I think I know what she dreams about.

She dreams about milk. I know this because there's nothing else in her life that's important right now, and when she was sleeping, I saw her making sucking movements with her mouth.

There's more but unless you have a baby - or are deeply interested in the contents of her nappies - you probably don't want to read on.

I was just changing her nappy yesterday when she began to poo. Babies tend to do this, timing the next one just as the old nappy comes off.

Lately she's been doing some big yellow frothy ones. They make a big impression but are mostly bubbles. It's a sign of slight digestion problems, but we have it under control.

Well, no sooner was the nappy off than she began to wee, and just as I had that covered, she began another frothy poo.

Then it happened. Not frothy this time, but a prodigious projectile poo. It reached as far as the bed, a metre away. After wiping her and changing everything she was wearing and lying on, I had a go at the bed. There were several blobs of glowing yellow liquid that looked like something out of Star Trek (the Shatner era).

I managed to get most of it out, but not all. There was still a clear yellow stain. Considering all she ever drinks is milk, where does this come from? Has she been sneaking out for a curry when we're not looking?

And now, from Life As It Happens TV ...

Caitriona's Diary (Windows Media Player)

Caitriona's Diary (Real Video)

These are both heavily compressed for 56k dialup modem streaming. A broadband option might be available later ...

It was when changing my daughter's nappy (Oh yes, I'm a modern man) that I suddenly realised the best way to get good service in a restaurant.

Here in the UK, it's considered impolite to complain in a restaurant, or indeed anywhere, about anything. (Well, at least to the people responsible. It's fine to complain to your friends, workmates or perfect strangers. But at all costs you must avoid mentioning to the people actually concerned that you may be in some way dissatisfied with their work).

That's not to say you can't speak up if it goes too far.

Say you've ordered your meal, and some time has passed and there's no sign of it. The waiting staff are standing around chatting and your group are the only people there. The correct manner of approach is this.

"Er, excuse me ..."

"Yeah, what do you want?"

"Well, I'm terribly sorry, but we've been waiting an hour and a half and there doesn't seem to be any sign of the food we ordered. I wondered if there might be some problem at all?"

"No. Can't you see we're busy?"

"Oh. Yes of course. I'm so sorry."

However, I think in future I may take a leaf from my daughter's book and if I don't get fed immediately, I'm just going to burst into tears and bawl my head off until they get the food on the table. Believe me, it is impossible to ignore, and it lends a real sense of urgency to the mission.

I think it might work. I might not go as far as demanding to have my bottom wiped, though.

Like many others with a fondness for good simple design and not a lot of money, we've furnished our house mainly out of the IKEA catalogue.

Everything in IKEA has a name, and it's usually a daft name from Sweden (I think Sarah, who used to work there, explained the thinking behind this once) and often you really wonder if they're taking the piss. (Like 'Groggy' for a hip flask, or 'Jerker' for a computer desk)

But sometimes the name is kind of suitable. We bought Bekväm, which is a step stool, very useful in the kitchen both as a small seat and for reaching things in the top shelves of our Faktum/ Ulriksdal kitchen.

Bekväm is pronounced like Bequem, which is German for 'comfortable' and is easier to say than 'step stool'. So we tend to call it by its IKEA name. "Have you seen Bekväm?" "You'll need Bekväm to reach that".

Honestly, it sounds like it's become a member of the family.

So on Tuesday we took Caitriona for her first walk in the park. Down to Dulwich Park. Actually we dawdled through Dulwich Village and then hurried to the Park just as it was closing.

We brought her out in her new pram, which we imported from Germany. It's a Teutonia and is built like a panzer. If any dogs trouble her she can wipe them out with the flame thrower ...

The thing about babies is that everything else in the world is reborn around them. We sit sometimes for ages, looking at Caitriona, noticing her little movements, the tiny gurgling noise she makes, the worried puzzled looks, the intense concentration on something just over your shoulder. It looks like she's working on a new theory of gravity. Probably it's just wind.

We repeat, as timeless generations of parents do, the cliches - she is so beautiful, she looks like an angel, her fingers are so tiny. And they cease, at this moment, to be cliches. Because it's simply true: she is beautiful, she does look like an angel, and her fingers are so tiny.

Someone offered us a car seat, and at first we thought we wouldn't need it, because we don't have a car. But we thought, sometime we'll probably go out in a cab or someone else's car.

We didn't realise at the time that a car seat also makes a very fine rocking chair. She was crying this morning and I put her in it, rocked it gently to and fro, and she became calm at once. She's lying in it now, beside me as I type this, lost in restful sleep. The new theory of gravity will have to wait.

