Pull Up a Chair Mate: Everything I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before Became Dad — The Honest, Warm and Occasionally Funny Guide for New Dads, Older Step-Dads Every in Between

The book you needed before the baby arrived. Or right now in the middle of it. Or when it all gets a bit much at 3am and you just need someone who gets it. >You haven't, by the way. But we'll get to that.Written by James Devine - father, step-father, 57 years old and still learning - this is the honest, warm, occasionally funny guide that covers every stage of fatherhood the way a mate would: directly, without preach, and with the dry humour that gets you through the hard bits.From the moment the test shows two lines, through the sleepless nights and the identity wobble and the toddler meltdown in the supermarket over the wrong colour cup - through teenagers and blended families and watching them become adults - Pull Up a Chair Mate covers the whole extraordinary, exhausting, joyful, ridiculous journey. 29 chapters covering everything that actually matters: - The News - that moment everything changes, and all the ways men react to it (including the ones nobody admits to) - The Pregnancy - nine months of being the support act, done properly - The Birth - what the films don't show you, and what your actual job is in that room - Coming Home - where the real adventure begins and the authority figures conspicuously fail to appear - Sleep - the great unspeakable of new parenthood, addressed honestly - Your Relationship - keeping the thing that started all this alive when you're both running on nothing - Your Mental Health - the chapter blokes usually skip (don't skip this) - The Older Dad - grey hairs, perspective, and not throwing your back out at soft play - The School Years, Teenagers, Them Becoming Adults - the whole journey, in order - Dads and Daughters, Dads and Sons - what they each specifically need from you - The Step Dad and Blended Families - for the men doing it differently - Dad Guilt, Looking After Yourself, Dads and Their Own Dads - the stuff nobody talks about - When Relationships End - separated dads staying present - The Whole Beautiful Mess - a final chapter that tells it exactly like it is: hard, joyful, ridiculous, and entirely worth every bit of it Whether you're 22 and terrified, 38 and cautiously optimistic, or 52 and wondering if you've completely lost your mind - this book is for you. The sleepless nights don't discriminate by age. Neither does the love, once it hits you.And it will hit you. Like a freight train you never saw coming.Pull up a chair. I've got you.