What Do Men Think Of Pregnancy

Other men, by contrast, feel excluded. They are not even halfway through the pregnancy, which itself is just a brief preliminary phase in the long horror of parenthood - and already they seem to have been left behind. The bond between mother-to-be and baby-to-be is profound and unbreachable. These men look at the bump with suspicion. It mocks them silently. It knows it will be getting all the milk, and they won't. 
 

What Do Men Think Of Pregnancy

Between these two extremes are multifarious shades of grey, because everyone reacts differently to the arrival of the bump. You may love the woman but hate the bump. You may hate the woman but love the bump. You may love them both (hooray!).

You may have just packed your suitcase and arranged to have your name changed by deed poll. Anything is possible. Oddly enough, it has nothing to do with whether you thought you wanted children or not, but then, as must now be coming clear, your preconceptions have a nasty habit of being overtaken by events. What is certain is that men who are virulently antiparenthood can be converted almost instantaneously into cooing devoted uberdads. Do not underestimate the power of the bump. Accepting its influence, and realizing that you now want to write one of those soppy newspaper columns about how great it is to be a dad, can be a humbling experience.
 
And as all the books say, you can never start bonding with your baby too early. It may only be the size of a fat hamster, but it will know when you are fondling the bump, just as it will know when mama is watching EastEnders (it will dance to the theme tune). Babies can hear sounds outside the womb from about five or six months. Talk to the blighter and it will come to recognize your voice (it can hear your gravelly male tones more clearly than its mother's squeakier range). 

Coo and make stupid noises, having ensured that there are no hidden tape-recorders or cameras recording it all for posterity. Massage the bump gently and, dare I say it, sensuously. You could use the inner tube of a toilet roll to listen to its heartbeat. There are hours of innocent fun to be had, and not-so-innocent fun, if you can talk her into it.
 
I asked the fathers how they had felt towards the bump.

IVAN: I loved the bump, I thought the bump was brilliant. You hear a lot of stories about men freaking out because their wives or partners were pregnant and feeling threatened by it, I didn't feet that at all. I thought it was absolutely wonderful. I thought it made Imogen incredibly attractive, that whole bloom of impending motherhood. I actually found it very, very sexy. What could be more natural, what could be more magical? And it was magical. And as it got bigger, and you got kicked in bed in the middle of the night by it ... it was great.
 
CLIFF: I'm not very keen on babies. No, let's start at the beginning. I'm very unkeen on pregnant women. It's almost a phobia. Like spiders. I remember, as a younger man, crossing the street to avoid pregnant women. So to be actually living with one was slightly scary. So I'm not sure I was wildly enthusiastic about being asked to put my ear to her stomach and seeing if I could hear things ...

I think I was scared of fatherhood, certainly of being a father of a baby. I didn't think I'd be able to cope very well. And, frankly, I was right.

ERNIE: I felt incredibly horny. In fact I still swear I knew she was pregnant before she did, because the whole sex thing was very, very different. Of course you can rationalize all that afterwards, but it felt different. Especially as Eva didn't get big at all ...
 

I was desperately interested in kicking, movement, the position it was in. Also a bit worried because Eva insisted on keeping her bellybutton ring in throughout. Because bellybuttons often invert during pregnancy. So I was always expecting it to pop out in a fairly dramatic fashion, and fly across the room. It never happened, to my chagrin. To find out more, you can check out What Do Men Think Of Pregnancy.