A man’s guide to his pregnant woman
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The end of your life as you know it
I feel for you, brother, especially if this is your first child. Your life is about to change in ways you can’t even imagine. And if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me or you’d think I just did it wrong and you’ll do it better. So all I can say to you going in is “Welcome to Neverland.” You’ll think I’m talking about the magical mystery tour of childbirth and childrearing, as if I’d deploy such a cliché. Only years later will you come to understand that Neverland is a place men are sent when they become fathers to completely change their view of themselves. You’ll never come out.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. You are here because your woman is pregnant and you either (a) have noticed some things that drove you to seek information, or (b) you want to be helpful and compassionate and do whatever you can for your growing progeny. You’ve come to the right place. Fathered Five will give you the straight dope about your pregnant lover with some help from Louann Brizendine’s The Female Brain. All blockquotes are from the book. You’ll get the unvarnished truth here, unlike those other sites that will tell you how you can share in the experience and enjoy the journey. Pfft! Those sites were written by women who were just trying to be polite.
It ain’t pretty
I’ll warn you up front: you’re not going to like what I have to say. But unrealistic expectations lead to disappointment 100% of the time. So buck up and forge ahead. And it helps to remember: you did this.
Invasion of the body snatchers
The fetus and placenta are entities that take over your wife—mind, body, and soul—to ensure their survival. There’s nothing you can do about it.
Those “fight-or-flight” chemicals, such as cortisol, are produced in large quantities by the fetus and placenta, so the mother’s body and brain are flooded with them. By late pregnancy, the stress hormone level in a woman’s brain are as high as they would be during strenuous exercise.
If this is her first child, it’s a brand new reality. Give her some space to be weird.
These changes result in a motivated, highly attentive, and aggressively protective brain that forces the new mother to alter her responses and priorities in life. She is relating to this person in a way she has never related to anyone else in her life. The stakes are life and death.
She’s not entirely herself, and she’ll need lots of sleep
All these changes are brain signals that something or someone has invaded your system. Progesterone spikes from ten to a hundred times its normal level during the first two to four months of pregnancy, and the brain becomes marinated in this hormone, whose sedating effects are similar to those of the drug Valium.
Be very careful during delivery
It’s best for everyone involved if you just stay near her head, massaging her shoulders or scalp. Even this impotent attempt at being helpful can backfire, though. And it’s not because she’s crazy. It’s because her brain is building new synapses at a rate it hasn’t done since gestation, and her senses have been heightened to those of a cat. She might spit on you. Don’t take it personally.
As the baby’s head moves through the birth canal, more bursts of oxytocin fire in the brain, activating new receptors and forging thousands of new connections between neurons. The result at birth can be euphoria, induced by oxytocin and dopamine, as well as profoundly heightened senses of hearing, touch, sight, and smell.
You are, literally, expendable
From conception until, well, I don’t know when, you are no longer the love of her life, nor is your relationship any longer her brain’s number one priority. In fact, from an evolutionary standpoint, now that you’ve planted your seed, her brain is done with you. Accept this. (Did I mention you did this?)
Mother love looks a lot like romantic love on a brain scan. […] Now I know why I felt so passionately about my child, and why my husband was sometimes jealous. In both types of love, surges of dopamine and oxytocin in the brain create the bond, switching off judgmental thinking and negative emotions and switching on pleasure circuits that produce feelings of exhilaration and attachment. […] The tender nurturing response of the oxytocin circuits is reinforced by the feeling of pleasure created by bursts of dopamine, the pleasure and reward chemical. Dopamine is jacked up in the mommy brain by estrogen and oxytocin. This is the same reward circuit set off in a woman’s brain by intimate communication and orgasm.
Your needs are not her needs
[Her brain is] marinating in oxytocin and dopamine making her feel loved, deeply bonded, and physically and emotionally satisfied. It’s no wonder that she has no need for sexual contact. Many of the positive feelings she usually gets from sexual intercourse are evoked, several times daily, by meeting the basic physical needs of her young children.
The novice or thick-headed will fight these facts every step of the way and make himself miserable. The wise man takes it in stride, adjusts his expectations, and begins the hard, hard work of figuring out his place in this new reality. There is a place. But that’s the subject for another post.
August 24th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
That’s lovely. Really it is. Now I know what my husband was thinking the entire time I was pregnant with my son.
August 24th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Hi Jenny,
Is that like, “Oh, lovely!” or lovely as in daisies? And maybe not the entire time. He may have also been fretting with concerns of his own, like how to earn more money. It’s a really interesting book.
