What To Expect When Your Wife Is Expanding

What To Expect When Your Wife Is Expanding

By Thomas Hill

Well, I suppose that more than a few titles such as this one will appear on my blog over the coming months for reasons that should be implied. I'll try to keep nervous father-to-be angst off the blog as best I can, but since I vowed to write something about everything I read, I am forced by my own dogmatism to write about them. Please bear with me.

Actually, I should take this moment to plug my side-blog: Birthing the Dragon. I started another blog that will chronicle my wife and my experiences of (cross-cultural) pregnancy and birth in Taiwan, one of the world's most superstition nations (and, yes... out child will be a Dragon, though we didn't plan that nor does it mean anything to us). Most of the blog content will be relating then furrowing my brow at the nonsensical advice doled out by old (and not so old) Taiwanese women about how pregnancy and babies. Should be enlightening.

Anyway, back to the book at hand. I suppose that it was smart of me to start with a parody. A nice, short, light-hearted little booklet for new fathers. While most of the advice is silly and irreverent ("What to Name Your Baby If You Are Not Serious About Naming A Baby," "What To Take To The Hospital For Myself," "What Your Wife Will Be Complaining About This Month") some of the advice is quite useful (although you often have to dig through layers of sarcasm and dimwittedness to get there).

Despite the light-hearted approach to a serious subject, I'm not going to get on this book's case. It is what it is. It's a fun little book you might would in the humor section of the bookstore. It's the sort of gag gift you buy for a guy whose wife is expecting their first child (me) but wouldn't necessarily buy for yourself. And since it was given to me by a very good friend in exactly that sort of vein, I'm happy with it. A solid morning's read.

I'm not going to give this book a whole lot of space for obvious reasons. I have more serious books on the subject piling up around the house that will get closer attention. But if I took one lesson away from this book it is this:

If our baby is a girl, her name will not be Bertrude.

Shout Out!

Unless you live under a rock, you've been to visit Sheila over at Book Journey. She is a book blog hub and a wonderful blogger with lots of fun stuff going on. Always deserving of an extra visit.