The members of some occupations have certain reputations. Yesterday I had my first encounter with one of them: The used car salesman.

I’ve dealt with real estate agents before, and to be honest, they’ve seemed pretty much okay. If they are just trying to rip all your money off you, at least they give the illusion of being nice. But this used car salesman - and from what people have told me, this is nothing unusual - didn’t even bother trying to disguise the fact that all he wanted to do was make a sale.

As soon as the remotest interest was taken in any of the cars (such as "have you got something like this in a manual"), he’d start jabbering on about "the boss being able to cut a little off the price", but if actually asked about anything other than the price, and he appeared to be almost as bewildered by it all as I was.

Worse was the way this guy, who looked all of 17, seemed to have gone to a seminar in how to make the non-car-knowledgeable (like me) feel like a complete idiot. He kept asking if I could spot some insignificant feature, like where the seats were attached in the car ("Where are the seats attached, can you see?"), or asking me where the fuses were - things which I had absolutely no idea about, and which are not really the top priority for me when it comes to car shopping.

When I expressed interest in a Mitsubishi, he snorted and extolled the virtues of Toyotas instead, by lifting the bonnets of both and explaining how much easier it is to change the fuses in a Toyota. That combined with the fact that Toyotas have a special thingy to prevent the bonnet going through the windscreen in a collision had apparently proved to him that Toyotas are the king of cars.

Well, and also possibly the fact that he works for a Toyota dealer. That might have meant a slight bit of bias. But rather than say this, I just smiled and nodded as one does when faced with a talkative but deranged person, and I tried to estimate how many used car salesmen could be smothered in the huge Toyota flag suspended behind him.

I did encounter another car salesman today, but thankfully he was much more laid back, something which was rewarded by real interest from me in one of his cars, to the point of a test drive. I was a bit shaky I’ll admit, but it’s been a month since I last drove a manual car.

What has been more scary today has been the enquiries about comprehensive car insurance. Given that I’m a car newbie, and L hasn’t driven in several years, it looks like we’re stuck on "Rating 6", also known as "You’re Going To Have To Pay Through The Nose For Insurance, Matey".

But I guess I always knew this game was going to be expensive - one of the reasons I’ve avoided it for so long. I can only hope that we can get it all organised without having to take out a second loan for the insurance!

Baby Jeremy poked his head out into the world at about 6:47pm on Thursday the 12th of February 1998. About three minutes later, the rest of him came out into the world as well, and he’s been here ever since.

He weighed 4060 grams. This of course means nothing to anybody, not even here in the Metric world, because for some reason we continue to compare the weight of newborn babies in Imperial, even a quarter of a century after Imperial got officially thrown out the window.

He weighed 9 pounds 1 ounce. This, in childbirth terms, is a severe "youch". But wait, it gets better. I’ve never had to get something weighing 9 pounds out of my body in such a fashion, and hopefully I never will, but the fact that L did this without any help from pain killers or drugs just impresses the hell out of me.

Okay, so she had two Panadol afterwards, but that hardly ranks up there with happy gas or having a needle stuck in your back so you can’t feel anything whatsoever from the childbirth zone. In fact to move a kid that size through you and then ask for two Panadol, is, I think, more an exercise in showing off than in pain relief.

As it turned out, I think getting home was a trickier exercise than getting him out of the womb.

On Friday, the hospital people said that since everything had gone swimmingly, and the two main participants in the exercise - L and Jeremy - were as fit as fiddles, they could make the trip home that afternoon. A nurse would drop by for a few days just to see how things were going.

So, Friday afternoon, they could come home. Friday afternoon. The 13th. The afternoon of Friday the 13th. How prophetic that turned out to be. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be Murphy’s birthday as well.

We don’t have a car. Plenty of people know that. It’s something that’s in the works - we haven’t really needed one until now, but now it’s something that is going to be extremely convenient to have, so I’m getting organised. Its arrival is imminent - probably within the next few weeks. But I’m not rushing into anything. I’ve got a fully fledged family now, so I’m not going out and buying some bomb on wheels that breaks down every two hundred metres like I might have done if I’d done all this ten years ago. Equally, I’m not going to rush out and borrow and spend the equivalent of ten or more years worth of Zone 1 Monthly Tickets on this new mode of transport until I know exactly what I need, want, and am getting.

