From being pregnant to giving a birth. Daddy’s version.

When my wife just got pregnant, I was on top of the world. Long-awaited news caught me off guard. It took me couple minutes to resolve the puzzle, well, to actually look at my wife’s belly where she had the words ‘I am pregnant’ written. Yes, I cried. It has been a long journey as we waited for her pregnancy desperately for the last year, and more or less actively for the last two. You know, the stress when you need to match the ovulation days which are very specific and precise, you also need to be in the mood for making love. I never experienced such level of stress before. Coz pregnancy ended up being an adventure that you knew nothing about despite your preparedness, amount of books you read. Father instincts don’t emerge immediately, hence they develop with time and maybe they will appear the last minute, or maybe they don’t even visit you. Who knows, but my wife says that she started feeling my support on the last three months of her pregnancy when I started getting involved actively: cooking, tidying the house, being more present in our everyday life. I wouldn’t say that even at that time I had strong father instincts. It was evolving to what I have now.

Her first three months were about feeling dizzy, vomiting and eating almost nothing. Being alone and the lack of both emotional and physical support from my side. I was so blinded by my workaholic nature that I took many things for granted and didn’t pay enough attention to the first trimester when she needed me most. Do I regret? Yes, I do. Now I won’t be able to change my past: my absence in our baby’s life while in womb. Do not ever, I repeat, ever miss the pregnancy of your wife. It is crucial and your presence will affect both her emotional and physical state not to mention baby’s development.

I tried to give more importance to my job, I thought I was taking care of our family. At least, financial part is covered, I thought. But I put my bets in a wrong game. My wife needed me more than ever. Not my job but my presence, not my dollars but my attention. It still haunts me to this day how could I disdain and neglect this important period of our life.

Somehow she managed the pregnancy in the best way one can imagine. She tried to bother me less, completely and absolutely counting on herself and dealing with everything on her own. Only sometimes she would ask me for a favor that I perceived as a big thing. What an idiot I had been.

As I mentioned before, my instincts started growing into something called ‘being daddy’, ‘supportive partner’, ‘conscious husband’ on the last trimester. I don’t know, but I started cooking though I maybe cooked four or five times since we got married. And I had this Gordon Ramsay awake inside, mastering dishes that I would never ever think I would cook. My father instincts were still clumsily evolving but I felt I was on the right way.

When they say woman changes when she is pregnant, you just perceive it as just a given fact without any comprehension and you don’t even give a decent thought to it. Well, woman changes. And it is not just mood swings, it is complete new characteristics. I would say MyWife.Point2. Totally new set of demands, new requests and super new spontaneous ‘you don’t care about me’, a little bit exaggerated perception of my presence in her life.

Now, along with newly emerged needs and my response to these needs, we started gradually entering the last trimester, when everything is altered. 9am to 5pm turns to 5pm to 4am, 12 am to 6am, 4:30 am to 4:45am and then 5:20pm to 7:33am schedule. Unpredictable mood swings along with unexpected temper displays.

You have to learn how to ignore most of the undeserved criticism but be sensitive to the very nature of her ‘specific to the last trimester’ behavior.

She had everything planned: from her underwear, my underwear, flip flops up to the sheet to cover the baby in. Hospital bag was ready long before the delivery. Look, I had no idea about it. I felt myself helpless and not enough involved at every stage of her last trimester…

(To be continued)