The air was heavy with chlorine and the kind of heat that is smothering in the spectator section of the swimming pool but prickly cold when out of the water. Dunked down in the lukewarm waters of the hotel swimming pool, Emrys’ head was cradled in the palm of my hand. I couldn’t tell whether my infant son was petrified or nonplussed. He was looking up at the fluorescent ceiling, his lips a perfect horizontal line, as I waded in the shallow end burbling Twinkle Twinkle Little Star into his face. I was opening and closing my fingers and thumbs in the universally recognised symbol of a twinkling star, as I’d been instructed to do by the Water Babies tutor.

There were eight sets of parents and babies in the class. Rozz and I had decided we’d take turns bringing Emrys while the other stayed at home to fantasise about sleep. In reality, the ‘free’ time would be spent sterilising bottles and boil-washing babygrows. The other parents were mothers in various forms of sleeplessness, either quietly singing in mild embarrassment or over-enthusiastically. The latter were also the most vocal in the WhatsApp group I wasn’t asked to join, the Yummy Mummies.

The Water Babies tutor was doing her best, though saying ‘kick kick kick’ in a sing-song voice over and over again every thirty minutes, five days a week, must have lost its gloss very quickly. I looked up at her once and she gave me that thin professional smile that said I’m paid to love this. The cuteness of eight tiny humans with thin lips trying to see through their parents’ hand gestures must have faded rapidly. She was simply going through the motions. Still, we copied her like disciples. I was aware of how we looked both ridiculous and completely normal depending on whether the observer was a middle-class parent or not. Emrys was definitely judging me.

I looked up at the swimming pool ceiling. The fluorescent bulbs were sparkling stars and the corrugated roof a white canvas reflecting the movement of the water in the low light, shadows ebbing and jerking, a cosmic cot mobile. For a moment, Emrys and I gazed at this galaxy of flowing satellites weaving around the brightness, until we were jolted back to reality with the next chant.

‘Bouncey-bouncey-bouncey! Bouncey-bouncey-bouncey!’

The last part of each session involved immersing the babies underwater. I always liked watching this. I’m not sure if it was just me, but I loved the look of a surprised baby. I loved the wide eyes and how every baby looked like they were saying, ‘What the hell did you just do?’ before deciding whether to laugh at the game or cry at the betrayal. Babies say so much with their eyes. I won’t believe that even the weary tutor’s heart didn’t melt a little bit at the sight of a tiny human in a pink swimming cap giving her mother a death stare. Emrys came up, droplets sliding down his face, his lips still a stoic line as if to say, ‘Tell nobody nothing.’ I wiped the water drops from his face.

I generally had the changing room to myself. Most men had the good sense to avoid a swimming pool with ten sets of babies being manically chanted to by their parents, even if there was a swimming lane and rope barrier between them. It was the same with aqua aerobics classes. I remember one time I found myself halfway through my lengths when a class began and left early in case I was accused of something. Being a man is much more neurotic than people think.

The enthusiastic mothers ensured that after the session, we would gather in the hotel bar for coffee. It was always busy with the sound of milk steaming, cutlery on saucers and the occasional overture from a smartphone indicating a message was incoming. The women were already sitting in the corner and all of them had a coffee in front of them. I couldn’t imagine how any parent of a small baby could exist without coffee. It was one thing we all had in common.

Nobody ever booked the space, but it seemed all the elderly couples reading newspapers over their pots of tea knew not to sit there. Perhaps the hotel staff divided the bar up into sections so the informal business meetings and laptop tappers could congregate in one corner and the buggy car park could sit in the other. I was almost always last to arrive.

One of the upshots of the swimming lessons was that the babies were wrecked and fell asleep in their prams. I was almost always the only male parent. As a primary school teacher, I was used to female company. Almost 90% of primary school staff are women, so in order to survive in the staffrooms, I had to become good at being ‘blessed among women’, a phrase I often heard when anyone joined the same table as me at break times. Luckily, I always found female company easy, and the post-Water Babies coffee was never a chore, even if the glass ceiling was that I would not be part of the WhatsApp group.

The group was a bit of a lifeline for most of us, especially the first-time parents, as advice was freely and generously shared. When the babies were on the verge of moving from milk to solid foods, I learned that ice cube trays were not just for ice cubes. Batch cooking for babies was a thing before batch cooking became a thing for everyone. I became an expert at rationing mashed sweet potato, stewed apple and puréed carrots into little moulds. I found out that it was a bad idea to mention you were thinking of taking a trip up to Northern Ireland, as you might be pressured into smuggling bottles of Gripe Water across the border.

Sometimes there would be a conversation about an issue that would require photographic evidence. For example, a mother might talk about a really nice Gro-bag that her cousin had bought for her daughter, and she would take out her phone to show us. This gave everyone else permission to do the same, and phones began to appear in synchrony, each mother scrolling through photos.

‘Ah, look at her, snug as a bug,’ said one of the mummies.

‘Oh stop! That face! She knows she’s a princess,’ said another.

‘Mine hated the zip-up ones. She likes her legs free,’ chimed in a third, which I sensed didn’t go down well. The reply was frosty.

‘Ah no, I swear by them. They can’t kick them off. Sure, it’s the only way I get any sleep.’

Everyone half-sighed at the thought of sleep. There was an unspoken rule that no one could top another’s story without prefacing it with ‘I know it’s silly, but…’ and one of the mothers scrolled frantically, searching for something that could top it. I wondered how many photos she had taken of her baby.

