Week 22 Day 5

   Pregnancy game #4:  Wake the baby!

And I will fully admit that this totally makes me an ass.  But this is really fun for the non-pregnant partner. (me)

   This game is played pretty much the way it sounds.  Jostle, poke, prod, talk to, tickle or do whatever it takes to wake up the baby and make it move!  Then you get to giggle whenever you feel the baby elbow, punch, kick or stretch against your hand.  It’s pretty awesome.

   This is assuming, of course, your pregnant partner will allow you to do this and hasn’t smacked you upside the head before the baby gets woken up.

    While waking the baby can be highly irritating to your wife, studies have shown (if it wasn’t already obvious) that interaction with the baby pre-birth can be beneficial.  So I may be an ass, but I’m thinking of the baby, right?

Week 20 Day 3

   Pregnancy game #3!  Paddy-cake with the baby. 

   Now we not only feel the little slugger, but we can see the movement when my wife is lying still.  When this happens we both giggle hysterically.  And since the baby can now hear this reaction from us, we are probably already conditioning it to continue moving more persistently to get a reaction.

   The only time we are able to notice this, of course, is at night when we are about to go to bed.  Not the best time for the baby to wake up since we are trying to go to sleep.  And since there’s still 4 ½ months to go, I imagine this will get very old very quickly.  Well… At least for my partner it will get old.  I think it could entertain me for hours.

  Which led her to respond with “You might call it paddy-cake with the baby, I call it being double-teamed.”  I could blame the baby but that would make me an ass.

   

Week 19 Day 3

   Game #2 to play with your pregnant wife:  Hold up the belly.

Only I think she really appreciates this one.  After all, she holds it up 24/7 and breathes a huge sigh of relief when I do this. 

   So what I do is just lift her stomach using both of my hands spread along the underside of the baby bulge.  It is surprisingly heavy and substantial.  And I am very thankful that I don’t have to hold this extra weight in front of me at all times.  I imagine that I would if I could because I see just how tired it makes her and I’d like to do anything I can to alleviate her stress (both physical and psychological). 

   Then I could be like the aliens in the Alien Nation series that was on in the late 80s early 90s.  I was going to post a link to a youtube video here but what I found is far more disturbing than I even remember.  (It might be the mullets)  Oh what the heck, here it is. 

   That show was wacky, but fairly open minded and progressive when it comes to sex roles in our society.  Definitely not assy.

   As for me holding up my wife’s stomach, I’ll leave that up to her as to whether it makes me an ass or not.

Week 18 Day 1

   Games to (not) play with your pregnant wife:  Find the Fundus. 

   Our midwife showed me how to do this and it’s pretty cool.  As the link above explains, the fundus is the top of the uterus and it gets higher and higher the further along the pregnancy progresses.  To find it, you dig your fingers into the abdomen of your wife and feel around until you come up against something that is denser.  I was being too gentle on my first attempt and the midwife encouraged me to really dig around.  You have to push down a good 2 inches or so before you feel it.  If it hurts, your partner will tell you.  A suggestion:  don’t just dig in like I did.  A couple of small test pushes goes a long way to preparing your wife for further prodding.  At first, I wasn’t sure what I was feeling.  But it slowly dawned on me that my baby was only a fraction of an inch away from my fingertips.

   First thing in the morning is not the best time to play this game as the bladder may be full.