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Stuart and his wife were extremely happy when they found out they were pregnant as they had been planning for it for some time. However, Stuart was about to find out that you can’t plan for everything and learning to help his wife through her morning sickness would be a learning curve for the both of them.
A well-made plan comes to fruition
Stuart remembers a very relaxed moment when he was told he was becoming a father.
“When my wife first told me, she just wandered out calmly and very quietly told me that we were pregnant,” said Stuart.
“I was very excited because it wasn’t an unexpected pregnancy, we had been planning it and everything was going accordingly.”
The more things change the more they stay the same
For some guys, finding out your about to become a father can have a big impact on your lifestyle but Stuart found that his lifestyle changed very little in the early stages of pregnancy, something he attributes to his wife’s positive attitude.
“My wife is very driven,” said Stuart.
“We didn’t change our lifestyle too much because my wife just carried on as normal.
“In saying that, she did suffer a bit with morning sickness and persistent nausea.
Kitchen nightmares
“She started to become really affected by different foods and odours as they would make her feel really sick.
“When this first started happening all she could handle in the morning was a plainly cooked steak.
“About a month in she developed a wicked aversion to pepper; she couldn’t have it on anything.
“It was so bad that we had to put the salt and pepper shakers on top of the bookcase so they wouldn’t send any odours into any of the cupboards. When we had dinner with other people and they took out the pepper mill, she just got a look of horror on her face as she knew the smell would make her sick.
“She is only just getting over that now, she can handle a little bit of pepper but not a lot.
“So I suppose the biggest change in those early stages was our diet.
“My wife had already stopped drinking some time before so I found myself not drinking much alcohol as well, as a show of support.
“We started eating really well with plenty of free range chicken breast and heart smart meats and loads of fruit and vegetables. My wife didn’t like eating in this first trimester because of the sickness but she craved fruit all the time. She had to limit herself to 10 serves a day!”
“I just had to be supportive and help out where I could by cooking foods that she still liked and not talking too much about what went into the meal.
“I would also try to make sure there were no strong smells in the house that might make her feel even worse. Cooking without any oil in the pan at all was hard as she would run straight to the toilet as soon as she smelt it heat up. Spookily she could also smell when the fridge was open from another room. We bought a new fridge and used bowls of bicarb soda to soak up odours but it still made her sick.
Other than the dramas around food and sickness, Stuart’s life continued on as pretty much normal. He said the concept of actually having a baby didn’t really sink in at first.
“If my wife was at home nesting it might have hit home a bit more but because she worked right up until the end we didn’t have that period of adjusting,” he said.
“I suppose it didn’t really sink in properly until close to very end.”
Click here to read Stuart’s experiences during the 2nd trimester.
Click here to read Stuart’s experiences during the 3rd trimester.
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Read about other fathers to be and their experiences during the first trimester. |
