Information density

Ms. “I only seem to crave really healthy food” Forty was all about the Hooters tonight. Ok, fine, we had crab legs. But we also had fried shrimp. And ranch dip. Being a supportive husband, I joined right in.

So far life is mostly normal on my side of the unbridgeable biological divide. Or, perhaps, not yet the new normal. The most disruptive thing I’ve been involved with so far was a dog having a (first-time) seizure, and that’s really not related to Ms’ pregnancy. I mean, I guess not. What do I know? We didn’t cover all this in school.

We had, briefly, the “will you still love me when I’m fat?” conversation the other day. Of course I will, I replied. You’re not fat, you’re just … occupied. Of course, me being both male and me, all sorts of things went through my brain that I KNEW I COULD NOT POSSIBLY SAY AND STILL LIVE.

Like, “Just like an engorged tick!”

Or, “Just like a well-fed python!”

Ms and I have a good relationship built in part on taking each other seriously by never taking each other terribly seriously. That mentality was stitched throughout our wedding, for goodness sake. Like an engorged tick. But there are things that just aren’t said.

I suppose you could make the argument that I shouldn’t be confessing them now, but I am doing a public service here. Of course I don’t think my wife looks like an engorged tick. I mean, she still looks like Ms right now, with the slightest of convex belly curves to indicate that biology is afoot. But even when she’s about ready to launch the new Critter into the world (“SQUEEEEZE!” *pop!* “WHEEEEEEEEE!”), she won’t be fat. I don’t get that attitude. “I’m so fat!” No, you’re not! You’re GROWING A PERSON IN THERE.

I had a brief lapse of judgment tonight when I said, “You know, maybe you just have gas” as Ms admired herself in the mirror. To her credit, she first said “You just don’t say things like that to a pregnant woman!”, paused, and then said, “Because they might fart on you!”

Apparently, this week the Critter loses its tail. That makes me sad. I mean, I probably shouldn’t wish for a tail for our child, but I want this kid to have a career it can fall back on, and, really, if you have a tail, you’ll never fall far. At least if it’s a prehensile tail. Swish swish.

We seem to have settled on Critter being a girl. I’d say we have a 50/50 chance, but even biological sex isn’t binary, so we could end up with all sorts of mixes and matches. Statistically speaking we have a pretty good chance of having a standard boy or a standard girl, so, for simplicity, we’ll stick with those categories until we have contrary data. Cis-privilege in a nutshell, that.

Anyway, we think the currently-tailed-and-webby-pawed creature will be a girl. I don’t know why we think that, but our conversations have just steered that direction. Fast forwarding 6 years and imagining our little dirt-covered, stubborn tomboy of a girl makes me happy. Of course, I won’t be sad or anything if we end up with a boy. We’ll just have to get Ms to teach him how to throw a football, since I don’t have the first clue about that sport.

If this post seems a bit disjointed, that’s kind of where I am right now. For me, it’s all waiting and observation right now. Maybe that’s all it will be until the Great Bursting Forth a few months from now. It’s a strange time for me. Sitting on this big secret (only a handful of people know, and none of them are “my” people yet). Watching Ms go through these weird gyrations between belly-rubbing wonder and clutching her groin because of (what is probably) a pinched nerve from all the bits moving around in there. She’s going to bed earlier. I’m more restless. Maybe it’s because all I can do is think about it. I mean, I can read up on What You Can Expect and price baby gear, but that only goes so far. There’s a big chunk of time that’s filled up with “What kind of father am I going to be?” and “I should probably learn all those children’s songs I never bothered to remember.” I don’t think it compares to what Ms is going through. I mean, she’s growing a person. That’s pretty wild for her. It is for me too, but it’s not my body that’s suddenly doing all sorts of unprecedented things.

And I come back to our cultural lack of preparation for this. This is literally what our bodies were built to do. We have the species gift of being able to do other things (including not having children if that’s what we want), and that’s incredibly liberating, but at a basic biological level we are mammals built to make more mammals. Why on earth is the process so mysterious? Why are we so hesitant to educate people about What You Can Expect? As far back as I can remember, I’ve been educated one way or another about how to have a career, for example, but reproduction? That’s taboo! Even though most people will go through it and it’s perfectly normal mammal behavior! Tabooooo! Even my hippie earth-mother mother wasn’t terribly chatty on the subject.

I don’t know. This shouldn’t be such a mystery. On the one hand, if everything goes according to schedule, we’ll have a baby in a few months, like billions of people before us. If there’s anything that we can point to as a shared experience across cultures and eras, that would be it. And yet we hide it.

On the other hand, if something goes wrong – and, as hard as it is to address this topic, it’s certainly a possibility – that’s a shared experience too. Across cultures and time. We invest millions of dollars in educating people about putting the oxygen mask on yourself before helping any others in the incredibly, vanishingly unlikely event that an airplane loses cabin pressure, but prepare people for a failed pregnancy (much less a successful one)? That’s an untouchable subject!

It makes me angry. In part because the legitimate fear metastasizes in the putrid glow of taboo. It becomes something you think about more than you should because all you’ve ever heard is whispers that so-and-so had a miscarriage oh isn’t that awful. Of course it’s awful, but our cultural blinders make it more awful than it needs to be.

If it seems like I’m spending a lot of time on this subject, it’s not because of any excess fear or obsession. It’s simply to give an example of the steep learning curve we face here. I’m tempted to say that it’s especially steep for men, because we absolutely do not prepare boys for this. We don’t prepare boys for nature taking its proper course and we certainly don’t prepare boys for what to do if nature takes a shit on you. I’m sure there’s no shortage of sensitive, age-appropriate instructional materials out there. I was a child in the 70s, after all. Between the wheat germ for breakfast and the educational videos, there was a spirit of being in contact with our animal heritage. (Yes, the preceding sentence seems like a bit of a non-sequitur to me too, but that was the 70s for you.) But when we inevitably discovered the NPR special that showed an actual, real birth of a child we were all “OH MY GOD DID YOU SEE THAT?!?” There was no context. It was like your grandmother farting at Christmas. Here’s a thing you have some basic understanding of followed immediately by the same thing doing something completely unexpected. And then we’re sent off to “understand” it without any supporting information.

It would be like drivers education consisting entirely of a single, commentary-free video of a car wiping out on black ice.

If I sound like I’m in a mood tonight, I’m not. I promise. I’m very, very happy, and very, very content with where my life is right now. There are things I’d improve, but none of them have anything to do with my wife or our gestating baby, and none of them are making me particularly irritable tonight. It’s more that my happy, content state is leading to the sort of mental clarity that takes offense at the things that are not so clear.

Of course, I also sit here and wonder if I’m particularly uninformed. I don’t think I am. I’ve always been a ready and open learner. I’ve never been grossed out or uncomfortable talking to family and friends about their pregnancies. I like data, after all, in whatever form. What convinces me that I’m right is obliquely but definitely related: we get weird about public breastfeeding. We stuff half price sliders in our own face-holes with reckless abandon, but feed a baby via the intended dispenser? Scandal!

Alas, my poor child will probably be the first in history to outgrow the “Why?” phase prematurely, because Daddy shares way too much.