WHEN Neil told his mother he was having his first baby, she suggested he should "write his usual bollocks" and turn the journey in to a daddy’s diary.

Almost a year later, in November 2008, Be My Baby (On the Road to Fatherhood) was released in Singapore and across South-east Asia.It will be launched in Australia in early 2009.

Being an eager first-time parent, Neil hit the bookstores and libraries and noticed that many of the titles were written from the mother’s perspective and he wasn’t having that.

There’s always room on the bookshelf for a sentimental journey to fatherhood from a soppy first-time dad, he thought. There are tears, laughs and far too many trips to the toilet, but Neil insists that it is one journey that every man and woman should try and take at least once in their lifetime.

The back cover:

When two lines appear on the pregnancy test kit, Humphreys’ world is turned upside down. He is excited but clueless and urgently needs some directions. After all, his biggest responsibility to this point had been a pet hamster and he lost that twice.

From the moment his doctor tells him to book an obstetrician’s appointment, he knows he is out of his depth — he doesn’t know what an obstetrician is.

Humphreys deals with parents who mock his sex drive, midwives who question his usefulness, friends who share only horrific birth stories, strangers who rub his wife’s belly and folks who seem to know everything there is to know about pregnancy (but often don’t have kids of their own). And there’s that troubling dream about her giving birth to a plastic toy lizard made in China.

How will he deal with his parental insecurities?

What’s the secret to being a decent dad?

Will he drop his baby at the birth?

Both funny and poignant, Be My Baby is a frank account of Humphreys’ quest to be a good father.

Every parent will identify with his journey and perhaps begin to realise what they themselves put their mummy and daddy through, even in the womb.

Book bits:

• Neil still didn’t have a name for his baby girl a day after she was born.
• Neil’s wife again took the cover photograph after he complained about all the painting and decorating involved in preparing a nursery.
• He still calls his daughter a “little heifer”.
• Be My Baby was the longest book to write, for obvious reasons, but the quickest to read.
• Yes, it really is the same shirt as all the other previous covers. Neil keeps it purely for sentimental reasons now, honestly, and only wears it on his book covers.