Pregnancy Hormones

I love my wife. I really do. I just want you to understand that fact before we go any further. That being said, God did not bless me with the medical knowledge to understand why the hormones in a woman’s body can have such an effect on them. Nor, does it seem, that He has blessed me with the wisdom to see when they are roiling about inside of her. I’ve found that pregnancy takes that lovely feminine feature and amplifies it beyond publicly desirable levels.

I’m a bit jealous of the fact that women have this intuition that leads them through situations. It’s almost like an innate navigational system. What I wouldn’t give to have a little voice in the back of my head to say, “You have now crossed into a hormonal mine field. Shut your mouth. Make a U-turn at your earliest possible convenience.”

Yeah, I don’t have that.

It was a bright, sunny Saturday morning. I was laying at the end of the bed, thoroughly exhausted from trimming both the Bradford Pear and Holly bush in the front yard. My sweet loving wife lay down at the top of the bed and pulled my right arm up above my head. Instinctively, I jerked it away from her, fearing that she was about to poke me in the armpit. Some of you would say I have a guilty conscience, that I was afraid my wife was paying me back for tickling her at some earlier point in time. Clearly, you’ve never met my wife. No former provocation is needed (though I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t done something to deserve it).
As it turns out, her intentions were totally pure…this time. She was attempting to pull me up closer to her so we could snuggle up and spend some time talking. She immediately told me as much, at a high decibel level, punctuated by the slamming of the bathroom door.

This whole interaction greatly confused our five-year-old who witnessed the entire debacle. Like the proven dunderhead I am, I told him that, “Mommy was just trying to be ornery, but didn’t want to admit it.” I made sure she heard me when I said it.

At this point, I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that there’s not a great deal of difference between a hormone-saturated pregnant woman, and a gas-soaked pregnant woman. In the case of the former, my off-handed comment served as the spark. Where I had simply hurt her feelings by rebuffing her earlier, I had now managed to set her ablaze with my most recent explanation to our son.

To my credit, I immediately tried to iron out the situation. However, I was told, in no uncertain terms, to leave the bathroom. Sometimes, a tactical retreat is the only correct move.

After a little while, we were able to talk out the situation, put our boy’s mind at ease, and eventually laugh about it. Still, if your field of work happens to be Bioengineering, and you’re looking for the next big idea. Let me suggest a hormone-sensing, speech navigation system. It’ll go a long way towards keeping us guys out of trouble.