Our Baby: The Grap

Our Baby: The Grap
by: Tom Coffee
My wife and I are only about six weeks into this pregnancy thing and we're still trying to wrap our heads around this whole idea of having a baby, though we have wildly different thoughts on the subject. I'm worried about whether or not we'll be able to handle the financial and moral responsibilities of bringing a child into the world. My wife is mostly worried about passing something the size of a watermelon through her hoo-ha.
And so far the worry has been all our own. We haven't told anyone else about our impending baby because, quite frankly, I don't think either of us fully believes that my wife is actually pregnant.
Sure, she's moody all the time and has had an inexplicable food cravings and she's taken to complaining about how bloated and fat she feels, but really, that's no different than how she's acted for the for the five years that I've known her. And I still married her.
Right now our baby is not really a "he" or a "she" as much as an "it" in our minds. We've been reading a lot of these baby websites and a lot of these sites compare our baby's current size to various pieces of fruit. The message eventually changes as the pregnancy moves forward, so one week the baby site will proclaim "Your baby is now the size of a sesame seed!" and a week or two later we'll read "Your baby is now the size of a raisin!"
If these baby sites had their way we'd all measure our own size compared to various items from the produce aisle. I'd stand 8.4 carrots tall and when I stepped on the scale it would read like a slot machine and report my weight as in at 250 pumpkins, two oranges and three cherries.
So every day I check these sites and every day I'm reminded that our baby is only the size of a grape. I don't mind telling you that it's hard to feel very attached to a grape...and it isn't even a fully developed grape. It's not like my wife has a little grape-sized person in her. No, right now she has a little pink squishy thing that, really, looks kinda like a...well....a squished grape.
Our baby is only beginning to grow organs, so it's not like we have a whole lot in common with our very, very, very little offspring. I mean, I'm a not a very complex guy but I still like to relax with a TV remote in one hand and a beer in the other. Right now our baby doesn't have hands to hold the remote or even a liver to process the beer.
This is all still so unreal to us that my wife and I are also still trying to find the best way to even talk about the whole idea of being pregnant. The phrase "we're pregnant" makes it sound as though we're some sort of bisexual Siamese twin sharing one body and committing unspeakable acts of fornication on ourselves. She's the one who's pregnant and I'm the guy who did it (or so she claims).
We've struggled with ways of referring to the pregnancy situation and so far we've used phrases like "knocked up," "expecting," "got a bun in the oven," "infiltrated," "violated," and even "been slimed." I think we'll have to filter out a few of those when it finally comes time to announce the news to our families.
So that's where we are in this whole baby-making process. The baby has been made, but it's still a pretty gooey, tiny thing that doesn't really have much personality and even less mass. I'm sure this whole fatherhood thing is going to change my life, but right now I'm just not feeling it.
I have, however, sworn off eating grapes. At least until our baby grows up... to be the size of a lime.

About The Author

Humorist Tom Coffee's website SpillingCoffee.com chronicles Tom's adventures as he struggles to escape his office job, commit random acts of home improvement, cope with becoming a father for the first time and quench his never-ending thirst for a great cup of joe. Life is funny. Have some Coffee...
tom@spillingcoffee.com

This article was posted on February 15, 2006

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