It is a blouse, I determine, after much fumbling and swearing, before dropping it in the laundry basket with the 47 other freshly laundered pieces of my wife’s maternity wear that I have given up even trying to fold competently. When I try, the results look as if we paid a feces-flinging monkey to do the job.
This is where we are, seven months into our first pregnancy. I say “our” because the monsoon of books, magazines and pamphlets that has rained on us from helpful family, friends and medical types describe it so. For couples, the literature tells us, this is like putting a man on the moon, a great endeavor. Yet, to me, the extent of my contribution so far to this joint enterprise has been but a dash of DNA.
Sure, I try to help out more, shouldering the laundry, etc. But I’m not the one bearing the burden (it is a happy one, mind you) of our unborn child.
I’m not the one suffering the aches, pains, nausea, heartburn, insomnia, cravings — all the joys of looming motherhood.
I’m not the one jolted awake in the night by tiny kicks deep in the uterus. If I were, this would be a much better story, and you would be reading it on the front page, under a 72-point screamer of a headline: LOCAL NEWSMAN TO GIVE BIRTH!
By the way, why don’t they make paternity clothes? Shirts and pants with elastic bands to accommodate new paunches, comfy clothes emblazoned with NASCAR and NFL logos. It’s a billion-dollar idea, man — a men’s section of A Pea In The Pod.
It surprises me that there isn’t such a section. The mom-baby-only business would seem to be a booming one. (Wasn’t it President Eisenhower who once warned of the vaguely sinister influence of the maternity-industrial complex?) Mom has been convinced that she needs to drop a wad on a bunch of shapeless clothes that last nine months. Why not appeal to Dad, too?
Oh, yeah, don’t forget baby. Three hundred dollars, for example, for a set of lovely sheets, sheets made for pennies by nimble-fingered Pakistani children roughly baby’s age, sheets baby certainly will not appreciate and merely soil. It would be more practical to line the crib with old New Eras. (Not that I would do it.)
***
Now, this rant reminds me of my biggest challenge, bigger even than trying to stay relevant, keep off so-called sympathy weight and grapple with taffy-like maternity clothes.
Some conscientious dads-to-be try to give up their filthy habits before the baby comes. They try to quit smoking, drinking to excess, shooting off firearms at midnight, etc. Without such vices, I am attempting to quit swearing, to clean up my potty mouth. It isn’t easy.
I’m trying hard not howl obscenities when life’s little nuisances — yahoos in traffic, snafus in computers — confront me.
Because, as my wife tells me, “We don’t want our baby’s first word to be ‘@#%!’”
She is right, of course. I just hope the little one appreciates Daddy’s sacrifice, @#% it!
——— The Voices column is written by a rotating team of New Era staffers. It appears Mondays.
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