Surprising

I live about thirty miles from my office. On a good day it takes me an hour to make the drive home. I just love battling Houston rush hour traffic, pushy drivers, and leftlane slow pokes. There is a silver lining though, my dad and twin brother work about 3 miles from my office so I carpool in with them. Carpooling with my dad and brother is great! We chat about all sorts of things; politics, my brother's business plan, curent events, market chatter etc... The drive flies by, I get to spend time with my dad and brother, and we remove two cars off the already congested Houston freeway system. I value this time greatly.

Well, on my drive home tonight (with just my dad since my brother is enjoying a southern swell off the coast of California this week) I questioned, out loud, what my wife might be doing in the nursery when I get home. Will she be hanging baby clothes on special baby clothes hangers - each color coded so we can quickly pick out 0-3 month onesies from 3-6 month onesies, or perhaps she is gracefully stuffing extra diapers into an overflowing, specially designed diaper storage container?

We made the drive home, safe and sound. I carefully twisted the front door handle, anticipating a tornado of baby paraphenilia to fly out the door, but as I pushed the door open I heard silence. That is odd. I stepped inside and there was my beautiful, very pregnant wife zonked out on the couch. She was exhausted. Her family's visit, the baby shower, digging through all the presents (nevermind sorting them, putting them away, putting them somewhere else when she redecorates etc...), and work had absolutly exhausted her.

I was not exhausted. I went for a 3.5 mile jog when I got home (saw 6 rabbits along the way also - 2 of them could have fit in the palm of my hand!). Where was this disconnect between her exhaustion and my energy? Yes, sure my wife is pregnant so inherently she is like a boiling over pot of hormones right now, and her body is going through some huge changes, but we both lived through the same weekend, right? And I had enough energy to jog 12 miles after work since monday.

Then I remembered something I heard at our baby care class - when asking couples to rank the intensity of child birth, the men consistantly reported a number lower than the women. I don't want to get into all the psychological reasons for this result, but the significance is that I really do not know exactly what my wife is going through and maybe I don't need to fully realize everything she feels right now to understand that she needs rest and she needs love. I need to be there to support her and let her know that we are a team, I am here for (and with) her.

Thats what strong teams do. They help each other.