Heh…given that I twice gave birth within 90 minutes of being admitted…the BH came pretty close to having to deliver his own children. Mr antiprincess is gettin’ off easy.

Sure–and again, I’m not saying anything about *your* situation. But enough guys use the “ooh, I might get all unmanly seeing you in pain, honey” excuse that I suspect people are assuming the worst about Mr. Princess.

I take back what I said about your being evasive. And I can respond in kind to your element of cordiality. As distinguished from the pure snark, misreads, and general crying out in pain of the others.

We seem to have honest differences in what we see in the trail of posts submitted above. To use your reference, I can only say that I view the”bunch of guys” a tiny irrelevant group who represent only a small fraction of decent guys out there. You seem to assign more significance.

Besides I see most of the “guys” as really strawguys. What starts out as an anecdotal “he” becomes a “they” and “these men” as everyone tries to regale the group with their own negative life experience, adding layers to the vindictiveness.

Much the way that you polluted an otherwise sustantial question on how this topic might be part of larger equality of the sexes issue. By prejudging my thoughts (as a possible “other kind of feminist”) with the “you antifeminists”, you give license to the inevitable words being put into my mouth as “one of them”. And the multitude of Reactive venom sure to follow.

It may be a good way to enhance the vibrancy of a weblog, but it certainly doesn’t add anything to real knowledge and understanding.

Do you happen to remember if they controlled for changes in eating habits, activity, sleep patterns, etc.?

Occasionally I think all of patriarchy can be boiled down to a few men who have a complex about their relative unimportance to the reproductive process. Stuff like this just confirms it.

I wish I could find it, because I don’t think I’m explaining it well. But the discussion of “couvade” made me think of it.

It’s observed even when the man is not the father (and knows this) and it isn’t reversed until some time after the child is born. I am not sure whether this happens with men that are only seeing their wife on the weekend or something.

So these men are not pregnant but undergoing a major change that effects their bodies, brain chemistry and behaviour and couvade seems to be about cultural traditions after the births, so it’s completely different.

snerk – it’s been five years plus…the honeymoon (such as may have existed) is long over.

hey – my birthing room, my rules. it’s my party and if I don’t want two hundred and fifty pounds of pale trembling sweaty nauseated totally-pitiful husband getting in my way, I don’t hafta have him there just because fathers SHOULD be in the delivery room, according to some conventional wisdom or other.

I’m led to believe that the folks you want in the delivery room are those folks who will be able to advocate for you. it’s going to be hard for the guy to advocate for me with his head in a bucket. I’d rather he “weasel”, unless he really really wants to be there for his own reasons and can overcome his issues for his own reasons.

I’m not going to love him any more for being there, nor any less for waiting outside. and he’ll have plenty of opportunities to step up, so to speak, as a parent.

I just get annoyed when folks want to get all pushy about how my family’s birth experience should be.