Babies fell into three categories for Hugh Linehan: Charles Laughton, Imelda Marcos, or ET. That was until his daughter Norah May was born on April 17th this year

'How can this be the summer that changed you?" asks my wife. "It's not even half over yet." This from a woman who still holds to the patently absurd belief that "summer" in this part of the world runs from May 1st to July 31st. However, although she clearly has some small part to play in these proceedings, this is not about her. And, as she rightly points out, her wedding vows committed her to loving and honouring me, not providing material for the Irish Times features pages (the loving and honouring is tough enough).

So yes, it's only the middle of July, but my summer began three months ago, when the weather was far better than it is now. Norah May Linehan was born in the early hours of April 17th, 2004, and my life changed for ever. It's changing still.

As first-time parents go, we tend towards the more well-worn end of the spectrum. No teen pregnancies for us. It's been a leisurely progress towards this landmark event. This has had a number of consequences, some foreseen, some unexpected. The very fact of conception has been greeted by surprised grandparents as a miraculous act of divine intervention. Siblings who got off the mark earlier chortle at the prospect of us in our dotage, struggling to support the offspring as she embarks on yet another expensive postgrad course in whatever ridiculous subjects they'll have invented in 20 years' time. But we have done very well on hand-me-downs - a constant flow of second-hand prams, cots, baths, chairs, yokes-with-rattly-bits and bouncy contraptions which have been unearthed for our use. Not to mention blankets, Babygros, one-piece suits, two-piece suits, vests, tights, hats, dresses and coats. All gratefully received, but who would have guessed that one small person the size of a Yorkshire terrier could need so much stuff?

The age issue has other implications. There was me thinking the reason I had all that energy in my 20s was so that I could go out every night and still get up in the mornings. Now I realise that a heavy biological hint was being dropped, which I ignored - and I am now suffering the consequences.

Also, when you're younger, you expect to be out of your depth - it's your natural condition. As you get older, it becomes more unusual, and therefore more disturbing. What am I supposed to do here? Where are my instructions? What the hell is this stuff? Slowly but surely, the sobering realisation dawns that all those trite clichés you've blithely ignored over the years are true. Worse, you find you're spouting them yourself.

First among these, for men, is that hardy perennial: "One thing this teaches you is to thank God you're not a woman." Which, after umpteen hours in the labour ward, followed by an emergency section, followed a few weeks later by the excruciating pain that is a breast abscess (they glossed over that one pretty quickly in the ante-natal classes), is now clearly the most fundamental truth around.

A closely related topic is the uselessness of men. They won't say it to your face (unless you've been stupid enough to make them angry) but you can see in their eyes that this is what women are thinking.

Apart from that brief and really quite painless contribution made sometime around the middle of last year, my role has been strictly a supporting one. Useful at times, certainly, but only in a menial way.

"There you go, just like George Clooney," said the nurse sarcastically as I stuffed myself like sausage meat into the disposable cap and gown prior to going into the operating theatre for the birth. We both knew I looked more like the village idiot in a Monty Python sketch, but hey. It's not about you any more, sunshine. You're just the comic relief.

And then, of course, there's the star of the show. Our daughter. Have I mentioned her yet? Sometimes I find myself standing over the cot when she's sleeping, just staring at her, dumbfounded.

There may be moments when she resembles Winston Churchill after one too many brandies (this is when people say "aah, she looks just like her father"). But she's actually (big cliché number two) The Most Beautiful Baby on the Planet.

Really. I don't say this lightly. Check out the picture. Would you like to see another one? I have lots here - I'll just show you a few. Come back - where are you going? Up until April 17th, I did what most non- parents do when a new baby is displayed: assured the proud parents it was the most gorgeous ever, while internally assigning it (always "it") to one of the three categories into which all babies fell: Charles Laughton, Imelda Marcos or ET. If I ever thought about what kind of category my own offspring would be, I would have guessed the odds were on a Laughton.

Now Mother Nature has played the remarkable trick of delivering this vision of perfection into my arms.

She has a crooked smile, slightly sardonic for a three-month-old, or so it appears to me. She has long fingers, like her uncle the pianist (let's hope she doesn't have her mother's tin ear). She has deep, deep blue eyes, and a dimple in her chin and . . . sorry, I'll pull myself together.

You will not be surprised to hear that, even at 12 weeks old, she shows signs of intelligence, wit and charm. She is still at a stage where laughter and crying are easily confused, which leads to a lot of Judy Garland-ish smiling through the tears. But she's astonishingly serene most of the time, and quite happy with her own company. She clearly loves her mammy and her daddy and her granny and all the rest of us. But what she really seems to like most is the ceiling. She inspects it, gets surprised by some aspect of it too obscure for us mere mortals to perceive, bursts out laughing, moves on to another bit, becomes fascinated by that, babbles at it . . . who would have thought a ceiling could be so much fun for a person who drinks only milk?

Having joined the tribe of fathers, I am occasionally questioned by other members of the tribe.

"How's the sleeping going?" they inquire sympathetically, and I have to admit that a lot of the time it's fine, because I'm in Dublin and Norah May and her mother are in Co Donegal, and those little lungs haven't developed enough to wake me from there. For four nights a week, I am Absent Dad. In years to come, there will be therapy to be had over this. I can see the other dads looking at me disapprovingly. I'm letting the side down.

I'm not suffering enough sleep deprivation. No use telling them it's killing me, stuck here in Dublin with a house full of builders and dust, missing out on never-to-be-repeated moments. Every Friday, I schlepp up to Donegal to discover that some wondrous new transformation has taken place. Her hair has grown! She's clasping her hands! She's quacking like a duck! Every Monday I reluctantly leave.

This enforced separation may account for what has become known as my "little shopping problem".

Up until now, I never knew there were so many places you could buy baby clothes. Now, I'm an expert. It has been suggested in some loving-and-honouring quarters that I'm suffering from an obsessive- compulsive disorder. I'd rather think of it as the mutation of a deep-seated male impulse.

Where in previous times I might have sallied forth from the cave with a sharpened stick in search of small-to-medium-sized mammals to tear apart for sustenance and clothing, now I prowl the aisles of department stores, Mastercard at the ready, on the scent of comfy-but-funky Babygros and on-sale tiny winterwear.

Apart from the location of baby shops, I have learned other things: about the rather brilliant people who staff the maternity services; about the public health nurse system, which actually seems to work (in rural areas at least); about the profound wisdom of grandmothers. And I have been introduced to the four gods which for the next couple of years must at all costs be propitiated: Food, Sleep, Wind, and Nappy.

In a few short months my life has changed forever. It's the most banal and everyday experience in the world, and also the most extraordinary and magical. I am bewildered, besotted, bowled over.

Nothing will ever be the same again. It's brilliant.

Series concluded