What to expect when she's expecting.

There are three things I have learned during Emma's pregnancy:

(1) The only genuinely useful things a husband can do to help his pregnant wife are the things that she can no longer do for herself. Yes, there's plenty of demand for sympathetic hair-stroking and complimenting her on how she looks great, but honestly, there's not a lot of other stuff you can do that really helps.

(2) There are actually quite a number of things that a pregnant wife can no longer do for herself. Emma was using the drill this evening to attach some sort of curtain-related item to the wall (she has evidently not entirely lost her self-sufficiency) but some tasks are certainly now beyond.

Bending down, for example.

Things that fall on the floor stay there. Mail. Sets of keys. Food items.

Owing to the water-melon sized future-son in her belly, Emma simply cannot bend down anymore, and so I can be quite useful by picking things up.

And that gives me an enormous sense of usefulness, I can tell you.

Oh, and moving heavy objects...that's another area where I now uniquely excel.

(3) No amount of 'picking things up' and 'moving heavy objects' quite gives a father-to-be the feeling he's doing enough to prepare for his son's arrival.

This, I deduce, is why I have gone on a gardening rampage of late. I think I'm actually stating to believe that creating a squirrel-proof strawberry patch (metal mesh 'roof' and solid wood 'walls') and planting a huge crop of tomato plants is exactly what my son expects me to be doing right now.

That, and figuring out how to do my own oil-change.

Oh, and summarizing twelve hours of child-birth classes into notes that might possibly make sense to me when Emma calls me and says: "It's started"!

Then again, we have four weeks to go until the due date...plenty of time to tidy up those notes, right?

Comments

[Matt]

Hate to say it mate, but once that bundle of fun arrives you're going to have approx. zero time to tend your garden or do anything else for yourself for the first three months at least.. If I was you (and with the benefit of hindsight) do everything that you think you might need to do in the next year or so...get it out the way so that you're not worrying about it later. I'd also use your hammock as much as possible cos there is no way you're getting 5 mins peace on that thing for the next 18 years...

That said, as my tweet said on Sunday...nothing beats a beautiful morning in the park with your son - other than a lie in of course ;-)