Five Silver Linings to the Summer Pregnancy Cloud: If your wife is anything like me, the phrase she's heard most often recently is, "Oh you poor thing! You have to pregnant all through the hot summer." While this is sympathetic, it is not helpful. You know what is helpful? This list of reasons why it's not so bad to be pregnant in the summer:
- She doesn't have to buy a maternity coat. Winter clothes are more expensive than summer clothes, and maternity clothes are more expensive than regular clothes. What do you get when you put them together? A super-expensive piece of clothing that she'll only wear for two months.
- Added Bonus: Skirts and dresses are a really comfortable option that are completely impractical in the winter.
- She doesn't have to go to the gym. Yeah, it might get a little muggy, but mornings and evenings tend to be pretty nice go-for-a-walk weather. Plus, swimming is one of the exercises that is supposed to be best for pregnant women, and there is no better swimming weather than summer.
- Added Bonus: She doesn't have to work out in front of a lot of size two gym rats.
- She can eat all the ice cream she wants. This is the summer for ice cream! All of those ice cream cravings can be justifiably filled with lots of trips to local summer-only parlors.
- Added Bonus: Ice cream has calcium, which the baby needs! It's practically healthy.
- The healthy foods she should be eating are all in season. Summer is the time for antioxidant-loaded berries, which are super healthy for your wife, as well as your baby. Have you ever tried to find raspberries or peaches in the winter?
- Added Bonus: It's also prime time for fresh, local vegetables from the farmers' market!
- She doesn't have to spend the summer snuggling a newborn. There's nothing less comfortable than being pregnant all summer... except for holding a sweaty baby against your sweaty skin and trying to get them to sleep.
- Added Bonus: Fall and winter are perfect times to snuggle a baby in little cozy sleepers. Plus, nobody will expect you to host Thanksgiving!
Here's hoping the heat isn't too bad, or at least that it's balanced out by all of these benefits. Good luck!
By Laura Lee Anderson, a mom-to-be.
Check out the other articles in this series here.
