Starring in the Real Baby Daddy Show (Minus the Laugh Track)

Dear Tom,

You're currently sitting on the edge of the bathtub, wearing a fleece dressing gown that smells faintly of Sudocrem and despair, staring at a phone screen playing an old episode of that American sitcom. You know the one. The baby daddy show where the impossibly attractive twenty-something bachelor has a child dropped on his doorstep, yet somehow he still manages to frequent bars, date women without dark circles under their eyes, and wear shirts that haven't been aggressively christened by reflux.

I need you to close the Netflix app immediately. The entire premise is an offensive work of fiction designed to make actual fathers feel like we're failing at basic time management.

Why the television lied to us

In episode whatever-it-is, Ben leaves the baby with his brother and just walks out the door to go to a rooftop party. Just walks out. He doesn't pack a changing bag with military precision, he doesn't leave a five-page manifest detailing exactly how to give Calpol if the ambient temperature exceeds 20 degrees, and he certainly doesn't spend the first forty minutes of the party staring at a baby monitor app on his phone while hiding in a toilet cubicle.

And the apartment. Good god, the apartment. In this mythical universe, Ben—a bartender, mind you—can afford to live in a sprawling New York loft while paying for nappies. His home is filled with sharp corners and glass tables. There isn't a single rogue piece of plastic farm machinery waiting to pierce the arch of his foot at 4 AM. The baby just sits there, cooing politely, acting as a prop for his romantic misadventures rather than a shrieking, sentient potato demanding immediate blood sacrifice.

His 'village' consists of his professional hockey player brother, his wisecracking best friend, and a mother who appears precisely when the plot requires free childcare so Ben can go on a date. Meanwhile, your village currently consists of the Amazon Prime delivery driver who has seen you in your pants three times this week and silently judged you each time.

The peculiar biology of dad guilt

You'll scroll through social media while trapped under a sleeping toddler and see all these Gen Z kids embracing the 'baby d' aesthetic, doing choreographed dances on TikTok with a perfectly swaddled infant strapped to their chests while wearing pristine matching tracksuits. Let me tell you, there's absolutely zero swagger involved in modern fatherhood when you spend 70% of your waking hours trying to identify which twin produced the mysterious sticky substance on the television remote. There's no choreographed dancing in this house, only the frantic, high-stepping shuffle you do across the living room carpet at midnight trying not to step on a rogue piece of Lego.

Let's talk about the mental health aspect, because the television programmes certainly don't. Our GP, Dr. Evans—a man who always looks like he's running late for a train—mentioned during a check-up that fathers can experience postnatal depression too. He handed over a slightly crumpled leaflet that looked like it had been photocopied in 1998, muttering something about sleep deprivation lowering serotonin and how the sheer weight of responsibility can trigger anxiety. He didn't give me a hard medical fact, just a vague warning to watch out for the low moods and maybe drink a bit of water.

And he was right, in his own fumbling way. You're going to have days where the sheer isolation of being the only bloke at the Wednesday morning baby sensory class makes you want to crawl into a ball and weep. You'll sit there while a woman named Cressida violently shakes a tambourine, singing about a speckled frog, and you'll wonder if this is the absolute peak of your intellectual life now. Our NHS health visitor, Brenda, suggested that the male brain goes through some sort of hormonal rewiring during the second year to promote bonding, though I'm fairly convinced this 'rewiring' is just the physical manifestation of chronic fatigue dissolving my prefrontal cortex until I cry at television adverts for car insurance.

Distractions that won't make your eyes bleed

You're going to panic-buy a lot of things over the next six months in a desperate bid to buy yourself five minutes of silence, so let me save you some money and point you toward the gear that actually matters.

At some point, you'll realise that the twins need entertaining without plastic junk that flashes aggressively and shouts primary colours at you. We eventually got the Wooden Baby Gym | Panda Play Gym Set with Star & Teepee, which I genuinely quite like, mostly because it doesn't require triple-A batteries or a degree in mechanical engineering to assemble. You'll buy it because you've this delusion that your daughters will quietly lie on their backs, engaging in high-minded sensory exploration while you read the Sunday Times.

