Daddy Blog: A Dad's Guide To What Not To Say To Your Wife
Engage brain then open mouth. It should be a simple enough mantra to follow, like mirrors, signal, manoeuvre, or no diving in the shallow end. They’re all pretty useful guidelines to staying alive.
Unfortunately, I’m not always so great at remembering the first one. I used to get away with it, blinding my wife with wit, charm and a smile to wriggle out of a potentially explosive situation. That all changed when she was pregnant though. Turns out then there are some things that just aren’t funny at all (although I still kinda think they are - just don’t tell her that).
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Like when her feet were so swollen towards the end of her pregnancy that I nicknamed them the Klumps (you got it, Eddie Murphy Nutty Professor reference). I mean, they were HUGE, it was brilliant.
What was not so brilliant was the amount of time I had to sit massaging them to make up for laughing at them. Apparently laughing at a pregnant woman’s fat bits is a no go, even if the bits in question are her feet.
Sometimes I got myself into trouble when I wasn’t even trying to be funny. I was just genuinely concerned, but I must have expressed myself badly. Like the time I asked her if she was sure she should be eating that. I can’t remember what ‘that’ was - I must have suppressed the painful memory - but it was just a genuine question. The list of dos and don’ts for a pregnancy diet was mind boggling to me and some of the things on the no go list were bizarre. I’m still not sure it wasn’t all just a big ruse by my wife to get me to eat more salad.
But it turns out that my ‘judgemental’ line of questioning was not acceptable in this instance, that my wife was perfectly capable of knowing what was and was not allowed on the menu and she certainly didn’t need me giving her the third degree. That was me told. Have you any idea how hard it is to argue back to a pregnant woman? You will not win.
I’m still paying for the lapses in judgement I made when she was pregnant. But if I thought it was a minefield then, I should have realised the worst was yet to come.
Like when I suggested we should keep having kids until we have enough for our own five-a-side team. Not funny three hours after birth. Especially as I sandwiched it in between the phrases ‘that wasn’t too bad, was it’ and ‘I’d do that again’. Not my call to make, it turns out.
Or when I said ‘you look really good, considering you just had a baby a few weeks ago’. I know, I know - schoolboy error. I should have stopped after the fourth word. I knew it even as I was saying it but like a juggernaut the words just kept coming and I couldn’t stop them.
Or, definitely not my finest hour, when I asked ‘what have you done all day?’. I didn’t mean for it to sound like I was accusing her of having an easy time of it, or that she wasn’t in fact working harder than me. I didn’t mean that AT ALL. I just meant it conversationally, like you’d ask ‘how was work’ or ‘what did you do at school today’. It just came out wrong.
Apparently that’s not an acceptable defence. Apparently I will be paying for this one for a while. In the meantime, I might give up talking. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.
