Things My Wife Complains About #26: Second Pregnancy

If you thought being pregnant the first time was hard, you should try being pregnant again. My wife is finding the whole second pregnancy thing pretty exhausting. As in, she's tired all of the time. As in, she fell asleep while I was writing this. She woke up to fall back asleep.

There are a few things that make the second pregnancy harder, such as James, James, James, and James. Last time my wife was pregnant, nobody in the house woke up at five o'clock every morning. Nobody screamed "I NEED THIS" for everything from a Curious George book to an abandoned pretzel. Nobody dropped a fork four to seven hundred times each dinner, and nobody insisted she admire lego constructions that are supposed to be "planes" or "bats" but actually look like wheelchair ramps designed by someone coming down from a bad trip.

Beyond fatigue that borders on hibernation, her symptoms include cravings so exotic I suspect she's participating in a reality show, and I'm being clandestinely filmed. After expressing deep concern at the absence of Panda Puffs this morning and simply writing "Graham Crackers" in an email, she appeared legitimately heartbroken that I failed to bring home a pumpkin pie donut, not to be confused with the pumpkin donut or pumpkin munchkin I fetched earlier (she didn't like either). A recent trip to Trader Joe's yielded no fewer than a half-dozen pumpkin items, despite my wife's claiming that pumpkin isn't a pregnancy craving.

As noted last pregnancy, there are no possible solutions. I can now say from experience that pregnant women become increasingly rational, fair, and kind throughout their pregnancy. So I have that going for me, which is nice.

12-weeks, 10/11/13