In reply to UKC Articles:
I feel compelled to write a response to this thread (my first response ever) for two reaons.
The first one being the most important. I thought that this was an excellent article about a subject/emotions which very close to home! One and a half years ago, after 4 years of trying, my son was born. My wife had a massive blood loss just after the birth, and then my son when he was 3 weeks old was rushed into hospital for emergancy surgery, which was made worse by the fact that he was given a massive penicillin overdose in the recovery room. He/We pulled through this, and then at 3 months old he developed severe reflux, meaning he never slept, he only took 1 ounce of milk per feed, meaning we had to feed hime every 1 hour every night untill he was 1.
This all meant that climbing has had to take a backseat. I work away alot, and at the weekend I think that it is selfish of me to spend a whole day out climbing when my wife has had our son all week by herself. Not only that, I want to spend time with our son, who is the most important thing in the world to us. Before he came along, I lived for climbing, I climbed pretty much every evening, and every weekend. and for me giving up / curtailling the climbing has been the hardest thing I have ever had to do. That sounds really sad, but thats how it feels.
My son is now well and truely on the mend, and I am looking forward to the days out in mountains we are going to have together in a few years time. I am trying to get myslf through my lack of climbing by thinking, that in a few years time I will have a mini-me to instill my love of the mountains on! He can already tell Stanage, and froggatt edge apart from other crags when we see them in magazines.
I think that the forced break of a few years I am having has made me love the mountains even more, and the fact that I can share them with my son is the best feeling ever. I think that I started taking them for granted, and thats when things go wrong!
The second reason for my response is to say what a bunch of to**ers some people who use this site are. This thread was not about grammer it was about mountaineering and fatherhood. If you havent got anything constructive to say then keep it shut, and before you have a dig back, I know my english is rubbish, but do I care!!!!! I dont know what it is about UKC but none of the other forums I use outside of climbing (Singletrackworld etc) have this amount of bitchiness or rudeness within them.