With my sister giving birth a full month prematurely earlier this year, followed by my brother's wife giving birth on her exact due date, it could have gone either way.

So when my phone rang at Lansdowne Road - right after Ireland went one up against Holland - my sequence of thoughts went something like: "Oh God, not now. Please not now. Not when we've just scored. Don't go into labour now."

But it was all right. Joanna was calling to say that she'd seen the goal on TV and it was brilliant.

At least I think that was what she said. Everybody, me included, was still cheering and I couldn't hear a thing. Anyway, she'd surely call back if it was anything else.

The actual delivery day, two weeks later and five days early, was marginally less dramatic. Joanna picked me up outside work at around two in the afternoon just after dropping her mother, who'd come over from Australia, at Busβras for a trip to Monaghan. Joanna wasn't feeling great, but no worse than usual. It had been a tough pregnancy for her, with morning (and noon and night) sickness all the way through.

We drove to Blanchardstown shopping centre, where, if we'd known we were about to have what would amount to the Last Supper, for a while anyway, we might have picked something more salubrious than KFC.

Back home, at around five, Joanna was really not feeling well: a quick phone call and we were on our way to the Coombe. We'd joked that, with me having just started to learn how to drive an instructor's car, Joanna would end up driving herself to the hospital - or that I'd push her there in a shopping trolley. In the circumstances, I thought it might not be the best time to try driving our car for the first time, and we'd neglected to pick up a trolley in Blanch. So the joke proved true: she did drive herself there.

We got there at 5.30. At seven a doctor said he didn't think anything was going to happen and that we could go home again or stay. We stayed. Two-and- a-half hours later we were parents.

We'd previously made up our mind on the epidural question - I felt I'd need one; Joanna thought not for her though. On the night, she changed her mind, but it was too late. The baby was on the way. With no time for an epidural they gave her a hit of gas. She told a nurse my name is pronounced Paw-drig, not Paw-rick. She was right. Still, I felt it was the gas talking and wouldn't let them give her any more. Never mind that it meant she was tearing my hand off with the pain.

My first thoughts when the baby was born were, in this order: "I knew it would be a girl"; "God, she's so beautiful"; "She's got a full head of red hair." This was even better than being in Lansdowne for Jason McAteer's goal.

We'd already decided that if we had a girl she'd be called Grace. Sorry to all the people whom we told it would be Tara or Kimberley, we didn't think you'd believe us. I don't think I've ever felt so proud in my life as when I was phoning people and sending text messages announcing Grace's birth to the world.

Daddy's brain feels melted since Grace was born: I managed to spell her third name wrong in The Irish Times announcement but when I showed her the paper and explained the pressure I'd been under to get it in on time, she didn't seem to mind.

The nurse took her to the nursery to let Joanna get a little sleep the first night. On two trips up to see Grace there, Bruce Springsteen was being played. This caused me to ask, in all seriousness, surprise and confusion: "Do babies like Bruce Springsteen?" Apparently they just like the radio on -it was coincidence that the Boss was playing both times I went in.

The afternoon after she was born I had just left the hospital building, but was still on the grounds, when a security guard approached me in a hurry. He asked if I was taking washing home in the bag I had. I was, but thought it was a very odd question.

Grace's security tag had fallen off into a baby-grow and I had mistakenly taken it out of the hospital, setting off an alarm. Within seconds a nurse had run into the ward and asked where baby McAdam (she's taking her mother's name) was, while at the same time the security guard was checking me out. It was very impressive and reassuring.

There have been lots of scare stories, not least in this paper, about childbirth being an awful experience. Ours was wonderful.