Last November, we had our third child. During the course of this time I decided that I would write an extended letter over nine months to her that she would receive in the hospital.
During the two days we spent with our new baby in the delivery suite we read this letter together. It wasn’t jewelry, new clothes, or a gift certificate, but K said it was the best gift I could have given her.
The Pregnancy Letter
When we began to read it I’d forgotten that I actually started writing it the same day we found out we were having a baby. I think this element of the content set a context that made my wife feel very special.
On average, I contributed to the letter less than once a week, and for what I did include, it may or may not have been a page long.
In addition to this, I made sure to make it funny and add in some things about current news for posterity.
Make Your Wife Laugh a Little
People who get to know me think I’m pretty funny. In fact, one friend of ours commented that I must have a wife who is always in a good mood from how much I make her laugh.
To this, I said, ‘well, she gets all of me,’ meaning that while I’m performing in a sense for friends and strangers, the “material” they hear has already been vetted by my wife.
On top of this, at times she has to deal with me being:
- Insensitive
- Upset
- Messy
- Disorganized
- Forgetful
- Gassy
I might be able to make her laugh, but it’s familiar, and familiarity breeds contempt, so when I added humor to the pregnancy letter I side-stepped my own self-serving brand of humor for other people’s.
I went to joke sites and found funny pictures as well as some jokes to copy and paste.
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The Greatest Value of This Letter
I think the greatest value she received from this letter was that it was obvious in its 20 or so pages that I put some serious time into it. Personal time from one’s spouse is always nice.
In later years, she’ll be able to not only see that I suggested such baby names as:
- Teflon
- Rainshine
- Bruce Leroy
- Tigerlily
but also that on Oct. 13, 2009 our middle child brought something in for her first show-and-tell; on Oct. 15 it was announced that Social Security payments would not increase because the cost of living had decreased with gas prices dropping from $4 to about $2.35 a gallon; and in May of that year, I tracked our spending to the penny for the first time, which led to us getting out of credit card debt just after the baby was born.
This letter, while a nice gift for my wife, will preserve those 9 months in a way that I would not have otherwise. And, good or bad, that’s priceless.
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