I'm Not the Only One Experiencing Pregnancy Symptoms

I love my husband.  SO MUCH.  And he has been super supportive and helpful during my pregnancy.  It can be tough with mood swings, nausea, stomach aches, headaches, insomnia...you know all of the fun things that happen to us women during this special time in our lives.

One of the things that I appreciate most about my husband is his ability to make me laugh.  And it isn't always on purpose.  So babe, thank you for letting me share this...

As much as I have been experiencing pregnancy symptoms, I have begun to notice that Jay has been showing a few of his own.  I had always heard of men getting sympathy symptoms, but it's so interesting to be experiencing this phenomenon first hand.  Before I was pregnant, we both led pretty healthy lifestyles.  If you have read my earlier blogs, you know we were active and ate relatively healthy.  Jay had sworn off dairy and red meat... something he had been pretty consistent with for quite some time.  Once I became pregnant though, our lifestyle and lifestyle choices seemed to fly out the window.

Upon doing a little bit of research I found out that somewhere between 80-90% of men actually experience these so called symptoms (see babe it's totally normal).  It's so popular, in fact, that it has been dubbed the Couvade Syndrome, or Male Sympathetic Pregnancy.

When I was in my first trimester where everything is just BLEH, I was needing to eat a lot of toast and carbs.  Unlike my usual eating routine, this led to eating toast with butter every night right before bed to ward off any morning sickness.  Jay, being the great husband he is, would either have toast ready for me, or would offer to make it for me no matter what time.  11 o'clock at night one of us would look at each other and say..."toast?"...and off he would go.  We would lay in bed eating toast together, side by side.

Once the first trimester came and went, my appetite got better, and so did the need to fill myself with empty carbs.  Jay, however, seemed to hold on to this pregnancy symptom.  More often than not he is asking me if I want a snack, a cookie, a brownie....and most of the time I'm saying no while I see him off snacking on the fresh baked brownies in the kitchen! 

Being that it's Christmas time, the Hallmark Channel has become our go to whenever we watch television.  My husband can be sensitive, which is another thing I love about him.  The first night we sat and watched a whole movie together, you know the one with the happy ending, Jay's "eyes were sweating" and he wasn't sure why he was so emotional.  I chuckled and thought it was adorable that my husband can be in touch with his feelings every once in a while.

Fast forward a couple of weeks filled with Hallmark movies, the emotional feelings seemed to continue on.  All Jay has to do is glance at one of the movies before he starts to well up with feelings.  He even got teary eyed during a commercial the other day.  I was baffled... wasn't that supposed to be me??  I thought I was supposed to cry at the drop of a hat; commercials, pictures, movies.  But nope...it's Jay who has taken on this role.

Indigestion and being gassy is just another wonderful pregnancy symptom we have to deal with.  And I think it's fair to say that men can have these symptoms most of the time.  But I couldn't help but crack up laughing when the other night my hubby was being a little more gaseous that normal.  "It's coming out both ends I can't help it!" he claimed.  I just burst out laughing..."I swear you are more pregnant than I am!" 

My newest and greatest symptom is heartburn that seems to creep up on me every night around 7pm...that and constipation (which is a real treat let me tell you).  Well wouldn't you know it - Jay has the exact two same symptoms that have manifested at exactly the same time as my own!  I swear his are worse than my own!

So babe...I'm just telling you to embrace this journey right now.  It is a fleeting moment, and although pregnancy symptoms can be tough, they are temporary.  And the end result is totally worth it.  *At least that's the advice people give me!*

<3 P.S.

Love you Jay..thank you so much for being such a supportive and loving partner in this journey.  I wouldn't want to do it with anyone else.  I am so grateful that through all the tough times, you can find humor and make me laugh no matter the situation.