My Pregnant thoughts...

Today I got a message again and its not the first time I am getting this kind of message “Baby boy Born at 12:15 am 17th March 2008 weight 9Lz, Mother Baby both fine”. Cute message but I don’t understand why my friends have to mention the weight of the boy with the exact time. So I Reply back Ashraf born almost 3 decades back time unknown weight around 70 kilos mother baby fine here as well.

I understand, I am guy who should have been married few years back waiting for his second kid’s arrival into this world. I also understand most of my friends (some younger) are married with first hand experience of fatherhood or motherhood. What I don’t understand why they need to tell me everything so excitedly when I don’t belong to their clan. I have an age-old problem I don’t know how to react. I really don’t know how to react if you are talking with me and your baby kicks your tummy for the first time. Are you sure it was a kick and not a punch…which leg? I don’t know how to react…

Not too long ago, the pregnancy and childbirth process used to be very different. Three months after marriage, women promptly sprouted bumps. Soon thereafter were unceremoniously transferred to respective parents’ house and a few months later they returned with a tumbling child in their arms. Nobody seemed to pay much attention to this process, including their husbands.

Same process rinse and repeat every year.

Things changed a lot of late. It’s socially acceptable and very cute to talk about pregnancy. If a person is my friend or family… I am the best guy to discuss every aspect of pregnancy. But if a person is a colleague or a friend whom I never thought of calling back once the college was over or I left the town, I really wish they are more discrete about what information they divulge and how they divulge it.
If you are one of them, I am so happy about his new episode in your life but
• You must forgive me for not excitedly participating in the discussion about your wife’s fluid fluid. Please don’t take it personally. I have nothing against old mates or fluid. It’s the combination I am not crazy about.
• If you are a guy, please don’t announce “We are pregnant.” No you are not. She is. You just contributed, hopefully. Say something like “we are expecting”.

• Guess what this is:
A drugged up, half-sleeping, exhausted woman with hair all over her face, which is kept in place by sticky, sweat. She is holding a 3-second-old child. A lot of tubes hanging around. Worked into this mess is a smiling face of a proud father.
That’s right. This is your very first family photograph, taken moments after your child was born, even before your wife had a chance to cover herself fully. Wonderful. Just go ahead and keep it to yourself. That’s all I ask. Please, don’t send it to people like me or post it on Orkut, neither can understand or share your joy in such a mess.

Sonograms are not cute. They belong in your doctors files and I feel should be stacked and forgotten once the baby is born and fine. And no, that’s not a nose. That’s probably a smudge on the printout.

To top it all, yesterday a female school friend of mine tells me, “Oh we are seriously trying for a baby.”. Did she ever realize that in these 10 years I have become a full grown frustrated male with great imaginative power. Now I am stuck with all kinds of images of how they are trying and in what positions

I love babies, I really do… they are so cute when they are washed, powdered, smiling with diapers but try to understand they are your babies the kind of enjoyment they can provide you… its exclusively for you.