Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Pregnancy series : The Second Trimester

The second trimester is kind of the temporary return to near normal. It’s the proverbial calm before the explosion. Your wife will begin to show that she is pregnant but she will act pretty much like a larger version of the woman you married. If there’s anything you and your wife ever wanted to do but haven’t had the chance, this is the time to do it. After this trimester, your wife is first going to be too pregnant to move a whole lot, and then you’re going to be married with child and you’ll both be too worn out to do a whole lot.

One cool thing does occur in the second trimester: you can actually feel your baby inside your wife. The baby makes its presence known through kicking—presumably in some form of Morse code that only babies can understand. While the kicking might be a slight annoyance to the mom, it will be the ultimate in coolness to you—sort of like the feeling you’d get if you could watch four football games and the Playboy channel at the same time. This will probably be the first time when you actually realize that, “Yes, there is a living, growing, little future Hall of Famer inside of there.” The only downside ofkicking is that it usually occurs (or is more noticeable) at night, thus
preventing your wife from sleeping. Which means that if you have an inconsiderate wife she may wake you up, figuring if she’s up then you’re up. Just think of this as practice for your child’s teenage years when he’ll really be keeping you up late at night.

The second trimester is also the time that many expecting mothers will undergo ultrasound. Ultrasound is taking pictures with sound waves. The procedure is totally painless for both the father and the mother—and the baby. It’s what doctors use in order to: determine the sex of the baby, make sure everything is progressing okay, and have something extra to charge you for. At the end of the procedure they will present you with the first picture (though you’ll have to pretty much take the word of the medical professionals that this really is your child) of your unborn child. If it still hasn’t sunk in yet, it will now—you’re going to be a father. Oh, at this stage don’t worry if the baby doesn’t look like you—because it won’t. This is nothing to be alarmed about and no reason to consult a lawyer. At this stage all babies look pretty much like small versions of those aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

To sum it all up: the second trimester is pretty cool.

Source : John Zakour. A Man's Guide to Pregnancy.2003

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