When Men Say Stupid Stuff Their Pregnant Wives Will Never Forget

I originally wrote this on a personal blog before the birth of my first child. If anything, nearly 10 years later, it’s more true than ever, so I’ve updated it and posted it here.

Men: the following is an important lesson. Please take it to heart. Sometimes, people get the impression that this blog is “funny”, “lighthearted” or “irrelevant.”

But what you’re about to read is crucial to your mental health and general well-being.

There comes a time in the life of most men when, after marrying the love of their life, he agrees to knock her up start a family.

You probably know that once your wife is pregnant, her feet will balloon out, she’ll crave weird food combinations and the inner storm of hormones will turn the love of your life into a raging she-monster that resembles nothing of the sweetheart to whom you so tenderly said, “I do.”

But one thing you absolutely have to keep in mind about your ever-expanding honeysuckle is that while she may develop “pregobrain” — the cutesy tendency of pregnant women to forget everything — she will most definitely not forget (or forgive!) your idiotic comments about pregnancy. Or the labor process.

Why? Well, to try and climb inside a woman’s mind and see it from their perspective (this is a hazardous trip, but we must explore these dangerous, shark-infested waters): Because it’s HER body, you damned fool, and you have NO idea what it’s like to carry a baby and the toll that TAKES on a woman! And if you say anything about any pregnant woman completely unrelated to your wife, even if it’s a TLC show called “My 900 Pound Pregnancy,” she knows you’re really talking about her! And if you leave room for one iota of doubt that you will not dedicate your 100 percent love, affection and support during the pregnancy process solely to her, then it is her duty to remind you of that for the rest of your life, you miserable, insensitive pig!

Woo. Still with me? OK. How do I know this is the case? Because I made a stupid comment once that my wife, despite being in the cutesy-spacey stage (I could’ve stapled her keys to her forehead and she would’ve waddled around the house, muttering “Where are my keys?! I’m going to be late! It’s at least a 15-minute waddle to work!”) found the unnatural focus to lock in on my comment, and thus begin the process all husbands of pregnant wives must go through:

1) The Utterance

2) Apology

3) Cross-examination

4) Apology

5) Character Assassination/Public Humiliation

6) Public Apology

It all began, innocently enough, with …

1) The Utterance

So there I was, contemplating how hard the day of labor would be on my wife, and the very real possibility that something could go wrong for her or my precious little daughter. When keeping in mind that labor can take anywhere from three hours to the lifespan of a giant tortoise, I thought, “Hmm, perhaps a quick workout would be nice.” A healthy way to catch a break from the painfully slow increases in dilation, right?

Married fathers reading this are probably thinking, “You poor, stupid, stupid man.”

Single guys are probably thinking, “Hey, that’s not a bad idea!”

Women reading this are probably trying to find out my address so they can mail my wife sympathy cards:

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Dear Fellow Giver of Life,

We heard about your moron husband. We are so sorry you have to live with this ignoramus of a brute. Please take our deepest sympathies as an encouragement.

Sincerely,

The Smarter Sex

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What came next?

2) Apology No. 1

My wife looked at me as if I had said, “Instead of wasting our time trying to figure out a car seat on the way back from the hospital, why don’t we just strap down our precious little newborn to the hood with some bungie cords?”

Mulling over my suggestion for a quick workout, my wife immediately reacted with “It’s gonna be stressful for YOU!?” She followed up with, “I don’t know, I thought maybe you would want to be in the ROOM during the birth of your DAUGHTER!” as if I had plans to skip out of the hospital and catch a train for Canada.

Of course, looking back now, it was a stupid thing to say, and though I was still a little overwhelmed at the thought of watching my wife go through the intense, agonizing process of giving birth, I didn’t quite see that. But I’m not TOTALLY stupid, so I apologized. Still, I had to brace for:

3) Cross Examination

This is your standard follow up to any incredibly insensitive (I mean really insensitive, not “politically insensitive”) thing you might say. In other words, you have to explain to your wife why you are not an absolutely callous cave man completely indifferent to her feelings and well-being. You make your case, you state your love, but you inevitably end up at:

4) Apology No. 2

You already know what this is, right? Helpful tip: Don’t start with, “I ALREADY said I was sorry! Sheesh! You think it’s easy living with you, always hoofing it around here in a fit, ya big grouch?!”

Also, don’t let your wife know that you’ve been thinking about video games, sports, beer or monkeys while nodding your head as she says things like, “Do you understand why that makes me so upset?” It’s just better to keep those things to yourself, because they might be used against you in the court of public opinion during:

5) Character Assassination/Public Humiliation

The next time your wife is around females, whether it’s their college friends or an elderly lady that just fell down and is being loaded into an ambulance, your sins will be weighed against you. This will be very similar to the Nuremburg Trials. (The Nuremburg Trials, in case you aren’t aware, were when the war crimes of the Nazis were made public to the world following the Allies’ victory in WWII. USA! USA!)

Your wife will tell other females all about THE UTTERANCE (notice how those words have taken on an epic, horror-film like quality now), detailing how insensitive and stupid you were.

“Get THIS — he said he thought the labor might be ‘stressful’ for him. Can you believe that?! Like he’s the one pushing a little human out of his body!”

Then, similar to the way people around the world shook their heads in disbelief and disgust at the revelation of the Nazis’ truly inhumane crimes, the accompanying females will react to the horror of THE UTTERANCE. They’ll roll their eyes, scoff and look at you like a man convicted of burning down an orphanage and drowning puppies for sport.

All of this, of course, mandates the:

6) Public Apology

Again, you’ll say how you’re sorry, not just because of what you said, not just because you don’t understand how hard pregnancy is for women, but because you exist.

But will that satisfy your wife and her judgmental friends?

Nope! Like I said earlier, they will never, EVER forget. It’s a well-known scientific fact that women who have been in a coma for years, will instantly sit up straight in bed, point to their husband and yell, “You said you could really ‘Go for a Beef n’ Cheddar’ when I just started to push!” It may take them months to remember their own first name, but they can recall in detail exactly their husband’s idiot comment about their pregnancy not five seconds after regaining consciousness.

The point being, THE UTTERANCE is an event that will never leave your marriage.

You may be thinking, “This dummy’s a jerk, and he obviously shoves his foot in his mouth at least once a week.” But I’m telling you, guys a lot smarter than me — engineers, architects and so on — have also fallen victim to THE UTTERANCE.