By Lucia Laubscher
Pregnancy is one of those exclusively female experiences, which leaves most men uncertain as to how best approach the mum-to-be in their lives.
If you’re a man, and you happen to have a pregnant woman in your life, then maybe the list below will give you some insight into what she, and in essence, you, are dealing with:
- Crying will happen frequently. And not just a gentle tear rolling down her glowing cheek. I mean full blown sobbing, ugly crying. Especially from TV ads about children, or involving love, or the wrong comment about her appearance, her cooking or really anything. I bawled my eyes out after my husband made a sarcastic comment which would usually just get an eyebrow lift. The only predictable part about crying while pregnant, is that it will happen. If not daily, then at least once a week.
- It’s an invasion. Yes, as a pregnant woman, your body has been invaded. You carry another living being inside of you and no matter how many times you fall pregnant it is still the strangest and most alien experience you will ever have. The worst of it is that you know your body is invaded and doing all kinds of amazing things long before others can see the evidence of this.
Your hormones are changing your body and suddenly the emotions and hormonal happenings it took you roughly 15 years to get used to, are now thrown upside down. Things that you used to love eating suddenly make you want to donate your lunch to the toilet and you start wanting to eat and drink things no-one ever thought of combining.
You just feel tender all the time…emotionally and physically. Once you’ve gotten used to the idea of having scrambled eggs mixed with Rice Puffs and mayonnaise for breakfast you start getting a slight bump in the front. You’re not always sure whether this bump is from the strange food combinations you’ve been eating, or if it’s from the life growing inside of you. Generally you just look fat and not pregnant. - You daydream about sex all the time. Which got you into this situation in the first place! You don’t necessarily want to have it, but you “feel” like it and thus you think about it often. See, you have about 30% more blood coursing through your veins than normal, which makes you feel a whole bunch more sexual, since this increase of blood flow happens “down there” as when you’re aroused. But you just don’t “look” as sexy as you’d like to. With the increase of blood you also have the occasional gum bleed and nose bleed – not sexy at all.
- Fear kicks in. Things that would normally not bother you in the least now bring on a bout of anxiety. Things like soft cheeses, mayonnaise, shellfish and raw meat. A sneeze or a cough would get a person banned from your personal space. The father of your child starts fearing things too. Like letting you drive by yourself to the shops, or letting you go for a walk. Or letting you climb stairs, or having you stand for too long. Other people that don’t know you start being concerned, as soon as your stomach starts being obvious that you’re pregnant and not just fat. Strangers will touch you without permission and tell you to look after yourself and your baby. They will give you unsolicited advice, which will make you fear that you are not capable of being a fully functional pregnant woman or would know how to take care of your baby at all. And of course, the worst fear of all – how the hell are you supposed to get this baby out? You look at the size of your stomach and try and imagine how all of that is going to come out through THERE…it seems like you have to try squeeze a bowling ball through a toilet roll.
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