Reading this in the British Psychological Society's latest offering of Research Digest made me smile. Today has been a day of gathering my own compelling evidence that men hold a softer spot for babies than I anticipated.
I've spent the last two days in a gym on a Health Screening and Fitness Testing module - part of my Diploma in Personal Training. As you all can see from BumpWatch, little baby-so-and-so has yet to make his/her presence known. So for the beginning of the course, I was just one of the students, instead of the pregnant lady. The class is predominately male, muscle-bound and protein-rich. We sat studiously for most of day one, learning the rationale and science behind fitness testing. Bums in chairs, calculators out and all trying to sound as smart as we could about anatomy and physiology. For some herculean chaps in the class, the brainy bit was a challenge, but they met it like professionals.
Come the end of the first day, it was our turn to show we could do it, starting with blood pressure, height, weight and body fat percentages. Body fat was being measured using bio-electrical impedance, a technique that uses a weak electrical current through the body to determine how much fat there is. Fat doesn't conduct electricity as well as fat-free mass. This test is a no-no for pregnant women. Electrical current though little foetus sounds very bad indeed. So I had to come clean to the class of muscle men that while I was happy to expose the extent of my lard holdings, I had to abstain for the baby.
What followed that day and the next surprised me. These tough guys brought me the mats to sit on for the practical work, asked about how I felt, were curious about food cravings and sickness, congratulated me on my own cardiovascular and strength testing results and expressed polite concern over my doing sit-ups. One bicep-bound boy caught me looking longingly at his nice smelling panini and actually offered me half of it. I was unprepared for their tenderness. I was waiting for the rolled-eyes, lack of sympathy and misogynistic jokes I so often read about towards pregnant women in newspapers. These men, testosterone-fuelled as they were, demonstrated genuine kindness and what seemed to me to be a heart-felt interest in the beginning of a brand new life.
The future is full of hope and possibilities.
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