"There is no more sombre enemy of good art," Cyril Connolly (right) wrote in Enemies of Promise, "than the pram in the hall".

Well, we've got a pram in the hallway, and I hope my writing will not fall away. My guess is that, now that I've got a whole new subject to write about, it will get better - or at least, there'll be more of it. But nobody really knows.

The other thing is that, looking at the pictures of my lovely new daughter (left), I'm beginning to suspect that she is actually a re-incarnation of Cyril Connolly. Or maybe Winston Churchill. I'll try offering her a cigar and see if she's interested.

Cyril Connolly also observed that "Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be read once." I suppose, by that standard, blogging is the art of writing something that even the author doesn't read.

This is baby Caitriona Breen (Caitríona Ni Bhriain), born 9.20pm 2 February 2004. She weighed 3.9kg, which is about 8.5 pounds.

I woke up on Tuesday morning after a few hours fitful sleep and went back to the hospital. I visited Susanne and we managed to get a wheelchair and I wheeled her up to SCBU - the Special Care Baby Unit.

There was our baby, lying in an incubator, sleeping. She was no longer being given oxygen; just air. We were allowed to take her out of the incubator and hold her. For her mother, it was the first time she had actually seen her new baby and it was a wonderful moment.

The specialist came along and told us that the caesarian was certainly the right thing to do, and just in time. They had done several tests and from what they could see, she was fine. She was alert and breathing normally. There did not seem to be any long term consequences.

We spent an hour or so there, and we had to leave her. I had to go home and later that afternoon I picked Philipp up from school and we went to visit. We saw the baby again, and Philipp got a chance to hold her.

We decided it was probably time to choose a name for her. We had never been able to decide on one. I quite liked Chelsea, but we could only afford Peckham, so that was out. Then Susanne said, "I really like Caitriona," and I said, "That was always one of my favourites!" So, in a moment, she was named.

On Wednesday, we visited again and this time the baby had been moved out of the room and into another room for babies who were about to leave the unit. We were allowed to take her down to the post natal ward.

Finally today, we got to take her home. On a rainy day in London, the newest member of our family came home, for the first time.

The text says, 'Moved to Theatre'.

On Monday morning at 5.30 Susanne woke me to tell me that her waters had broken. We had to go into hospital because there were complications and we could not go ahead with our plans for a home birth. That was a disappointment but it turned out to be very much the right decision.

We spent most of the day in the hospital, waiting for labour to start and then for it to advance. Gradually the contractions got closer and closer - but not enough.

Eventually it was decided that the baby was going to have to be induced. All the time, on the table beside us, there was a little machine printing out a graph. This was monitoring the baby's hearbeat. It's the printout in the picture above.

Suddenly, her heartbeat dipped dramatically for and inexplicably. Then, after five minutes, it returned to normal.

Then we waited until later and later in the afternoon. Then at about 9 her heartbeat dropped again. Nothing seemed to have any effect. She was in some sort of distress, but we knew nothing about it.

After a few minutes hurried consultation, they rushed us into the operating theatre. I had just enough time to put on my ER-type costume, then I stood by Susanne encouraging her. Then they decided to use a general anaesthetic, which meant (for reasons I'm not sure about, but you don't tend to argue with a surgeon who has your wife's and baby's life in his hands) I had to leave the room.

I stood outside in the corridor, looking through the window. After about five or ten minutes - time was intensely compressed - I saw blood and heard the words, "baby out". And there was a flash of tiny, bloodstained body.

Ages, ages later they came outside. The baby was alive but dazed, they said. Her tone was floppy. I had no idea what that meant but it didn't sound good. I asked about the mother. "She's fine," they said.

Eventually the paediatrician came out with the baby in her arms. My daughter, who looked very red and dazed. And she had hair. I remember noticing her fair brown hair.

She was breathing, though with difficulty - a sad little wheezing sound. They put her in an incubator and took her away for tests.

Then I had to wait anothe age until Susanne was wheeled out and I waited a while for her to come to. I told her what had happened. Then I told her again because the effect of the anaesthetic was to make her forget everything.

She was pretty distraught by the sudden rush to the theatre and the panicy nature of the whole thing. Even more by the fact that her baby was away, somewhere else, and she had not even seen her.

Eventually I got to go up and look at the baby in the incubator. She was looking better, and she cried a little before lapsing back into sleep.

I took some photos and brought them back to Susanne. It gave her some comfort, a little. We talked and then I had to go home and try to sleep.

I got home about 2.30 am on Tuesday morning. Twenty one, mostly sleepless, hours had passed. I felt like I was in a long endless tunnel, near to everyone else in the world, and yet so far far away from everyone.