A couple days ago Seth and I were watching a video of our favorite comedian, Jim Gaffigan. He earned our number one spot because he does a 15-minute bit on the awesomeness of bacon. He was talking about how he and his wife just had their fourth baby. He described with amazement all the crazy cool things a woman’s body can do. He basically said, women can grow a baby inside their body, delivery that baby with their body, and then miraculously feed that baby, with their body! Then he said when you think about what man’s contribution to life is, it’s really sort of embarrassing.
Although the physical contribution of the sexes is unfortunately a bit more significant for the woman, I was shown this week what some of men’s different roles can be when their wife is in the “growing the baby with their body” stage. This week Seth has made a late night dessert run and painted the baby’s room. He even earned extra points with me for agreeing to paint one of the walls Kelly green. Sure, the guy can be the one who does projects around the house, runs out and gets you whatever your little taste buds desire, and tells you how beautiful you look even though you feel like a blob. Seth has done all these things, but this week he reminded me of how crucial our husbands are in the baby-making journey.
I woke up on Friday morning with some minor pain in my lower abdomen. It sort of felt like the annoying pain you get when you have accidentally “held it’ for too long. I thought nothing of it but as the day went on the pain kept growing stronger. One of my greatest weaknesses is freaking myself out over situations that haven’t even happened yet. It could be a potential illness, the future, finances, etc. and I could sit there and worry for hours over nothing. I’ve really been working on it the last few years but I definitely backslid during our first few weeks of pregnancy. I Googled terms like, “ectopic pregnancy” and “signs of miscarriage” if I felt any sort of pain or cramp. I was giving myself different Google diagnoses everyday! Things had gotten out of control because I was trying to take control. I had to stop letting Google diagnose me. So, when I was feeling this ever-increasing pain in my abdomen I told myself to be calm and stop getting all worked up over nothing. Unfortunately I didn’t pray about it in that moment, I just tried to brush it off. Thankfully God used my body to talk to me since I wasn’t talking to Him. At around noon I was sitting on the floor and when I reached for something I felt a shooting pain go through my pelvis. I froze and realized that I had been in a fair amount of pain for a few hours but had been just trying my best to ignore it. I wrote Seth a text in a “just so you know this was kind of weird and I thought I’d tell you” sort of way to tell him what I was experiencing. I don’t think he’s ever responded to one of my texts sooner. He called me immediately and when I said hello he said, “Call the doctor.” I laughed him off and tried to say it was probably nothing. He was so insistent and said, “When it comes to you and the baby we don’t mess around. Just call.” Seth and I never tell eachother what to do. If on occasion it does happen, we know that the other person is strongly insisting on being taken seriously. I reluctantly agreed, called the doctor, and got an appointment for later that afternoon. After our appointment Seth could have given me a huge dose of, “I told you so.” But thankfully he didn’t. The pain I was experiencing was from a bladder infection, which my doctor told me if left untreated, can lead to premature labor. WHOA! I got the antibiotics and started feeling relief a few days later.
Married ladies out there, I hope you have husbands who can fulfill the stereotypical male pregnancy-related duties, but even more than that, my hope for you is that he is a man who cherishes you and will take care of you when you aren’t taking care of yourself. By trying to ignore what my body was telling me I wasn’t taking care of myself, or our baby.
Blessings,
Shantastic :)
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