Welcome to my world

My wife is giving birth in two or three weeks, so I don’t expect a great deal of sympathy here with what I’m about to say, but I’ll say it anyway. Pregnancy can be pretty tough on guys.

Yeah, I know, it’s nothing compared to what women have to go through. Now in her ninth month, my wife looks at me beady-eyed whenever I spring up from a chair to exit the room. She demands to know where I’m going. She, on the other hand, takes a good 15 minutes to lift herself up from a sitting position – and that takes all the determination of launching the Space Shuttle. My wife has also started to describe herself as feeling "like a beaten-down horse" most of the time, and I am hugely sympathetic. I try to make her feel better by noting that female elephants carry their young for up to three years before giving birth. This doesn’t help.

Anyway, it’s a major operation for her to get through these final weeks, so I know she’s in no mood for pity. But it’s hard being me, too. As the father-to-be, you have to walk a fine line between going about your business – doing all the mundane tasks that need getting done from day to day – and exhibiting enough solicitous care and attention to avoid being labeled "heartless," "thoughtless," and sometimes "a bad father" (when, to be fair, the jury hasn’t even come out of the box yet).

As a father-to-be, you have to read lots and lots of baby books – and I mean read them, not just look at the back covers – and come up with good, offhand comments like, "Have you started nesting yet?" or "When would you like to work out a feeding schedule that allows you maximum rest time?" It’s a lot of work, believe me.

But, of course, on the other side of the bed is somebody who has been doing much, much, much more work than you from day one – and it’s sensible not to forget it. One must always remember that the struggles of male pregnancy don’t amount to a hill of beans next to the real hill of beans.

Therefore, I try not to make a big deal out of my Sympathy Gut. Sure, it was fun the first couple of months, developing weird cravings and stomach pains similar to my wife’s. It was great finding out I could eat as much of what I wanted just to keep up with her. Yes, sympathy pains are one thing. Gaining an extra few kilos just from general inertia and sloth is another matter. And I can’t help feeling cheated that my wife will "magically" drop her several kilos after giving birth, while I’ll probably be toting around my Sympathy Gut for a hell of a lot longer.

Another thing I can’t expect too much sympathy about are the well-known symptoms of clumsiness and forgetfulness, which women exhibit after four to five months of pregnancy, but which I’ve been exhibiting most of my adult life. Suddenly, these delicate creatures find out what it’s like to knock over shampoo bottles in the shower, or to drop stray blobs of tomato sauce down the fronts of their shirts. Suddenly they know what it’s like to wander around a room aimlessly for five minutes, too embarrassed to admit you can’t remember why you got up in the first place. Now my wife knows what it’s like to be klutzy and absent-minded.

I shrug and tell her, welcome to my world.

But, again, she stands a good chance of losing most of these unpleasant side-effects in about three weeks. Her finger joints will no longer crack and pop alarmingly in the morning from swelling. Mine still will. She won’t knock over ceramic knick-knacks like a bull in a china shop whenever she enters a stranger’s sala. I will continue to do so. And she won’t have to go through boxes of Breeze and Surf anymore just to keep up with the kaleidoscope of food stains decorating her wardrobe. She won’t continue to be a slob. I will.

And perhaps the worst part is, in three weeks’ time, I will no longer have a partner in grime – someone who’s as messy, thoughtless and addle-minded as I am, and as incapable of sitting in one place for five minutes without making a holy mess.

Except the new baby, of course. At least we’ll have that much in common.