As an expectant father, hopefully you try to prepare yourself for your wife’s pregnancy and the inevitable delivery of your baby. Many of you will start reading all of the available literature in the hopes of understanding the different phases of pregnancy and what to expect at the time of delivery. Others will go around and ask their friends and coworkers for real-life experiences to help them prepare. No matter how much you plan, each pregnancy and delivery is different and you can never prepare for all of the changes in your spouse and in yourself during the course of the pregnancy.
 
The Announcement
After many months of delicious romps, my wife and I decided that we were just not going to get pregnant. We timed it; we took temperatures; we counted days, hours and minutes; we tried it lying down and sitting up; and we even tried indoors and outdoors, day and night. Nothing seemed to work. So, we decided to postpone our efforts to get pregnant (“Bummer,” says Hubby!) and go back to an irregular schedule of sexual encounters that we were following before our attempted parenthood.
 
Lo and behold, that was all it took. One interlude before rushing off to work and five weeks later, we were pregnant. Now, if that doesn’t say something about just letting nature take its course, I don’t know what does. On Mother’s Day of 2002; my wife and I announced to our family that we were going to have a baby. I am sure there was much chuckling behind our backs from our families since neither my wife nor I were saints as we were growing up.

The Face
In most relationships you become familiar enough with your spouse to know when she is giving you a certain look. There are sexy looks that say, “Let’s fool around,” and there are evil looks that say, “You better keep your mouth shut.” Most couples develop a rapport that allows them to read each other’s moods and to act appropriately depending on the look. Unfortunately, pregnancy changes all of the rules.
 
I’m sure that most of you remember 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland. One of the scariest memories I have from childhood is from that movie when the wicked witch of the west says, with an evil look on her face, “I’ll get you my pretty … and your little dog too.”
 
To this day, I never thought I would see that face in everyday life. I thought it was a face reserved for the big screen. I made the mistake of disagreeing with my wife in month five or six and she whipped around with that same venomous look on her face and in a voice I had never heard before she said, “WHAT DID YOU SAY?” That was the last time I disagreed with her during pregnancy.
 
The Subtle and not so subtle changes
I also noticed a couple of other subtle changes that were not evident unless you knew my wife. She no longer wanted to watch movies like The Terminator or The Godfather. Instead, she wanted to watch sappy movies like Hope Floats Gone with the Wind. I also noticed that my wife developed an addiction to HGTV. Any time we were home, HGTV was on.
 
As we eased into the fifth and sixth months, my wife and I both started putting on some weight. She had good reason but I was eating just because we had good food in the house. My wife always watched out for what I ate but I guess she felt like she could not say anything to me if she was hogging out too. By the time our son made his first appearance, my wife had gained 70 pounds and I had put on 40 pounds of sympathy weight.
 
The changes started becoming more noticeable. My wife got in the habit of pointing out every child under the age of two in magazines, stores, malls, etc. She would always say, “Awe, look how cute,” or “I hope ours will be that cute.” By this time, I had already learned that any response other than one of agreement or affirmation was likely to be punished with beheading by her scathing temper.
 
Madonna turns into Martha
One final thing I noticed that scared the heck out of me was that my wife’s shopping habits and decorative preferences became drastically different. Before pregnancy, when we went to the mall, we always shopped the surf shops and sporting good stores. Now we were shopping at Lane Bryant and the Baby Gap. My sexy, steamy Madonna-like wife had turned into Martha Stewart.
 
Bold, sexy colors were replaced with muted pastels and patterns. Our motto, leather and lace, was replaced with spruce up the place. And, the awesome yard sale furniture that was perfect for any room was discarded in lieu of overpriced furniture for the baby that would last for a year or less. My eternally youthful, spontaneous, zany and irrepressible wife had changed drastically in the course of just 9 months and had left me with my head spinning, wondering what happened.
 
All in all, the changes that women and men go through during pregnancy will vary from person to person. Some women hardly change and others become totally different. I am lucky enough that three years after my son was born, more than half of the changes that my wife went through have reverted back to her pre-pregnancy behaviors. She can now tolerate some of our favorite movies again and she’s stopped dressing like Martha Stewart.
 
My caution to all of the “Dads-to-be” out there is this; when your wife gets pregnant, be prepared for anything and remember that no matter how prepared you are there will always be something that you forgot to prepare for. So, be flexible, remain neutral and keep your head down. Good luck!