I should know

I’ve been seeing something a lot recently. Ms will say something – for example, a sternly-worded rejection of an idiotic YouTube video that’s been going around involving white people rapping badly in pajamas (I won’t link to it, because … Jesus, no) – and someone will respond that she’s only saying that because she’s pregnant. It’s not always quite that direct, but the conclusion is inescapable. Let me see if I can pick through this. I’ve known my wife for 20+ years. I’ve heard her moods, seen her triggers, listened to what makes her angry, and the Ms I grew up with and married is the Ms who is nuzzled up to her pillows in the bedroom right now. Her essential character hasn’t changed, her reactions to things (largely) haven’t changed, her sense of humor is the same. Everything about her is the same as I’ve always known, with a very few exceptions. She has, on maybe two or three occasions in my presence, had an emotional reaction to a stimulus that I would not have otherwise expected (think tears when a feelgood news story comes on, or something along those lines). She has identified rapidly changing hormones as the cause, but I should really be clearer on the point: she hasn’t done anything out of character or weird, just not the response I was expecting. All well within Ms’ established range of responses to stimuli – enough so that it’s difficult for me to think of specific examples here, just remembering my own mild surprise. On another two or three occasions, Ms has spoken to me more sternly than I would have expected because I needed to be doing more. I’m perfectly ok with that. I mean, we’re doing this in sort of pro mode: we’re still learning our way around each other as cohabitators, and now Ms is going through substantial physical changes that leave her quick to tire, so I’m having to make my own adjustments. Sometimes I miss the mark. I feel bad about it, because I want to do everything I can to make this process as easy for Ms as possible without treating her like an invalid, but it’s nothing that’s caused me to feel wronged or unjustly accused or any nonsense like that. My pregnant wife needs me to do more sometimes, I’m trying, and sometimes I don’t do enough. Maybe Ms will chime in about this, but I don’t feel like it’s an epidemic of failure or anything, heh, but I do feel like it’s justified and gentle correction during a time when both of us are going through behavior adaptations. It’s also worth pointing out that, as with the first example, I can’t really think of a specific occurrence because nothing wedged in my memory out of either shock or anger. After considering it for maybe one one hundredth of a second, my reaction was “Oh, ok, right, of course.” My pregnant wife is essentially the same person my non-pregnant wife was. Full stop. There are differences, but they’re subtle. The best example is one I told her about this weekend. Ms goes to sleep earlier than I do (I mean, my current insomnia troubles notwithstanding, I’m a night owl by nature, and Ms is not). Before she became pregnant, she’d come home and gradually wind down, almost imperceptibly cleansing herself of the day’s stresses before falling asleep on the couch. Now she’s much more consistently awake until the light suddenly goes...