Pregnant women naturally gravitate toward others who are going through the same thing. Most have friends who fit the bill, but Sarah is a few years ahead of her friends, so she turned to the Internet. She joined an “Expectant Moms” group that had lively message boards frequented by women all over America. She signed up using my e-mail address for some reason, which meant that when I opened my email yesterday and I found myself knee-deep in e-mail roundups about uteri and ultrasounds.

Other than the fact that she is pregnant, Sarah has nothing in common with these message board women. Most appear to live in carpeted suburban houses and already have children with names like Cody and Caitlin. They use lots of :)s and !!s in their messages. Many, in an apparent widespread medical miracle, claim to be “showing” at eight weeks. (Even I know that most women don’t show until about week 20.) Others claimed that they felt kicking at week eight. Their fetuses were the size of a fingernail, and they thought they felt kicking? Must be Baby Beckham in there. “I’m managing a $750,000 school budget,” Sarah grumbled, “And these are a bunch of bored homemakers watching Oprah and waiting for their baby to kick.”

One of them posted the following message:

“My DH is so sweet!!! 🙂 He ran to Walgreen’s (thank gawd for Walgreen’s!!:)) in the middle of the night to get me crackers!”:)

“DH?” I asked, reading over Sarah’s shoulder. “What’s with the baseball lingo?”

Eventually we figured out that it meant something along the lines of “darling hubby.” Hmm. I have yet to run to Walgreen’s in the middle of the night for crackers. I wasn’t aware that Walgreen’s even carried crackers.

The more I saw of the message boards, the less I qualified. A DH:

  1. Takes digital photos of his wife’s belly every week to chart her progress. I don’t currently own a camera; I buy a disposable one whenever I need to take a picture.
  2. A DH goes to bed at the same time as his wife, no matter how early. My eyes physically cannot close until SportsCenter is over.
  3. A DH talks about his wife’s body like they both own it, i.e., “We’re gaining weight in our legs,” or “we’re drinking six glasses of water a day,” or “our cervix is totally dilated!” We’d rather be shot.

So, I suppose, as devoted as I am to Sarah, I still don’t qualify as a DH. Have to do something about that.