘Health’ visitor who came round once a week. I tried giving her the full routine every time but after each performance she’d say the same thing: “Oh yes, some babies are just a bit sick like that. And angry. And don’t sleep. It’s all perfectly normal”. Did she assume I was a hypochondriac? I could forgive Smiley and Frowny to a certain extent, they were young, had no medical training and only limited experience with babies. But this woman was plainly an idiot.

They kept up the shared ignorance routine for 6 weeks but I wasn’t going to be beaten this early in the game. Eventually I saw a different Health Visitor who decided that this… forgive me while I quote her technical medical jargon directly… was not right. Not exactly Dr. Kildare but you have to work with what you’ve got and at least she was on the right track. She sent us straight to the Casualty department (that’s The Emergency Room for my American readers who prefer more drama).

I was finally being treated with the respect I deserved and they prescribed proper medicines for Reflux, which is the fancy name for heartburn and throwing up. Not only that, but I was to return every week for a check up. I still suspected they might be holding back on the really good stuff so I kept up a bit of a fuss until I was prescribed with phenobarbitone to ‘calm me down’: apparently it’s the most widely-used anticonvulsant worldwide, but the important thing is that it also has sedative and hypnotic qualities. Groovy.

So at 3 months I became a happy, well-adjusted member of society and began my long career as a junkie – and all at the State’s expense… Ker-ching! The consultant said he’d never seen a baby laugh so much.

Well, wouldn’t you?