ONE of my favourite Friends moments came during the episode when Rachel, heavily pregnant and panicking, is given some advice by a well-meaning, but rather patronising Ross. She listens to him for a moment or two, then stomps off, snapping: "OK. No uterus - no opinion".
Initially, when I became pregnant, I was open to all forms of counsel - not that I could avoid being subjected to everybody’s baby stories - but over the months, I’ve learned to steer clear of one particular source of information: the know-it-all man
.
I met the first one after I’d been gestating for only a few weeks. My days were spent constantly fighting morning sickness and general feelings of lousiness, so when this father-of-three told me he’d seen it all before and knew exactly what to do, I almost kissed him. "Take it from me, I’ve been there and there’s one thing that’ll save your life," he told me. "There’s only one word you need to remember." I was practically fainting with gratitude - what was this magic that would end all my woes? He smiled smugly as the pearl of wisdom dropped from his lips: "Calpol. You give it to teething baby and it never fails. You’ll wonder how you ever did without it. Remember, Calpol. Fantastic stuff."
Calpol? Calpol? I’m carrying something the size of a pea, which won’t appear for the best part of a year but which is already making me feel like Godzilla after a dodgy curry, and you talk to me about what to do when it’s teething? I nearly disembowelled him with my bare hands. However, after I’d gone away somewhere and screamed for a while, I tried to understand why on earth he thought that advice about baby medicine was worth passing on to someone so obviously unready for any such details. Then it hit me. Of course. He was a bloke and he wanted to help, but he couldn’t put himself in my place. So he’d done the one thing he knew how: he’d shared what he understood. He’d seen Calpol working with his own eyes and he knew it was useful. Grasping on to that single straw of helpfulness, he’d presented it to me.
Thank God I’d filed my nails down that day, or all the medication in the world couldn’t have saved him.
Over the months, I’ve come across many other men - usually experienced fathers - who have far more opinions that they do uteruses. One explained to me that, as far as pregnancy is concerned, I shouldn’t worry because "nothing much happens for the first six months" and another reassured me that all my fears about labour were silly since "you just get yourself an epidural and Bob’s your uncle." Hmm. I wish I’d said "OK, no needle pumping drugs into your spine - no opinion", but I was picking my jaw up off the floor at the time.
Beloved Husband and I have just begun a series of ante-natal classes, so now I’m also getting a wider view of how fathers-to-be experience pregnancy. At our introductory session last week, both the men and the women were asked what they hoped to get from the course. The women said things like "information", "exchange of experience" and "knowledge". The men said "Brownie points". One man - unfortunately the one I’d brought with me - said: "Help to resist pulling off the stump of umbilical cord that gets left behind on the baby."
Despite his obsession with the umbilical cord and fears that he may not be able to leave it well alone, Beloved is hoping to be a good father. But even though he hasn’t read a single baby book, can only watch birth videos from behind the sofa and definitely has no uterus, he still feels qualified to pontificate about parenthood. The other day, I was harmlessly musing about whether to buy baby clothes in dark blue (easy to wash) or non-gender specific cream (more PC, but shows up more dirt), when Beloved intoned piously: "A baby isn’t an accessory, it’s a responsibility". Right. Thank you, Dr Spock.
I’m currently reading about the Huichol tribe of Mexico. They seem to have an excellent understanding and empathy between the sexes. In their culture, when a woman goes into labour, they tie a string around her husband’s testicles. As the pain of her contractions begins to increase in intensity, she regularly tugs on the string, so her beloved can share some of the agony with her. Sounds fair enough to me. And if this charming custom came to Britain, I wouldn’t mind a bit if a man said to me: "OK. No tied-up testicles - no opinion."
