The helpless blog of a first time dad: Morning, noon and night sickness

I DON’T expect any sympathy, but my wife’s morning sickness has also left me feeling awful.

Before I explain, let me give you some background.

I am not a couch-dwelling oaf of a man. I was a trainee chef for a couple of years and still do all the cooking at home.

One of the first things my wife said when she fell pregnant was “you’re going to have to show me how to work the washing machine.”

I’m also a man that is quite prepared to admit his wife is a better driver, which has led to me being named a “Site of Special Scientific Interest” by the Natural History Museum.

But I like sport and I have a “you’ve just got to get on with it,” attitude to illness and this has made life difficult in the Smith household of late.

The weekend that my wife’s morning sickness kicked in I was absent having gone to London to watch the rugby world cup.

I spoke to her on the phone, she said she’d started being sick and I said this was actually a good thing because it meant baby was developing as it should.

I couldn’t remember where I’d heard this but it sounded reassuring. Further research showed it was on a message board thread entitled “things I’m sick of hearing about my morning sickness.”

By the time I got home my wife had gone to her mum and dad’s because she was feeling unwell all the time and wanted company. She asked me to come and pick her up but I sent her a text saying I couldn’t because I’d had a couple of pints and didn’t want to risk it.

This was untrue, I hadn’t drunk all day, but Sunday night is a regular battleground for the TV remote in our house between her Homeland and The X Factor and my wish to watch American Football on Sky Sports.

I suddenly saw the opportunity to watch NFL to my heart’s content and I took it.

It wasn’t guilt free watching but my team won so I got over it.

I went and picked her up in the morning.

She continued to be ill all week, morning, noon and night (whoever called it morning sickness has got a wicked sense of humour) and I began to feel like Taylor Lautner must have done on set of the Twilight movies – a key part of the plot at the start but not really key to the main action after that.

All I could do was pat my wife on the back and offer some sympathy as her body rejected my cooking.

“I feel partly to blame,” I said at one stage. I think this was on a message board thread entitled, “The one thing the other half absolutely should not say under any circumstances.”

So the weekend came around and my wife told me she was meeting a friend at a shopping centre for lunch on Saturday.

This happened to coincide with the kick-off time for a football game that a friend had offered me a ticket to see. The match and the shopping centre were only a few miles apart.

This gave me an opportunity to see the match and earn some brownie points at the same time so I told my wife I’d accompany her “to do some shopping” in the morning and would then “return home” when her mate turned up.

I then sent my mate a text saying I’d have the ticket.

I should have remembered that women never seem to stick to the original arrangement and it turned out my wife’s friend couldn’t get to the shopping centre until 2pm an hour after kick-off.

This forced me to come clean about what I was actually up to at which point my wife said she felt sick – sick of me going to watch sport every weekend and leaving her on own that is.

When we got to the shopping centre she said she was going to be physically sick so we went to the food hall and I bought her a ginger cookie.

I then said I needed to go because the boys were waiting for me outside the ground and I had the tickets. This can be filed in the same folder of dishonesty as the “two pints” lie.

I stayed with her as long as I could and then I got up and left her. Alone. Feeling sick. Because she was carrying my child.

As I made my way to the ground a feeling of disgust came over me. There’s no way I should have left my wife on her own.

Her late-running friend should be ashamed of herself.