Births bring new challenges to a relationship, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
SOME DECADES AGO, a reader tells me, she was astonished to be advised at an antenatal class that when her infant was brought home, her husband “should not know there was a baby in the house”.
Even at the time it was, to the ears of my reader and of other women, a silly piece of advice.
But what would that nurse have thought about the contribution of husbands to the course of a pregnancy? I expect she would have believed that it was a woman’s job to make it appear that nothing particularly unusual was going on in the house and to keep the husband well away from all knowledge of morning sickness and the like.
And as for mood swings, well, there would be no call for that sort of thing.
If you don’t expect your pregnant partner to be invisible, here are a few points that might help see both of you through the pregnancy experience without burnout.
First, if a woman has mood swings, and if these began with the pregnancy, remember that there is not a lot she can do about them and there is not a lot you can do about them either. Accept that they happen, don’t use up energy trying to figure out ways to prevent them from happening and realise that they will end when baby is born.
The same goes for morning sickness, tiredness, general irritability and fads for weird foods.
If there are issues that need discussing, to do with finances, work or time arrangements for after the baby is born, then be willing to talk about them with her even if her mood swings are making her a pain in the neck.
Even at the best of times, we men are not all that great at discussing money matters with our partners. We get emotional and defensive about them, and retreat into the cave. But this isn’t a time to behave like that: issues will not be one bit easier to sort out after your baby is born, and the mother should not be left to worry about them alone.
To women, I would say that if this is your first baby, now is a good time to resolve that, after the birth, the father’s hands-on involvement in rearing your progeny will be welcomed.
Men can feel pushed aside when a first child arrives, and these feelings are made worse if attempts by men to hold, carry and feed the child, or to change a nappy, are treated by the mother as reckless breaches of health and safety regulations.
Right now, and after the birth, you need to make an effort to be closer together, not further apart.
Addendum: Back to the great “paddling” mystery – we now have a likely solution and evidence that the Irish truly do speak the best English in the world.
Readers may recall me wondering recently what a local lad meant many years ago when he bragged that he had spent the weekend “paddling with a wan” in Dublin. One reader referred me to the online Urban Dictionary, but I was not convinced that the explanation it provided was the correct one.
Now another reader, an English teacher, writes that while preparing a lesson on Hamlet for his Leaving-Cert class, he came across the word in question.
Hamlet is disgusted by his mother’s remarriage and advises her not to “Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed: / Pinch wanton in your cheek; call you his mouse: /
And let him, with a pair of reechy kisses, / Or paddling in your neck with his damn’d fingers, / Make you to ravel all this matter out.”
The teacher concludes: “I think it refers to what in my young days would be described as ‘feeling’ someone!”
I think he’s right.
I am glad that the paddling issue has now been put to bed, so to speak, but I’m even more pleased to learn that in Co Kildare in the 1960s we were speaking Shakespearean English as a matter of course.
Padraig O’Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is accredited as a counsellor by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book Light Mind: Mindfulness for Daily Living is published by Veritas. His mindfulness newsletter is free by e-mail