My incredibly hard life coping with a pregnant wife (bring small violins)
I'm living with the soft furnishing equivalent of a black hole.
Jane attracts any bedding item within 100 yards. By the time she's settled in bed, she has three of the four pillows under her head, another cushion under her feet and three quarters of the available duvet.
The other day she added to this list by purchasing a special boomerang-shaped pillow, which apparently has multiple purposes including supporting the tummy and acting as a nursing cushion, not to mention poking me in the back every time I edge further into the bed in search of more of the elusive duvet.
And the snoring! Don't get me started on the snoring! If only there was a pillow that stopped that!
(Pauses a moment to get images from the end of the film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" out of my head.)
... Perhaps not that permanently.
I have a theory for all this. It's all down to evolution.
Every time I mention my lack of sleep due to sharing the bed with the Pillow Monster to my male colleagues who are already fathers, I get very little sympathy.
"Just you wait until the baby's born," they chuckle. "Then you'll really be missing sleep."
Which got me thinking, maybe pregnant women have evolved to prepare husbands for the complete disruption to their precious sleep patterns that a small baby brings.
I'm perfectly confident that my child will have such superior genes that it will come out with an innate sense of proper bed times, and also not getting up before 7 on a weekday (9 at weekends), so I really don't need this preparatory training!
...ahem...
In other sprog news, Baby is getting bigger and stronger by the day. What were once tiny flutters are now punches and kicks and great arching stretches that suddenly change the entire geography of mummy's tummy. It's great! Jane might disagree there. She used to ring me up from work when she first felt the baby move, now the novelty has started to wear off a little.
Babies, apparently, can learn their father's voice while in the womb. So I'm singing to the baby most every day, usually because I run out of things to talk about.
Current favourites (based on kick responses) are:
Jane attracts any bedding item within 100 yards. By the time she's settled in bed, she has three of the four pillows under her head, another cushion under her feet and three quarters of the available duvet.
The other day she added to this list by purchasing a special boomerang-shaped pillow, which apparently has multiple purposes including supporting the tummy and acting as a nursing cushion, not to mention poking me in the back every time I edge further into the bed in search of more of the elusive duvet.
And the snoring! Don't get me started on the snoring! If only there was a pillow that stopped that!
(Pauses a moment to get images from the end of the film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" out of my head.)
... Perhaps not that permanently.
I have a theory for all this. It's all down to evolution.
Every time I mention my lack of sleep due to sharing the bed with the Pillow Monster to my male colleagues who are already fathers, I get very little sympathy.
"Just you wait until the baby's born," they chuckle. "Then you'll really be missing sleep."
Which got me thinking, maybe pregnant women have evolved to prepare husbands for the complete disruption to their precious sleep patterns that a small baby brings.
I'm perfectly confident that my child will have such superior genes that it will come out with an innate sense of proper bed times, and also not getting up before 7 on a weekday (9 at weekends), so I really don't need this preparatory training!
...ahem...
In other sprog news, Baby is getting bigger and stronger by the day. What were once tiny flutters are now punches and kicks and great arching stretches that suddenly change the entire geography of mummy's tummy. It's great! Jane might disagree there. She used to ring me up from work when she first felt the baby move, now the novelty has started to wear off a little.
Babies, apparently, can learn their father's voice while in the womb. So I'm singing to the baby most every day, usually because I run out of things to talk about.
Current favourites (based on kick responses) are:
The Wheels On the Bus Go Round and Round - not including the controversial "Terrorist on the Bus goes boom boom boom" verse.
The Theme to Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds - which I found out the other day was first on telly over a quarter of a century ago. Makes me proud to be teaching my child the classics.
Just under 10 weeks to go. I'm sure I'll start feeling like an adult any day now.
The Theme to Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds - which I found out the other day was first on telly over a quarter of a century ago. Makes me proud to be teaching my child the classics.
Just under 10 weeks to go. I'm sure I'll start feeling like an adult any day now.
I first felt my son (the one they told me was a daughter) kick during The Rocky Horror Show at the Theatre Royal. The evidence continues to mount.
Follow the bits of advice you like the sound of, ignore the rest.
And, yes, isn't it a bitch changing the pillow case on a V-shaped pillow?
My advice; every time she pulls the duvet off you, violently rip it back. In her sleep she'll associate her duvet thievery with a sharp tug and won't do it anymore. As for the snoring, I've found with Wifey that if you tip her onto her side or make sure she doesn't have her arms above her head while she sleeps that stops things. You want Jane to sleep on her side anyway because that helps baby's positioning for the birth.
Don't you just hate unsympathetic veteran parents? "Oh, just wait until the baby arrives!" or "you don't have kids yet so you don't understand". These people are less than useless in terms of advice. The fact is when baby cries in the night they'll generally shut up once they get some milk into them. Get into a fast reaction routine of hearing the cry, rushing to baby, getting milk into it and then back to sleep. And the best part (for you that is)? If Jane's breast feeding you only have to go back to sleep as you are redundant in the process.
...except if baby needs its nappy changing.
Not sure about that one. I think thats the prelude to bed cover war! Certainly not something I would take on with a pregnant wife. :)
alan
Express. Bag. Freeze.
Then a bloke can get a bottle and 'breastfeed' at any time of night.
Been there. Done that.
My verification word is 'chestio'. I kid you not.
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