“Really?”

Despite two months of painfully aggressive baby making, it really caught me off guard when I found out my wife was pregnant. I had no idea that it would happen so quickly, or that (apparently) I'm a huge stud.

Anyway, the pregnancy test was stuffed in a Christmas card and I should have noticed that my wife was gushing and on the verge of tears (the good kind) as I opened it.

I didn't immediately occur to me what was going on and at first I turned the thing over and over in my hand. After all, maybe it was just an unused test – perhaps with a note explaining that we would take another stab at this baby-making thing later that night, without the ovulation calendar and without the gravity-minded, clinical approach to sex that would make an Amish grandmother call me a pansy.

But after a few seconds that seemed like much longer, I realized that the thing said "Pregnant" and blurted out my uninspired "Really?!"

She didn't seem to care that I had nothing more impressive to say, and we hugged and smiled like idiots.

We were pregnant.

I say "we" were pregnant, because a few short hours into the pregnancy, my wife very clearly corrected me when I was so callous as to imply that SHE was pregnant. Being a generally obedient husband who knows how to pick my battles, I filed that note away in the marriage-saving section of the male subconscious that keeps track of things like what endearing nicknames she hates (honey, woman) and what kind of flowers she likes (any – you jackass).

Apparently, it isn't that simple. "We" are pregnant whenever we are talking about spreading the news at family gatherings, buying baby stuff, or reading any of the 1800 pages of baby books we owned before the pregnancy test was dry.

"She" is pregnant when we talk about how miserable she feels or how I am failing to live up to my role as hunter/gatherer/man servant.

I find that the best way to go is to stick with "we" until it gets me yelled at, unless circumstances really make it seem like a bad idea. If she is in the bathroom, lying on the floor after throwing up and peeing on herself ever-so-slightly, that is a BAD time to point out that "we" are pregnant. SHE is pregnant, and SHE is suffering.

I can go grab a bottle of water and get her pregnant butt up off of the floor. WE can go buy her some saltines in the morning.