My Pregnancy

Surprise! If you thought that the title meant Carrie was the one posting this blog, well, you should be surprised. But I want to share with you my pregnancy.

Many people think that pregnancy is something that simply must be endured by the female, and that the male has it easy after his initial contribution. However, I have had the experience that pregnancy can affect the dad just as much as it affects the mom, and I'm not just talking about the joy or the sleepless nights!

That's right. Even men can have pregnancy symptoms. Mine started fairly early on. In fact, fairly shortly after we found out that we were pregnant, I had this very strong sense that we would be having a girl. My "maternal instincts" still haven't changed. Even though we chose not to find out when we had our ultrasound appointment, I still have a strong sense that we are having a girl. (By the way, Carrie doesn't have a strong sense either way right now.)

The funny thing is, the girl's name that we have picked out is one that I had a pretty strong sense of early on, too. It came to me shortly after we started thinking about the long term ramifications of having a kid, and Carrie fell in love with it pretty quickly, too. (And no, we're not telling our names until the baby arrives. Yes, we do also have a boy's name picked out, but it took a little bit longer to decide on.)

However, these were merely the beginnings of my pregnancy symptoms. I also began to gain weight while Carrie remained pretty steady, at least during the first trimester. I'm not kidding. I probably gained about 5-7 pounds during the first couple of months, which is pretty typical for a pregnant woman. My pregnancy was proceeding right on schedule, you might say!

The biggest reality check for me came when Carrie had a trip planned to visit her family. We had discovered that we were pregnant, but didn't want to spoil the weekend for our sister-in-law, who was about to have her baby, and was having a shower. Needless to say, our decision to not tell Carrie's family while she was there was rather stressful. But, as you might already suspect, guess who is the one who started to get an ulcer from this? Not Carrie, but me!

Yes, while she was there, I had some burning sensations in my stomach that caused me to go to the local insta-care. There, I was told that it appeared that I had the beginnings of an ulcer. Carrie's stress at not being able to tell her family about the pregnancy led to me having to take two months of a prescription to bring it under control. (Oh, I should mention that I also had told God that I was okay if He gave me some of her symptoms if it would make things easier on her, so just a warning to be careful about what you pray for!)

During the second trimester, things began to level off. At least, Carrie started to get some of the typical pregnancy symptoms, and mine seemed to diminish a bit. All actually went pretty well during those middle three months or so. She felt good, I felt good, and we had the joy of sharing our news with quite a few people. We also planned for quick trips to Texas and Minnesota to see our families, our last bit of traveling before the baby gets here.

Which brings me to the third trimester. This is the one where things often take a turn for the worse, at least in terms of how the woman carrying the child feels. We both have suffered much interrupted sleep, though she has been the one to gain the weight now. (In fact, right now she has the cutest big baby bump, and I can even see baby pushing out and can feel hiccups.)

However, we also began to take some baby classes through the local hospital to prepare ourselves. We've learned about infant safety, about breastfeeding, about lamaze, and all sorts of interesting things. But at one of the classes, the instructor had this cruel idea that dads should really feel what it's like to have your ribs poked continually and to feel an extra 35 pounds or so sticking out in front of you.

So she has this get-up that you put on to "experience the pregnancy" (as though I didn't do enough of that for Carrie in the first trimester!). As you can see below, it's quite the fashion.

Yes, those are our bellies touching each other.

How many pregnant dads can curl the carseat as their weight training program?

NO! We are not having twins. I just thought it would be cool to hold two babies while waiting for mine to be born. Of course, it was born about 5 minutes later, when I got to strip this fashionable get-up off. I can just imagine that Carrie wishes that her pregnancy could come to an equally quick and painless end.