Welcome to Throwback Thursday! I began professionally writing in the 90s with a newspaper column called “My Two Cents.” Thought you might enjoy this throwback to what I was thinking/feeling at that time.
I wish my husband could be pregnant for just one day. So he wouldn’t feel left out. So he could understand that it’s not as easy as we women make it look. And I don’t think I’m alone in this wish for in talking with other women it seems many of us would like to see our men take a more active role in the nine-month process.
The question is…which trimester?
Would it best for him to be pregnant in the first trimester so he could be nauseated all day, weepy, so sleepy by three in the afternoon that it’s all he could do to keep his head off the desk?
Or should it be in the second trimester so he could be famished all day, eat everything in the pantry, feel weepy for having eaten everything in the pantry and knowing the scales will be three pounds heavier in the morning, and so sleepy by three in the afternoon that he can barely keep his head off the desk?
Or should he have the privilege of the third trimester so he could be kicked until the inside of his belly was blue, lose his navel and the sight of his feet thanks to the uncontrolled eating of the second trimester, worry about labor and delivery so much that it made him weepy, and be so sleepy by three in the afternoon that he really has a hard time keeping his head off the desk?
Both times I was pregnant I wanted some days off. Just one day off so I could lie on my belly on the floor, or jog down the street without slinging my kangaroo paunch, or fit more easily behind the steering wheel of a car. It would have been nice if my husband could have taken the job for just one day.
I tried to get him to strap a 30-pound bowling ball around his middle, get indigestion, wear tight shoes (and pantyhose!) for just one day so he could see what it felt like, but he refused. I think if he had, he would have been sleepy by three in the afternoon, don’t you?