So, how would we get our Brand New Human(tm) home? As it happens, if you walk outside the hospital, there’s a tram stop. Of the multitude of routes that stops there, the one generally going by the handle "67" goes within two minutes walk of our house. This sounded like a reasonable plan. Avoid rush hour, and it’d be a piece of cake. Not as fast as the tram/train combination we usually use, but involves the minimum of hassle. The tram: this was plan A.

Except the hospital weren’t amused. Brand new baby, exposure to people’s germs on public transport, what if mum has an emergency, etc, etc. Okay, fair enough. Wish we’d known before, but fair enough, they know about this medical stuff. That’s why they work in the hospital.

So plan B: What if we take a cab? We need to buy a new car capsule for Jeremy soon anyway since we’re buying a car, so why not buy it now? No, wait, we haven’t got Isaac’s car seat handy, and he can’t go in a car without it. And it’s too much hassle to go home and get it.

Okay, Victoria (a friend, not the state) has our spare house key. Plan B(i): She could bring the car seat in so that Isaac could also go home in the cab. Wait, she’s out, at Ingrid’s place today. What’s Ingrid’s phone number? Don’t know. What’s Ingrid’s surname? Don’t know.

Wait, we have Ingrid’s friend’s number. Ring Ingrid’s friend. She hasn’t got Ingrid’s new phone number. But she’s got Ingrid’s surname. Okay, ring Directory Enquiries. Damn, we can’t ring Directory Enquiries from this phone in the room. Go to the phone by the lifts. It’s out of order, won’t accept the coins. Okay, go down to the ground floor, there’s more phones there. Zoom down in the world’s slowest lifts. There they are, ground floor phones. One being used, one out of order, a notice advises to try first floor. Take stairs to first floor. Two phones there. One out of order, it won’t accept the coins. Other works. Dial Directory Enquiries. Give the name and street. Bingo, they’ve found it. And the number is…. silent.

Bugger.

And it was a free call anyway.

Okay hospital people, here’s plan B(ii): We’ll buy that capsule for Jeremy, and send L and Jeremy home in a cab, and I’ll take Isaac home on the train, which is how he and I got in there that morning. Hospital people say no, they’d prefer that mum doesn’t go home on her own, just in case a crisis develops.

Okay, plan B is up the spout. Time to call in the big guns: my sister - the one with the company car and the boss sympathetic to such domestic crises. And plan C(i): We’ll buy the capsule for Jeremy, my sister will take L and Jeremy home in her car, and, since we still can’t contact Victoria with our spare house key (for getting Isaac’s car seat to us), I’ll take Isaac home on the train.

So, ring my sister Susannah. Hmm, not in the office. Okay, ring her mobile. Not turned on, goes to voicemail. Leave a message. Eventually get hold of her. Does her car have the correct baby capsule bolt on the fensterbunk*? She’s not sure. Hold while she runs down to the carpark to check. Yes, it’s there. Eureka!

So, Isaac and I go to get the capsule. Find one of those adaptable ones that converts to a toddler seat when the kid’s old enough. On sale! Great! One problem: the bloody thing is huge. Too huge to carry while trying to direct Isaac to walk in the correct direction in the city crowds, let alone back onto the tram to get back to the hospital. Consider buying it, working out how it works in toddler configuration, putting Isaac in it and catching a cab back, but it all seems too hard.

Go back empty handed. Ring sister back. Plan C(ii): she will pick me up, we’ll go together to get the capsule, fit it to the car and then pick up L and Jeremy. She does, we do (and I spot the D-Generation’s Tom Gleisner walking down the street, carrying a baby capsule with baby inside it, while waiting for her). We spend ten minutes trying to figure out how the hell the capsule works before getting it all fitted nicely - lucky we both have degrees. L and Jeremy go home in her car, Isaac and I go home on the train, everybody meets up 45 minutes later, happy ending after all. Phew.

(*) Fensterbunk: I’m not sure of the spelling, but my sister claims it is a Dutch word for the part of the car just inside the rear windscreen, for which there is no English equivalent. It would be very convenient at times like these if there was a word for this, so in my family we’ve taken to just saying "fensterbunk" instead.