This is a complete fantasy. What actually happens is that it becomes a tiny, wooden thunderdome. One of the twins (I think it was Lily, though they switch personalities on Thursdays) became completely obsessed with the little crocheted panda, while the other spent three weeks attempting to systematically dismantle the wooden teepee structure with the quiet focus of a tiny demolition expert. But it's a quiet thunderdome. The muted grey palette and natural wood actually do seem to prevent them from becoming overstimulated and having a complete meltdown by 11 AM. The crocheted panda is charming, though its friendly little face has seen things no toy should ever see, and it buys you exactly enough time to drink half a cup of lukewarm tea before someone starts crying.

If you want to save yourself the misery of tripping over hideous plastic junk, you might want to browse through Kianao's wooden baby gym collection before the living room completely surrenders to primary colours.

Things we wipe bodily fluids off of

Then there's the Organic Cotton Baby Blanket with the Calming Gray Whale Pattern. It's lovely. It's incredibly soft. The GOTS-certified organic cotton feels like something you'd find in a boutique hotel that only forbids children. But let's be absolutely honest here—within forty-eight hours of opening the package, it'll be subjected to an explosive diaper incident that tests the very limits of modern washing machine technology. It survived, and it stayed soft, which is a minor miracle, but I wouldn't spend too much time admiring the pristine gray whales because they'll soon be obscured by crushed peas and dried oat milk.

The dental nightmare phase

Six months from now, the incisors arrive. I don't want to alarm you, but the teething phase with twins is what I imagine they use for psychological warfare training at MI6. You thought the newborn sleep deprivation was bad, but you simply can't comprehend the chaos of four sharp little daggers deciding to cut through the gums of two children simultaneously.

I strongly suggest acquiring the Llama Teether Silicone Soothing Gum Soother immediately. It has a little heart cutout that they can really grip without dropping it every four seconds, and because it's 100% food-grade silicone, you can just chuck it in the dishwasher when it inevitably gets dropped on the pavement outside the Tesco Express. I once dropped it down the gap of a train seat on the Jubilee line and seriously considered tearing the carriage apart with my bare hands to retrieve it because my daughter was gnawing on my thumb in retaliation. It has these textured bumps on the back that the girls chew on like tiny, rabid wolves. Buy three of them. I'm completely serious. When one rolls under the sofa and you're too tired to retrieve it, you'll thank me for the backups.

You'll spend a lot of time over the next six months wondering if you're doing this stay-at-home dad thing correctly, mostly because there's no performance review and your tiny bosses communicate exclusively through screaming and throwing toast. You'll watch those slick television representations of fatherhood and feel a big sense of inadequacy because your hair is thinning and you can't remember the last time you read a book without pictures. But you'll also find yourself standing in the kitchen at midnight, washing out tiny bottles while the house is finally silent, and feeling a strange, heavy sort of peace that the sitcoms never manage to capture.

Before you descend entirely into the madness of toddlerhood, do yourself a favour and equip the nursery with gear that seriously survives the chaos—explore Kianao's organic essentials and maybe buy yourself a few minutes of peace.

Questions I asked Google at 4 AM

Why doesn't my life look like the sitcoms?
Because you don't have a team of Hollywood writers scripting witty comebacks for you, mate. Also, you live in Zone 4 London, not a Manhattan loft, and real babies produce a volume of bodily fluids that would violate standard broadcasting guidelines.

Do I really need an organic cotton baby blanket?
Need is a strong word, but considering my twins tend to aggressively chew on everything draped over them, having a blanket that isn't soaked in synthetic pesticides provides a tiny shred of comfort while the rest of my parenting feels like an absolute shambles.

How long does the teething phase really last?
Our paediatrician vaguely mumbled something about the primary teeth coming in until they're nearly three, which sounds like an extended prison sentence, but honestly it comes in waves of absolute misery followed by weeks where you forget they even have teeth until one of them bites your knee.

Is the phrase 'baby d' acceptable to use in public?
Only if you want to sound like an undercover police officer trying to infiltrate a sixth-form college. Just call yourself a dad and accept that your cool years are firmly and irreversibly behind you.

Can a wooden play gym really keep a twin occupied?
For roughly eleven minutes, which in twin-time is the equivalent of a two-week holiday in the Maldives. It's exactly long enough to boil a kettle, completely forget you boiled the kettle, and remember again just as the water goes cold.