‘I know it’s silly, but this was her at two weeks. Look at the tiny hands. She’s smiling there, look, proper smiling!’

‘That’s wind, Helen,’ someone said, and everyone laughed too loudly.

Every week, I watched the compliments, disclaimers and comparisons unfold. Each mother was both offering and receiving reassurance. I smiled and joined in as best I could, but mostly I took in the choreography of it all. The hiss of the coffee machine filled the pauses between their laughter. It was strangely comforting, this weekly show-and-tell of tiny triumphs. We all wanted to prove we were doing fine. The topics rotated from sleep to teething to baby toys and everything in between.

On one occasion, a parent was talking about her little girl’s christening. She was explaining that the child’s gown had been made from her own wedding dress. She had her phone out and was scrolling to find a photograph of it. Another was already ahead of the game, however.

‘My own wore the christening gown I was baptised in,’ she confided. ‘Can you believe it? We’ve had it in the family for years.’

As this seemed the winning declaration on baptismal gowns, she moved on to her moral dilemma. Another advantage of being the token father was that I wasn’t expected to look at or comment on the baptism gown.

‘I was kind of hoping to skip it, but sure, my mam wouldn’t hear of it. She insists it’s for the best and it makes things easier. I’m not even sure I believe in it, but sure, it doesn’t do any harm. At least she’ll have the certificate if she ever needs it for school or whatever. You can’t upset the family over something like that.’

I wasn’t expected to comment. I didn’t, but I could feel myself getting angry, as I often did when the subject of religion and schools arose.

That line, it doesn’t do any harm, has been the defence of Irish schooling for almost two centuries, ever since the first National Schools were founded as shared spaces for Catholic and Protestant children alike. The Stanley Letter, the 1831 document that founded the National School system, imagined a network where children of all backgrounds learned together.

Of course, it didn’t last. The Protestant hierarchy refused to join this National School system, the Catholic Church eventually filled the vacuum, and the concept of a multidenominational education system was baptised out of existence.

‘I didn’t want a big fuss, you know?’ the young woman continued. ‘Just a few people over for lunch afterwards. It wasn’t like a full-blown party, and sure, she’ll probably end up in a Catholic school, won’t she? That’s just the way it is. You wouldn’t want to be making things harder for her down the line.’

I knew the rules and I knew that there was nothing I could say. Most of them had only been parents for a couple of months and those rules were already fully embedded in them. These are the things that people don’t spend much time thinking about: cultural norms, social conventions, the status quo. Like how the boys in Water Babies all wore blue swimming caps and the girls wore pink ones. Men did not join the parenting WhatsApp groups. And baptismal certificates, a strange currency that made you belong in a supposedly secular republic.

After a while, the talk drifted again, as conversations with new parents always do, and before long the chat had moved back to teething rings and whether it was a good idea to keep a stock of them in the fridge. Someone mentioned starting baby sign language classes; another was already researching toddler art groups. There was always a new milestone on the horizon, something to get them ready for whatever came next. Before long, ‘next’ became school.

It was coming to the end of our Water Babies term and, as usual, we were in our corner of the hotel bar. Samantha, the bar manager, knew us by name and what type of coffee kept us from falling asleep. The babies were swaddled into their prams to doze off after their half hour of hard graft in the swimming pool. Looking at the babies, all tiny and oblivious, I could hardly fathom Emrys speaking or walking, never mind sitting at a classroom desk. It was as alien an idea to me as him cruising along a zip line or cycling a bicycle. I was still in awe of the fact that we made it out of the house and back alive. But here we were, sitting around a table, pondering a future at least four years away. Which primary school were these babies going to attend?

‘I hear Bennekerry is great,’ was the opening gambit for the 2014 school-choice Olympics.

‘Oh, I’ve heard it’s very big now. I hear Tinryland is nice and small,’ came the withering review.

‘Well, I guess my lad will be going to Killeshin, it’s only out the road,’ said a mother who I knew lived a few metres from a different school.

Some said they were choosing the Gaelscoil because the Irish language was very important to them. Samantha even chimed in to tell us her lad went to St Fiacc’s and loved it, as she cleared away the first round of coffee cups.

Some of the group said their child would be going to the local school but, given all the discussion, they didn’t seem as certain anymore. I decided I would say nothing. As the principal of one of the schools in the town, I was rather hoping one of them would mention my school, a designated disadvantaged school on the periphery of the town. None of them did. I took a bite of my chocolate muffin and pretended not to care.

I didn’t see much of the group after Water Babies ended. A few months later, though, I bumped into one of the mothers while pushing Emrys around the Town Park. She told me about all the others from the group. The highlight was that one of them was pregnant again. We laughed that she obviously mustn’t like sleeping at all.

Then she paused. ‘You work in the Educate Together, don’t you?’ she said out of the blue. She had been talking about a new restaurant that had opened in the town, which she was hoping to book for all the mummies and daddies because it would be nice for the men to meet too. I told her that I did and that Emrys would be going there when the time came.

‘So you didn’t baptise him then?’

‘We didn’t,’ I said.

‘Poor Emrys,’ she said.

I smiled as politely as I could, but it landed like a stone in my chest. There it was again, the price of belonging. I looked down at Emrys, still asleep in his pram, and thought how odd it was that a country that calls itself secular could still pity a child for not being baptised. We promised each other we’d meet for a coffee soon and moved on. The path curved by the river, and we were almost at the car park.