About a month ago I told V: I’ll start visiting you at least once per week, usually on Wednesdays, to help with chores and carrying heavy stuff from the supermarket. I know you don’t need it yet, but I need it so that it can become a habit rather than a chore. As we both find it difficult to ask for help I just know you’ll suffer every time you ask me for something, so let’s just make it easier for you to ask and for me to help. We might need to increase the frequency of the visits later on, but let’s do one time per week for now.

She replied that it was a good idea, thanks. But she didn’t have any tasks for me on that day. “It doesn’t matter” I replied, “the point is making it a habit”, so I went anyways and had dinner together. Then, the next two weeks it was moving boxes out of storage, and last week I picked her up at the airport after a business trip. She’s been very grateful about it though I feel as if I’m not doing much (yet). I infer that it’s the feeling of being backed up is what she’s grateful about.

She’s of course superbly excited about her pregnancy and very focused on what she has to do now. Her horizon is two or three months and if my predictions are correct, she will start buying stuff (crib, clothes) one or two months from now. She’s always taken good care of her health but now she’s doubled down on evading anything that could have the remotest possibility of harm, so she won’t eat fresh food outside of home, no cured or raw meat or fish, no coffee and of course no alcohol.

To tell the truth I’m relieved I’m not the father. I’d be a nervous mess despite V’s cool. I like it more this way, it gives me a peek into parenthood without the enormous responsibility of being one. My few friends with children were very vocal that I was making a mistake, they don’t regret their children but they said very clearly I didn’t know what I was getting into.

Some day I will write my full thoughts on having children. Until my early thirties I never wanted them, even seriously considered getting a vasectomy. Then I left it as an open question, and now I’m currently thinking “only with the right person, under the right circumstances, and I’m not seeking for it but I’m open to it”. At age 46 I feel it’s unlikely I’ll have children and I’m fine with that.