Loving that I am not doing this pregnancy thing alone...

On one of my frequent sojourn's to the bathroom, which happen every 20 minutes or so, I suggested that Mr Stubbles should carry my ever-growing belly for me. While we are both going through the pregnancy experience, my perspective is enormously different from his.

I spend my time feeling like a heffalump: 

• lugging all this extra weight around, 
• frustrated at my decreasing mobility,
• and getting beaten up from the inside. 

Mr Stubbles gets to behave like the noble gentleman:

• helping me up from the depths of the couch, 
• extracting me from the car, which is a bit like popping an extremely tight cork out of a bottle, 
• and easing me into a sitting position as I lie on the bed like a tortoise on its back. 

I have really been quite impressed that he doesn't complain about constantly being disturbed by my demands, and I love the tenderness with which he treats me. Personally, I become grumpy at my neediness... so it means a huge amount that he doesn't. 

After I joked that I was going to attach a bag of rice to the front of Mr Stubbles with duct tape so that he could feel what it was like to be pregnant, he called my bluff.

My sweetest darlingest man, spent one entire evening with 5kg's of rice attached to the front of him. Strangely, he decided to forego the duct tape in favour of a backpack on his front. 

The effects were almost immediate. 

• Firstly he discovered the loss of this feet. They had instantly disappeared. 
• Within 20 minutes, Mr Stubbles had mastered the pregnant waddle. 
• After an hour, he complained that he was short of breath. I admit to feeling a tad concerned, and thought about having him call the experiment off. Then realised that he is a fully grown man and quite capable of calling it quits if it got too much. 
• He also found that he had to hold his stomach with one hand while reaching with the other to pick up things off the floor. 
• After 2 (maybe 3) hours, hand kneading his lower back, he innocently enquired, "Does your back hurt?"

My carers and I were in hysterics. I don't think that they had ever seen a man trying out pregnancy. Come to think of it, it's the first time I've ever seen it up close and personal. 

It's a good thing that he stopped when he did, I would have hated to see him with swollen ankles, trips to the toilet every 20 minutes, or desperate cravings for chocolate. 

Mr Stubbles and I came up with a few suggestions for making the experience even more realistic...

1. Add a few potatoes to the rice. After all, babies are not round, and if the potatoes moved, you might just get that being kicked-in-the-ribs feeling. 
2. Do the experiment over a few days... and keep adding more rice. After all, I'm carrying close to double that now!
3. Mr Stubbles came up with design for a pregnancy bag for men, complete with lower back straps and ways to add in extra weight. While I think it would be amazing for more future dads to try out pregnancy, I'm not sure how much of a seller it would be. 

Looking back on his brief experience, Mr Stubbles felt that more men ought to give it a try, and that the world needs more empathy and understanding of how to help others. 

From my side, "Thank you for the excellent giggle that you gave me, you are a brave, brave man... and I think you are going to be a fabulous dad!"