UPDATE: Numerous people have let me know there is an English term: "rear parcel shelf". Of course, putting parcels on the rear parcel shelf would be a bloody stupid idea, since they’d go flying around the car in a collision.

Other people, mostly Dutch, have let me know that the Dutch word in question is "vensterbank", meaning "window sill". A close translation to the English term is "hoedenplank", meaning "back shelf" or "parcel shelf". I think that given how silly a name "rear parcel shelf" is, I’ll stick with "vensterbank"!

No, no baby news. Look. I know this doesn’t really apply to most of the people reading this, it really applies to friends and especially relatives of ours: Stop bugging us! We’ll let you know when something happens - HONEST!

Technically, the due date for young Jeremy (yep, we’ve decided on a name) to enter the world was either Friday or today, depending on which estimate you believe. So it’s perfectly reasonable for him to still be up in his womb enjoying a bit of privacy. And despite the best estimates that modern technology and a generation of childbirth experts can give, it’s essentially up to him when he comes out.

And so, while my uncle’s wife, an ex-colleague’s wife, and a vaguely-known-met-once colleague have all had their babies in the past week (and Elle McPherson and Deborah Conway can’t be far behind), we keep on waiting, trying to get on with life rather than mope around the house just in case labour sets in suddenly. After all, we may as well make the Omigod The Baby’s Coming Find Some Hot Towels Let’s Get To The Hospital Dash, when it finally arrives, at least a little interesting.

It has been what you might call an eventful weekend.

After a relaxing Saturday, plodding up and down Southbank, and dropping into Madame Tussauds (how the hell DO you pronounce it, anyway?), on Saturday night, L started having regular contractions. By the point that they were three minutes apart, we decided it was time for action. We called a friend to babysit, and called a taxi to take us to the hospital.

It’s a reasonably irrational thing of mine that I generally call Silver Top taxis, and it’s not just because our neighbour, the Ignatius Reilly of Melbourne, drives for Black Cabs. It’s because of Paul Kelly, and his song "To Her Door". But a poor reason is better than none, so that’s who I called.

The taxi arrived. We got in. The taxi driver got out and examined the right headlight. The right headlight was not working. He started fiddling with wires. After a few minutes, he was still fiddling with wires, and not having much success. I decided that since the contractions were still coming, rather than wait to have the baby in his cab and/or have him electrocute himself on a headlight wire, thus making it impractical for him to drive us to the hospital, it seemed like a good idea to get him to call us another cab.

This he did. The backup arrived after just a few minutes, and we reached the hospital without too much further excitement. We zipped through Admissions, up to the Family Birthing Centre. It’s called the Family Birthing Centre because it sounds much nicer than the Labour Ward. It sounds much nicer because it is much nicer. Well, it’s certainly moderately nicer. The carpet is less tacky, the furniture is probably from this decade, and everybody who works up there must have passed a staff smile test.

They also place an emphasis on natural childbirth. A minimum of intervention, just let mother nature and mother human do their respective jobs, and hope for the best. I’ve come to the conclusion that most women hope to give birth this way - at least until it starts hurting.

Of course, they will shunt anybody for whom natural childbirth is not quite making the grade, down to the Labour Ward where they can do all the heavy stuff with forceps, copious amounts of drugs and gas, C-sections and other such man made delights.

So we arrived at the Family Birthing Centre just after midnight, and got on with it. Only problem was, it didn’t happen. It seems that on this occasion, with less than a week til her due date, L was overtaken by contractions probably brought on by a touch of gastro. I know she won’t mind me mentioning this publicly because she said she plans to document the night’s most spectacular visits to chunderland in the Great Vomits Of The Twentieth Century web page.

Of course, the knowledge that the contractions are not caused by, and are not helping at all with, the 39 week old foetus inside her stomach, didn’t come immediately. We only found this out the next morning, after a several hours of painful contractions, a minimum of sleep (okay, so I’m exaggerating a bit), and what seemed like an eternity connected to a drip and a machine that goes "ping!" Oh, and we also got to see a flying visit to the hospital from Cliff Richard (although he didn’t come to our ward) and a debate between a tram and a U-turning car outside. The tram won.

By Sunday afternoon we were back to normal at home, once again waiting for the kid inside to make his next move.