September 5th, 2007 at 7:30 am
When it comes to pregnant wives, I have to say I was one of the lucky ones. My eternal darling had only the occasional “pregnant” moment - I more than made up for it on her behalf, however!
September 5th, 2007 at 8:59 am
That’s true for me, too, Molk. Mothered Five is the most even-keeled person I know; not even invasion of the body snatchers (pregnancy) could rile her.
September 10th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
[…] your children.According to Dr. Louann Brizendine, your wife’s brain changes drastically when she becomes pregnant, and continues to change while raising the children. Those changes mean you are no longer her first […]
September 16th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
my partner is about 6 weeeks, and she freaks out on me,, like really freaks out,, and i just dont know what to think. she has a child and this is my first,, am i nuts or is she trying to push me away???
September 17th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
I hope not, Derik, but it’s possible. Biologically, she’s finished with you as soon as she’s pregnant. Good thing we’re not the sum total of our biology, eh?
If your relationship is solid except for her freaking out, chances are she’s dealing with these brain and chemical changes. I suggest you try to talk (very gently) to her about it. Don’t blame her; just try to understand what she needs and how you can help her get it. It’s a tough time. Good luck!
October 7th, 2007 at 11:36 am
I have to say from what mother’s I’ve met have said, women have a tendency of doing the alone time thing cos it gets very scary sometimes. Try to be affectionate without being overbearing? Like making a bath up with a few drops of Jasmine and Chamomile should help her relax a bit. Oh and the back, back’s are nasty during pregnancy- the spine is supposed to be elongated by the extra weight the woman’s carrying. Anyway, good luck!
October 8th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
hey, so ya everythign worked out.. just had an ultra sound (she had cramping and spotting) all looks very good heart beat 145everythign normal.. doc said at this stage, 90% to 95% or a normal pregnancy . so i will sit here and continue to worry i guess, thats what i do best,
October 9th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Well I have one bit of assurance for you, and that’s that babies are amazing at surviving. My youngest niece was supposed to be born on the 4th of August and instead she was born on the 25th of March. At this level of development, her lungs weren’t supposed to be able function enough to get oxygen into the bloodstream and she was 1 pound in weight. She’s done really well and got her weight up a bit (she’s about 6 pounds now). My brother himself developed pneumonia at 2 days old. Anyway, I hope it’s kinda reassured you a little. Tell her good luck from us and try not to worry TOO much
March 20th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Well this is interesting; I believe that the spiritual state of the mother actually triggers those hormonal changes. I think each mother is different depending on the experiences they had in utero themselves, some illogical sayings or feelings could be directly from their subconscious minds reliving their own gestation and their parents’ relationship during that time. Read Dianetics and you’ll see what I mean. I am a mother of twins and I longed for sex during my pregnancy. Weird? And yes it does change everything to be pregnant, you are now connected forever to the father whether you like it or not, and then you create life… MAN now that is amazing. Now to try to boil that down to just hormones… eh eh, it is an actual experience… like I said the hormones are simply reactions to the experiences.. like when you become frightened and then your body reacts, same with being pregnant and giving birth. The experience of carrying a baby body as it grows is hard to explain unless you’ve done it.. just try to imagine that your body is growing a life inside it, all of the emotions that come with that and how it will affect your life, also that you know is going to come out the hard way, and that your body may never be the same, but it is all worth it for that little one in there… and it is also very draining and tiring on a body… as it grows it uses up all the back-up resources vitamins, minerals and vital energy you would be using to live… hair falls out and all sorts of things can happen. Yes, just as someone with sleep deprivation can react irrationally, so can a pregnant woman lacking sleep, or food, etc etc. Different women react differently to the experience given their situation and their health. They are going through some pretty horrendous yet amazing, physically draining experiences ( and it’s all to make a baby for you) (LOL) so you better show us how freggin grateful you are and love the heck out of us the whole time. Yes there are all kinds of changes and usually pregnant women’s backs are out and they are in pain and discomfort from it.. so they need extra love and attention from you. Don’t worry it’s only for 9 months…
When our twins were born my husband and I cried tears of joy and hugged and kissed each other as we sobbed. We are forever changed and bonded by love for creating the future of mankind together.
Then after that comes the sleep deprivation from feeding and changing the babies in the night.. but that gets better as the baby gets older, and those first years are so adorable that all of the extra hardships and dirty diapers really wont bother you.
I also recommend epidurals by the way, BIG TIME. Gods gift to woman if you ask me. (injection of anesthetic in the spine so that the pain of labor is lessened). Though once you have one you can’t get up and walk around, if you were planning on a water, or indian birth etc..