Coping

I'm absolutely astounded at how much work it is to be the partner of a pregnant woman. This is second only to how incredibly astonished I am at how much work being pregnant is for Kelly.

Kelly pointed out to me this weekend that I slept my way through the first trimester. Being the childless couple that we were at the time, that was possible. I slept and Kelly busied herself with the house chores that she wanted to do (like the easy task of painting the entire downstairs...LOL). I specifically remember reclining on the couch and waking up to eat and putter around for a couple of hours and then going back to sleep. It was so easy in retrospect.

Kelly, on the other hand, is shafted in two ways. First, her pregnancy is about 10 times more difficult than mine was. Seriously. I know that I complained a lot and if you thought I had it rough, you can begin to understand how hard this is on Kelly. Her entire world is timed in 1 hour increments and every decision is made based on getting enough (but not too much) of the right foods (these change every day) and when she can take her medication to prevent even worse sickness.

Let me just spell this out so you have some idea. We'll take a random couple of hours from any given day. So say it's 10 AM and Kelly had just eaten a half cup of bran cereal with some soy milk. The food is probably not sitting great and her belly is aching from cramps (because every time she eats, she gets cramps). She sits down for about 15 minutes, because her head is spinning and she needs to let the food settle so that it will stay down. She sips water or apple juice or gatoraide if any other that happens to sound good at the moment. Her food finally settles and her body decides it will keep it about a half hour after the food is consumed. She has about 15 minutes to be a normal human being, so maybe she plays with Bailey or wanders around the house trying to help with some of the chores. About 15 minutes into that, her head starts spinning again. Time to think about food. She spends the next 15 minutes looking at the contents of the cupboard or the fridge trying to figure out what looks good. Meanwhile, spending all that time looking at food makes her naseous. The other option is that I spend 10 minutes in the kitchen calling out options, most of which are met with groans and thinly-veiled disgust. We finally settle on something and I am usually the person who makes whatever she's decided on because by this time, she's already so naseated from the process of figuring it out that she can't stand to be in the kitchen. I bring her her food and she then must spend the next 10-15 minutes psyching her mind and body out to be able to even touch the food in front of her. 10 minutes later, she may have gotten the food in (we're talking about 1/2 cup of food or less) and then the game begins again.

Without a break.

Ever.

Talk about exhausting. For all of us.

I think, at this point, it's safe to say that we'll never have a third child. It's just not going to happen.

So back to this shafted thing. The second way she is shafted is that we have a child. And we don't have a simple, easy going child. Hell no. We have Bailey. Our bundle of loud, excited, challenging energy who needs almost constant interaction and who wants it from both of us. Even when I push Kelly to take a nap, to watch TV, to stay off her feet, she can't do it. And not because I won't let her...but because she feels bad. I'm carrying nearly everything right now and while I absolutely do not mind, the exhaustion is evident on me. I am an absolute failure at hiding my feelings, so when I'm stressed, tired, grumpy or bored with the same old routine, it shows. And she feels bad. But I can't pretend to feel any other way. So poor Kelly gets to try to be a part of the "normal" routine of our household while feeling like absolute shit because I'm not Donna Reed.

When I was pregnant, my easy-going, laid-back, down-to-eart, NON-drama queen wife took it all in stride. On the flip side, this strung-out, stressed out, drama queen wife of hers is not handling it with nearly as much grace as she did.

So anyway.

It may not seem it, but we are actually doing okay. We're both lost inside of the struggle of a difficult early-pregnancy, but we're coping. We know each other so well, and that helps. I can tell when she is needing me and she can tell when I need to be left alone.

Kelly made the comment that having a pregnant partner is lonely in the beginning of her pregnancy. She said "it's so fucking lonely. All you did was sleep. You'll see." Kelly isn't sleeping constantly, but my wife has been taken over by horrible morning sickness and is consumed with self preservation. It IS lonely.

We would have it no other way. This is the path we are following to complete our dream, and we wouldn't change it for a second.

But I think we'll both be happy when this passes and she can feel a bit more like herself. Herself pregnant, to be sure...but herself.