The Hunter-Gatherer Writes a Blog…

Hunter-Gatherer considers his plans...

Guest Post from Puck:

So my wife is pregnant.

First, I should engage in the token gloat:

“Aren’t we just terribly fertile?!“

However much we planned for this and wanted it to happen, it is still news to me.  Unlike Mary, I don’t have any obvious biological indicators that we are having a baby but it is mutating my thought patterns in intrusive and masculine ways.

I normally keep a running plan in my head about what is coming next.  As soon as I heard the word “Honey!” from the bathroom, there was an entirely different criteria for how I planned my future.  A large collection of previous plans (a conference, purchases, weekend plans, and more) were tossed to the side as being too frivolous.

Instead they were replaced with WifeWatch 2010 and the Baby Countdown.

WifeWatch 2010

I am breaking this down into 3 key groups:  Mood, Food, and Sleepiness

Mood

The first thing most men hear about pregnant women is that they go from being normal women to irrational, food craving, hormone rockets that might explode at random.  With this in mind, 1.7 nanoseconds after the word “Honey!” was translated by my brain I accepted that I was ready to bear the brunt of any explosion.  Everyone will get grumpy from time to time and my wife has always been exceptional about giving me good information when she is having a bad day.

At that moment, I mentally wrote her a blank check.  If necessary, I will hide the bodies of the people she kills and will accept that their righteous deaths are probably my fault.

Here too is the need to ensure that my wife realizes how gorgeous and amazing she is.  There will be body changes, unexpected drama, and discomfort but it is my job to make certain she knows that she is in fact, the smartest, most beautiful woman on the earth.

This is only the first part of WifeWatch 2010.  Are her moods stable?  Actually, she is surprisingly rational… for now.

Food

As my wife is in danger of becoming irrational at any moment, I need to step in as hunter-gatherer and ensure that she gets enough protein, vegetables, and especially calcium to keep her healthy.  As my friend Aeddan once told me, “Baby will get his calcium.”

If a mother is not taking in enough calcium through her diet, the baby can deplete the mother’s bones leading to osteoporosis.  That means we have milk, cheese, prenatal vitamins, and a ready supply of calcium rich antacids which help with mommy’s upset tummy and secretly dose her with calcium at the same time.

My other red flag is her hunger curve.  Normally, my wife has a hunger curve that provides us anywhere from 30 minutes up to an hour before she goes from hungry to grumpy.  At any point that pregnant-wife tells me she wants to eat, there will be food.  The smart hunter-gather carries self-protective Mommy-snacks which are intended to increase his own life expectancy.

I have populated the house with quick snacks including bed-side emergency crackers which should help with a queasy stomach.  As I usually cook for us, I am also trying to ensure that she gets the food she needs for healthy baby-building which includes a fair share of meat and eggs (protein) cooked in an iron skillet (iron).  Lunch is typically a salad with chicken and her snacks are typically cheese, yogurt, bran crackers, and steamed milk with sugar free hazlenut syrup or a decaf tea.  (Caffeine has been largely eliminated and alcohol is completey gone.)

I’m also looking at new recipes which should provide us with multiple meals in one shot which leaves us quick-heating left overs.  The no-pasta lasagna was frankly pretty stunningly good.

Sleepiness

We hit a spot of luck with Mary’s teaching schedule this quarter because she can come home after lunch and power nap.  While she doesn’t look pregnant yet to the untrained eye, she gets pretty fatigued around midday.  These aren’t light dozey naps either.  These are the hibernating she-bear naps.  Nuff said.

The Baby Countdown

There is the state of being pregnant and then there is the process.  For any engineering process, there exists an implementation plan and this baby is no exception.

First, we need the manual for the device.  I ordered one for her and one for me.

• The Pregnancy Book: Month-by-Month, Everything You Need to Know From America’s Baby Experts
• The Expectant Father: Facts, Tips and Advice for Dads-to-Be, Second Edition

To me, Mary’s Mommy book started with “Isn’t this awesome! What a wonderful miracle!” and my Daddy book was “Here is how much this is going to cost.“  It is probably useful information, but I’m not exactly hugging myself with the miracle of procreation after Daddy Chapter 1.

Next, I needed to get our insurance house in order so I made certain that both of us had current insurance cards.   Mary went to a medical check-up the Monday following our successful pregnancy test and everything looks ship-shape.

Which leaves my engineering mind spinning continously on the next list of items:

• Picking an OB-GYN
• Picking a Birthing Center
• Any possible wrestling with insurance company
• When to tell work people about upcoming parental status
• Prepping a space for our spawn… (room, crib, car seat, and etc.)
• Reworking my evening schedule to ensure I have time to help
• Prepping my plan for D-Day?
• Actual Baby maintenance planning

Expected baby day is September 7 and today we cross another day off between now and then.