THERE ARE SO many dads who miss out on the magic of their sons' lives. They blink and they've grown up. Not for a moment am I saying mothers who care full time for their children have it easy. More than many dads, I know they don't.

I gave up my teaching job around the time that my son was born, nearly two years ago. After a generous period of maternity leave, my wife went back to work.

Once she'd gone back, I was the full time dad. Now, don't laugh, but I expected the novel would get written in those first six months of my son's life.

Before long, I gave up even trying. Creativity bites the dust when you're at the mercy of baby's demands for instant gratification.

So I resigned myself to looking after the little mite.

Admittedly - okay, so I'm biased - he was a good baby and relatively easy to mind. Three months to the day after his birth, he slept through the night, even though by then we felt the our little nuclear family hadn't slept for decades. We knew we were remarkably lucky.

It was a very privileged time for me. There aren't many dads who enjoy the close scrutiny of daily milestones and adventures. It was a period of close bonding between us.

Which is not to say I was the perfect dad. Far from it. I often felt exasperated, impatient, powerless, embarrassed, drained, weary, trapped.

I could also identify with what some full time mothers feel about having a sense of low status.

"And what does your husband do?"

"He looks after our son."

I used to feel embarrassed taking the shrieking bundle out in the pram. Not always, but often enough not to get away with ignoring those feelings. It was fine to carry him, lug him around under my oxters or put him on my shoulders - but the ...

Nor did it matter wheeling him in the pram if I was accompanied by someone else.

MY WIFE WAS missing out. She wasn't seeing the magical moments she'd looked forward to. I wasn't getting my ever more elusive book written.

We ended the experiment and took an even bigger risk: we chucked both jobs and set our sights on returning to Ireland.

My better half would look after the increasingly demanding lad. I would see if I could earn us a new living back in Ireland, hopefully peddling words.

Now that words are being written, I'm conscious that I'm missing out on the little one again. What with travelling to work, time spent in the office and the long trek home, I'm lucky if I've 10 minutes playing time with my son's infancy, which is galloping ahead in micro blinks.

I don't want to be, for him, an absent father.