Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Pregnant

Before I'm accused of whining, let me state that I knew, going in to this, that hormonal fluctuations were going to be par for the course. I expected a higher degree of sensitivity, a peak in my wife's (sometimes substantial) temper, perhaps a few tears and a little bit of yelling. I was hoping it wouldn't be quite like the experience of her first couple Depo shots (imagine a few months worth of PMS rolled into two days), but I was prepared to take verbal lashings given that my body wasn't the one enduring all of these changes.

I got just that, at least in the first trimester. Her rationality, usually one of her many beautiful qualities, faded to a distant memory. In its place was a woman driven by pure, raw, unfiltered emotion. I was relatively certain that she hated me for those first couple months, and I'm quite certain that she loved the dog more than me at that point. The second trimester saw the extreme peaks level out substantially, though not without occasional dips and spikes. You can see some evidence of this in my post Top Ten List of Universal Maxims for Partners of Pregnant People (and on a related side note, I've taken to blurting out "Rule # 8!" when especially confused and confounded by her behavior).

Now that we're on the cusp of the third trimester, my wife has returned to me suddenly. What is incredibly odd, at least to me, is that she still initially reacts to stimuli with the same degree of emotion as she did before, but instead of continuing with a particularly unreasonable tirade or spontaneously bursting with tears, she suddenly...laughs at herself. All the time. It's as though she has been given the ability to scrutinize her behavior with perfect objectivity and most of the time she finds her little outbursts of irrationality absolutely hilarious. I do not know where this came from and I will not expect it to continue, but let me say that I'm treasuring every last second of it while it's here.

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Here's an updated shot of Amanda's growing belly from Friday. The incredible rate of growth probably made this picture outdated five minutes after it was taken.

My step-father told me I ought to be more alliterative and, instead of calling them "belly shots," refer to them as "pregnancy profiles."

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We have another appointment tomorrow morning, which is always exciting, so I should have some new ultrasound scans and news to share. But for now it's back to the reality of grad school, which has become far less interesting than thinking about and planning for the arrival of these little ones. Post-Kantian ethics ain't got nothin' on these two boys.