COLUMN: Sex, lies and maternity clothing
When they say a woman is expecting, a common misconception is it means she is simply expecting a baby. This is not true. My wife and I just had our third child, and I am here to testify to the world there are many different levels to what a woman is expecting.
LIES: When a woman is pregnant, she will ask her husband many questions concerning her physical appearance. To 99 percent of these questions, the correct answer is the exact opposite of what you think. When she is in her last trimester, she may look like she swallowed an entire car engine and will tell you she is fat. All she really wants from you is to lean over that tremendous stomach of hers to her face and for you to whisper she is still more beautiful to you than ever.
MONEY: The financial end to having a baby starts well before the baby ever gets there and is not spent entirely on the little whippersnapper. There is the subject of maternity clothes. Many women will borrow maternity clothes from friends and relatives, but do not be fooled; this does not get you off the hook completely. Maternity clothes go out of style and I don’t know if it’s because of the extra material, but they are not cheap.
Then there is the underwear, believe it or not; the leopard skin thong she used to wear just doesn’t cut it anymore. Also, the bra will need to be replaced, not only because things change upstairs too, but because of the wonderful invention called the nursing bra. These things are aside to the crib with matching crib sheets, a car seat, diapers, blankets, pacifiers, booties, outfits, a stroller, a bike trailer, shoes, baby wipes, diaper-rash ointment, bottles, formula and a breast pump.
PATIENCE: One of the cruelest tricks played on the human race is the difference between the male and the female sex drives. As it is commonly known, guys are ready for sex at any time and women need the planets to be aligned, the barometric pressure at exactly 76 cm Hg and her mate to have romanced her prior, or at least not messed up in some major way that day. When a woman gets pregnant, all you have to do is take the scenario above and then forget it all together. But as a final blow, there will come a time during the pregnancy that your wife’s OBGYN, who is obviously getting back at you for having to stare at the naked lower-half of your pregnant wife for the last eight months, tells you that you cannot have sex again until the baby is at least six weeks old.
SHARING TOO MUCH INFORMATION: This begins in a man’s life when he and his wife decide they are going to try to get pregnant. At this point, he is taught exactly about his wife’s menstrual cycle and when exactly she is ovulating. Then, after conception, the wife has the need for the husband to come to her doctor’s appointment so he can watch another man examine a part of his partner’s body he is not exactly comfortable with. During birth, there is very little left to the imagination about his wife’s womanhood, and after the baby is born there is still more to come.
Fortunately, along with all of these things comes a child so amazing, perfect and unblemished that all of the negatives cancel each other out into one beautiful positive. That is when you look at your wife and feel more in love with her than ever. And over time, you feel like you might just do it all over again, that is until you get the hospital bill for services rendered.