My pregnant wife
NUTS & SCREWS With CHARLY BOY
Saturday, July 04, 2009

The first time I heard somebody say to me “Am pregnant”, I seriously went into a fit. All kinds of thoughts went through my mind. The one that nagged me the most was becoming a father at the tender age of 15. Yes! Go ahead and say I spoil from belle. Why wouldn’t I when at the age of eight my nanny was playing “house” with me. At that time, it was taboo for a young girl to get pregnant without being engaged.

However, I was very furious with the girl, who first told me that. To get back at her for scaring the living day light out of me, I told her I wasn’t responsible for that pregnancy. For starters she was much older than me and I was too juvenile to know how to deal with that kind of situation. For me at the time, I just avoided her like a plaque. How that matter was resolved I really don’t know.

By the time I was 17, there were just too many distractions with girls and women. I remember one month when three girls showed up in our house at different times with their parents all claiming I had put their daughter in the family way. That must have been the worst season ever as a teenager for me because the sermon and punishment I got from my father was unprecedented. Looking back, how I wriggled myself out of that logjam was something to behold. I remember on one occasion when I was summoned to our sitting room and I was asked to explain how well I knew one of the girls; that was when I first noticed my street mentality, being aware of what the repercussions will be from my father if I admit responsibility. I cried, I lied, I told the house at the time that it “wasn’t me;” that in fact, I knew seven other people who had kissed and told. Needless to say that the poor parents of the girl were confused and disappointed. But I can’t forget the look on her parent’s face; it was a look of pain and shame. How all of that was resolved, I know not.

I pitied my mother then because she didn’t find it funny, and from then onwards I was taken on some serious sex education for a long time. Of course, sex was made to look awfully dangerous, risky and everything bad. Now, that was my way back, when I was sowing my royal oath across the land, when I was too much in a hurry to learn and discover the women folk. I thank God for all the madness at the time because in a way it made me mature early enough for the responsibilities I was to shoulder later on. Like play, like play, this is how I ended up with almost a football team for children. While my mates in secondary school at the time were writing innocent love letters, I was busy exploring the female anatomy for practical. That’s how come I ended up with my first child before I hit 18. Even at that, I claimed my famous chorus, “it wasn’t me.”

Till date, I have eight children and seven grand children. Legally married three times, divorced three times, and now in my last lap of the marriage business. My present marriage to Lady D has stood the test of time; it has lasted for 30 years, and we have been blessed with three lovely kids. However, she has always been the mother to all my children.

Henry, my friend, came over last week to visit with his wife. While we were chilling in my living room trying to catch up with the events happening in Nigeria, I couldn’t take my eyes off Henry as he waited hands and feet to his pregnant wife, not letting her lift a finger. As I watched him dot on his wife, I remembered the times Lady D was carrying our baby too. I could relate to what Henry was doing and he invariably won my respect in that regard. It reminded me of myself. In fact, my matter would have made all male chauvinist grin with envy or out rightly hate me with passion for being a “mama dey call you kind of man.”
I know that for most men, once their wives get pregnant they are usually irritable, especially during the early month as they go through their morning sickness, hot flashes, mood swings which results to nagging.

For some other men, they feel their wives are useless and they try to confine them to the bedroom or the house. For me, it has always been different. There was always something about my wife being pregnant. That’s when she radiates more beauty. She’s more sexy for me at that time, and that’s the season I look at her as fragile, hence, I want to do everything for her. Am at my peak with love, care and warmth because I see her as two fragile being.
Please readers tell me if am queer. Do you know that these are the times I take her out the more, even with her tummy in the way? I want her to wear the sexiest of clothes. I want to do everything for her.

Am I normal? Am asking this question because it’s not the Nigerian way. I have seen series of pregnancies from my other wives but none has evoked this kind of sentiment and emotion that runs through me each time Lady D is pregnant. Am always left with the feeling of a man who is about to experience his first sense of fatherhood. At night, I hardly sleep. Now that’s because am too busy watching sleeping beauty sleep. Those are the moments I feel most connected. For me there was no difference between night and day because during the day, not only did I suddenly become a houseboy, I doubled up as a gofer, a steward, a chauffer. In fact, I was made to run down the stairs to give her something that was just a hand stretch for her. But the good thing is, I loved doing those things so it was like nothing to me.

Twice, I had been in the labour room and I could categorically say that our last two babies, we had them together. Isn’t it funny that for someone who can’t stand the site of blood or to see people in pain was in the delivery room with madam till the baby drops? Now, what does that make me? Henpecked or what? Call it whatever you like but I guess what am just doing is sharing those moments of joy with you and hoping that there’s something in all of these that you can take away.
I shared with Henry my own experiences at the various times my own wife was pregnant and I had to ask, what would make a man like me, who had seen many pregnancies, behave like this towards Lady D?

Henry’s analysis? He said: 1) The truth is that you understand and she understands you; 2) You respect her and she respects you. By so doing, you know not to invade her privacy, likewise her; 3) You love her and she loves you and you know deep down that she sincerely loves you; 4) She has been able to live with you with no choice, but to see her every waking day of your life as a women (the fragile one) so you unconsciously find yourself treating her as glass (fragile); 5) in her, you have found oneness. You found a friend, a sister, a brother, and most importantly a mother.

Henry said to me: Remember that men always gravitate towards their mother because however they are, whether good or bad, their mother will always love them. So, he said, it is very possible that my wife has been able to keep me in that state whereby I know that she will always love me even when I’ve done something wrong, thereby, making me see her as my mother, which is a good thing.