What did I expect when we were expecting?
I’d be better off writing about what I didn’t expect when we were expecting. That would be pretty much everything actually. I AM a guy after all, which means I can only focus on one concept at a time. And by the time my internal queue reached the ‘worrying about what to expect’ part, the 9 months had passed. Wait! Scratch that, I mean 10 months.
Amazingly 10 years from now if you ask me to remember anything about my wife’s pregnancy, that is what I would most likely come up with. I guess that’s because the concept is so mind-blowing to me. Forget the whole human being being grown INSIDE my spouse (and really, no matter how much of a essential part of the fabric of our existence this is, it is still pretty hard to wrap your mind around isn’t it?), I was more awestruck that she was pregnant for an extra month! I mean, who knows that sort of a fact beside doctors, nurses, and those who practice midwifery. (Okay, I will remember the term midwifery too as it was completely foreign to me before pregnancy).
Plus, I wasn’t the one whose body was about to go through an amazing change. That is, if you don’t count the “sympathy pounds” I put on. Sympathy pounds are a sympathetic way of saying the father to be is getting fat because of all that extra food that is in the house to support the fetus growing…INSIDE HIS WIFE. So no, I didn’t expect to gain sympathy pounds.
I didn’t expect the flashlight trick to work either. What? You haven’t heard of the flashlight trick? Spoiler alert: I am about to reveal the flashlight trick. So if you expect your child will not have turned by the 8th month and you want to discover this trick on your own, please stop reading now. Of course, this would only pertain to female readers, since guys would most certainly NOT have expected this.
As I was mentioning it was 8 months into the pregnancy, and our son Lukas still hadn’t turned. This basically means he was standing upright inside my wife. He was always on the move too. Doing Jumping Jacks most of the time. He was like a tiny Japanese workforce, doing morning calisthenics, but pretty much all day long. INSIDE my wife. Anyway, as we all know most babies exit their mothers with much more ease if they are standing on their heads in there when the time comes. We kept waiting, but he wouldn’t turn.
Enter the flashlight trick. My lovely wife, MRS. LIAYF, had read about the trick and we decided it was worth a try, even though I didn’t expect it to work. As she lay in bed that night we turned out all the lights in the room. Then, I turned on the Mag Lite flashlight I had brought up for the occasion, held it about an inch from her belly, and switched it on. Then, I slowly moved it down her belly towards her…well, let’s just say towards the exit door. I repeated this a few times. I think I even started chanting “The light…..move towards the light….” which made both of us snort with laughter. After a bit, we switched off the flashlight and went to sleep.
In the morning, Mrs. LIAYF woke me and told me Lukas had turned in the night! Amazingly the trick had worked! At least that’s what I will always believe was the reason. No one could now convince me otherwise. Even though I didn’t expect it.
From then on the whole process was a blur. But it was a pretty amazing blur.
In case you haven’t heard, there’s a new comedy coming out on May 18th called ‘What to Expect When You’re Expecting’. Yeah, it gets it’s title from the popular pregnancy manual, and stars Cameron Diaz, Dennis Quaid, and Chris Rock.
Like most comedies these days, I will reserve my judgement until I’ve seen it. But it looks like it could be good.
