I’m writing this from our office and there are two pregnancy books within eyesight at this very moment. If these things were cell phone towers let’s just say that you’d get great coverage in our house. There’s one in every room, just in case. When the wife and I got married I talked to anyone who would listen about how ridiculous and overpriced the wedding industry is, and anyone who has gotten married in the last 5-10 years will back me up. You might as well drop trou and spread eagle the moment you hire a wedding photographer, band/DJ, florist or cake designer because you are about to get fucked. They have a friendly way of doubling or tripling their normal rates when they find out you’re getting married. Nice folks.
But after the past few weeks, I think that pregnancy might top the wedding experience in terms of insane and inane products and hysteria. For all the BS when it comes to weddings, you still have the ultimate trump card when it comes to the people you’re interested in hiring. You can always say “fuck it” and run off and get married at a courthouse. You could get a nice cake at a local bakery (but don’t tell them it’s for a wedding…) , put disposable cameras on each table for everyone to use, hire your buddy to play songs from your itunes and buy a shitload of flowers the day before the wedding. Maybe it’s not the wedding your lady has been dreaming of since she was five, but the point is that you could do all of those things.
With pregnancy it’s different. Once it passes a certain point, that baby’s coming and it’s coming on its schedule. I could dissuade the wife from buying each and every new wedding magazine but, like I said, with pregnancy it’s different. Even though my role in planning the wedding was minuscule, I could always make a stink if I felt strongly about something because I was participant #2, at least on paper.
But the trump card I talked about with weddings has been taken off the market when it is pregnancy time. The major difference is health. There’s nothing life or death with weddings, even though it sure can seem like it at the time. I wouldn’t have had a hard time yelling at the guy who made our wedding cake (he was a ponytailed weirdo and the thought of his hands in our cake batter creeps me the fuck out — he probably owns a ferret or a python or something) but I don’t think anything good is going to come from getting mad at the girl doing the ultrasound. Besides eating healthy foods, taking some pills and pretty much taking it easy, there’s not much that you can control about this. And that’s where the books really come into play here. Each book is pretty good on its own but you end up feeling like a crazy person after reading all of them. My wife pretty much is convinced that she shouldn’t be eating anything at this point. Just yesterday she was nervous about drinking a bottle of SmartWater because of the added electrolytes.
So where does this lead? I really don’t know. But I foresee lots of books, magazines and conflicting advice in my future. And there’s nothing really to do about it but bend over and take it.
