Pregnancy through the Husband's Eyes

My dearest wife has asked me to write my perspective of her pregnancy.  I guess I will start by saying that she has definitely had a harder pregnancy than most women do. And I'm not just saying that because she is my wife, and I fully acknowledge that I don't know all of the intricate details of every other woman's pregnancy and their pains, sicknesses, and emotions. But what I can say is that even 9 months later, at 37 weeks pregnant, full-term, were it not for medication Amy would still be waking up sick and throwing up every half hour like clock work.  If you think I'm exaggerating I'm not. I give 2 examples.

One, at approximately 25 weeks I forgot to stop at the pharmacy and refill the prescription for her anti-nausea medicine.  So I after getting home from work at 7am I promptly called the pharmacy only to find that it wasn't yet open. Well I showed up at 9am when the pharmacy opened to get the prescription filled as quickly as possible.  The only problem was between 7:30am when Amy woke up and 9:15am when I got home with the goods; Amy had thrown up three times.  Awesome.

Two, approximately 22 weeks. We casually wake up on a Saturday morning, which at the time was one of two days a week that I didn't have to wake up at 3:45am to go to work.  At this time, we were first trying the experiment of "what if we don't take the pills? Will she still throw up? Will she only throw up once? etc." Well the first words out of Amy's mouth that morning were, "Garth can you go get me a bowl?" Puke time. Half awake I meandered to the kitchen only to hear, "You don't have time to walk!" followed promptly by the bathroom door slamming and the sounds of baby induced vomiting protruding from the bathroom. Awesome.
The good news is there is medication that has helped along the way.  The bad news is, sometimes she forgets and then she has a rough go of things. It only took 2 1/2 weeks of constant throwing up, losing 4 pounds in a day and half, and a trip to the doctor for an IV before we found she needed the medicine in the first place. I'll admit I was at first overjoyed that she had morning sickness, something she didn't have with our first pregnancy which ended in miscarriage. I thought it was a good sign of a healthy pregnancy, although that quickly dissipated into feeling bad for her during the period of time leading up to our IV trip to the doctor, playing "guess what I'm thinking" waiting for her to be hydrated, and eventually getting a prescription to save the day!
I can also say that Amy is a freaking scholastical warrior. Not only was she constantly sick during the winter semester, especially during that 2 week period of no medicine, but she was enrolled in 18 credits.  She was blessed with understanding professors, but the work load was certainly never cut down.  I don't know how she did it.  18 credits in the winter and 17 credits in the spring.  She read over 50 books, and not just novels that are in some way interesting or fun to read.  We're talking ANTHOLOGIES; thousands of pages of British literature that could put me to sleep faster than the afternoon session of general conference. She ground through it all. Even the late nights with the crazy schedule of going to sleep at 8 or 9pm and waking up at 1am because she just didn't have energy for that night. And now she is graduated! Dunzo with the college scene and right on time before baby boy is here.
She also put up with me a lot.  I did what I could to help, although I know it wasn't as much as I could or should have.  She definitely has deserved a lot more through the pregnancy, but somehow has been extremely patient with me. I'm not sure how I got so lucky, but I've certainly the most blessed guy I know.
Now onto the actual pregnancy aspect. The first 12 weeks were probably the longest of my life. After having a miscarriage, and having her experience similar symptoms through the first trimester of this pregnancy to say that I was worried and stressed is an understatement.  It's all I could think about a lot of the time, and I'm pretty sure she knew it because it was undoubtedly on her mind too.  But somehow we made it through to that first ultrasound appointment when we experienced something that we didn't get to with our first pregnancy: hearing our baby’s heartbeat. It was a strangely emotional time when it suddenly hit me that there was a living, developing child. For some reason I still felt like it could all come crashing down at any moment. I'm glad to say I was disappointed in that regard and we made it to the gender ultrasound appointment.
Now that was a nervous time. Up to this point I basically refused, much to Amy's dismay, to discuss any baby names. I wanted to know the gender of our child before entering that stage. I can never remember being more excited! Now I would have been ecstatic with a baby boy or a baby girl, and always will be, but when we heard the doctor say, "He's showing off" I was flooded with excitement.  My mind suddenly went to playing catch, going to ball games, polishing cars, speaking twi, and sending him off on a mission.  It was a lot to take in at once, but it was something I couldn't stop thinking about.
Flash forward to the first time I felt him kick and it was another instant emotional connection. I thought it was always so funny that early on I could come home and start talking to him and he would respond with kicks! Amy didn't like it as much, especially as he got bigger and it started to hurt her more, but coincidence or not, I loved every single time he did it, and still do, even if Amy thinks its ridiculous when I can get him to respond to me.
At the present Amy generally gets annoyed with me when I constantly want to be touching her belly. I'll admit I'm freakishly just drawn to wanting to be as close to him as possible, which annoys her because it's still her belly.  At 37 weeks Amy is now waking up on average 3 or 4 times a night to use the facilities, which wakes me up nearly every time, but with a new job, not having to wake up at 3:45 am, and summer break with no homework, it's not something that bothers me at all.  I've enjoyed the times I've had to take care of her, to "make dinner" (usually my specialist spaghetti and meatballs), and to do my best to keep the house clean when she has so much going on. (Although I never remember to dust which drives her insane).
Looking back over the past 9 months I can say it has certainly been a great experience. Sometimes I would find a box of cereal in the fridge, or the milk left out all night due to "pregnancy brain" (or so I'm told). There have been many Sunday's of sitting alone in church because Amy has been too sick to move. There have been times of going for drives in the car just for AC, because even our swamp cooler hasn't been able to cool her down. There have been requests for foot massages and back massages, even though she falsely thinks I don't like giving them or haven't given them enough (probably true). There have been countless trips to the store for cravings of runts (only the chewy kind), lemonheads (not lemon friends), air heads (no cherry flavor), laughy taffy (the big ones are gross), snickers, milky ways, gobstoppers, and m&m's (peanut butter). There have been more pb&j sandwiches than I can even count and me having to always remind Amy to take her prenatal vitamins, calcium supplement, and iron supplements. There has been the absurd mexican food craving for Costa Vida, crunchy tacos from Taco Bell, or bean burritos from Taco Time. There has been the super nose abilities to magnify any scent ever, especially my breath if I've been in lab and come home "with breath smelling like metal" (whatever that means).
But in the end, there has been a perfect wife, and a perfect companion who has experienced it all so we can begin our perfect family. Not perfect in the ways of the world, but perfect in our struggles, perfect in learning together, perfect in patience, perfect in silly arguments (which she always wins), perfect in decorating our baby's room, and a perfect best friend who will be the perfect mother to our baby boy Camden, just as soon as he's ready to join us.

Garth Wright