We’ve known we are pregnant for almost a week now. I’ve learned/confirmed a lot so far, including:

• Weird things happen to a woman’s body when she gets pregnant. I’d read that women feel “different” in ways they can’t explain. I was hoping MY wife, the brilliant woman that she is, would be able to explain it, but she can’t. She does, however, have bouts of SuperNose. At a luncheon this week, in a room full of the smells of various cooked meats, she could smell the salad. Apparently salad has a smell. It’s also amazing how a baby the size of a grain of rice can make a woman so tired AND hungry.
• As expected, everyone has their own ideas about what pregnant women should or should not do and theories about how to predict the baby’s gender or how many babies will emerge. Sample prohbitions include alcohol, exercise, lunch meat, sushi, sex, lifting anything weighing more than 8 ounces, traveling, and getting out of bed altogether. Some people claim multiple births follow your mother’s side or father’s side or skip a generation every time. Some say if you’re carrying low, you’re having a boy. Many believe that raising a woman’s arms overhead will wrap the umbillical cord around the baby’s neck, as if the arm bones and cord were connected somehow. Google pregnancy myths and see what you find. Generally all this advice is something the advisor “heard” somewhere, or is based on a single instance that the advisor is extrapolating into a Law of Pregnancy. Some of these ideas have medical validity. Many are utter hogwash. The amount of misinformation, and contradictory information from seemingly reputable sources, is amazing. I do my best to smile politely, but I am a skeptic about anything I hear other than your personal experience, which I would LOVE to hear about. I want to be a good BabyDaddy and appreciate help as long as it’s accurate! Leave comments if you have any advice.
• Pretty much everyone, even our friends who can’t stand children, gets excited when they hear about a new baby on the way. In our case, some of the excitement results from our long journey toward these happy days. But even people who don’t know how hard it’s been for us still rejoice. I like to think it’s because they believe we’ll be good parents, but the truth is probably much simpler: babies are hope for the future. Imagine a world that had no babies, like in the movie Children of Men that I mentioned several weeks ago. The human race would be maybe 80-100 years from extinction. Through babies, we combine two different lineages into a new life that will (we hope) live on after we have left this world. They are also a clean slate. Despite their inherent propensity toward sin, they still have an innocence that they will never regain. They haven’t made all the mistakes that we’ve made or been through the pain we’ve endured. They also have a tremendous amount of potential. All the “grownups” around them wistfully speculate about who they’ll become, but only God knows for sure. They’re like Christmas presents that take a lifetime to unwrap.