Laurence Fox Opens Up About Struggling With New Fatherhood

First-time moms aren’t the only ones who struggle with the changes a baby can bring. In a candid new interview with the Daily Mail, Laurence Fox — who with wife Billie Piper welcomed son Winston James, 5-months, in October — lends a voice to all the bleary-eyed new dads out there who don’t feel an instant connection with their children. “I definitely went through really odd feelings, really animal ones such as ‘Do I even want this baby?’” he admits. “I was like that for about two weeks after he was born.” Noting that not all men are willing to go on record with having this particular emotional response — or lack thereof — to fatherhood, Laurence observes that most men opt instead to “get drunk.” He muses that “some of it is that men can have babies whenever they want, so, until they actually connect with this baby, then it’s tough.”

“Suddenly I looked at him and thought, ‘You’re called Winston’ — I’d called him ‘it’ for ages, as in ‘it’s doing that’ – and then it just clicked. And that’s when you become — it’s awful isn’t it, when clichés are true – but that’s when you go, ‘I’m not going to ever let anything bad happen to you – ever.’ And now he’s just a joy.”

A joy who continues to exhaust his parents, however! If there is one ongoing drawback to life with baby it is the “cumulative loss of sleep,” Laurence says. “‘It has this peculiar effect on your brain,” he explains. “You lose compassion, sensitivity, kindness – they’re the first things to go in extreme situations.”

“You stop opening doors for your missus when she’s carrying the shopping bags. Instead, you plough through yourself, in an ‘I-must get- through-this-myself’ way. It’s quite scary.”

Click below to read about who Winston favors.

From the sound of things it doesn’t take much for Winston’s sleep schedule to become disrupted. In the interview, Laurence laments having a meet-up with friends the day before that stretched on for far too long. “‘Winston didn’t sleep last night, which was hell – and it’s because we had friends for lunch who just refused to leave.” Rolling his eyes, he wonders “Why do people do that?”

“You know, it’s seven o’clock, we’re putting the baby to bed, how much more obvious do you want me to be about the fact that you need to go home now? But, instead, they were still chatting away at half past eight, and I was sitting there with rage boiling in my eyes, thinking, ‘You’ve just denied me an hour-and-a-half of sleep.’”

His tone softens, however, when he notes that the friends in question don’t have any children themselves. “So basically they just don’t get it,” he adds. Winston is “gorgeous,” Laurence beams, revealing “he’s starting to look like both of us now.” Showing off some pictures of baby boy just after his birth, a time when he noticeably favored his dad, Laurence muses ”he’s really changed already…I think, ultimately, that he’s going to end up with my hair and her eyebrows, which is good, as I don’t have any eyebrows.”

Having a baby has changed Billie in more ways than one, Laurence says. “She used to smoke and drink, and she does neither now, although she has the odd roll-up once in a while,” he explains. ”We used to be quite lazy country folk really, you know, nip down the pub for hours, but now that’s sort of stopped, although we’re trying to get back into it.” Motherhood has also made the 26-year-old Secret Diary of a Call Girl actress tough, Laurence says.

‘She’s really good. She doesn’t lean on me very much, I must say. She doesn’t ever go, ‘Oh, this is just too much, can you just take him?’ –  although I do a man’s share of nappies. And I put him to bed and she feeds him. I think women become harder when they’ve had a baby because they’ve been through something. They’re different because they’ve suffered.”

Winston is the first child for the couple, who married in 2007.

Source: Daily Mail