AFTER our baby was born at 8:09 p.m. last April 3, Sunday, I now think pregnancy is overrated. So, that was it? Nine months of anticipation, fear, excitement, mood swings, baby blogging and high-folate, low-fat milk, and the baby pops out just like that?

Whatever happened to that dreaded scene of the wife being rushed to the hospital only to give birth in the backseat of a taxicab? Or where’s that romantic scene, if the mother ever makes it to the hospital on time, of husband and wife holding hands and looking lovingly into each other’s eyes as the hugely bloated figure in a maternity dress is wheeled inside the delivery room by a legion of nurses and surgeons and the entire Department of Health?

This was not the movies, so nothing of that sort happened that Sunday. Instead, we were having breakfast at home when the wife said, “Oops, I think I wet my panties.” And I said, “Oh, too much beef loaf. Let’s have corned beef tomorrow.”

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WE’RE getting bored of being pregnant now. When you’re nine months on the way, you start to wonder if all this would ever end. I heard stories about women who were weeks past their due dates. There’s this story I read about a mother who was so many weeks overdue that when the baby finally came out, she enrolled it immediately in prep school.

When you’re nine months on the way, the most exciting event in life consists of the daily walks around the neighborhood. We’ve become friends with the neighbors this way, because part of this prenatal ritual is to smile at everyone on the street, so people will know you are genuinely happy, when in fact the wife feels so bloated she is beginning to think she’s a newly-discovered planet.

Don’t forget to hold hands, too, and look into each other’s eyes when you pause at the corner to catch your breath. If the weather is good, gush over the clear blue sky, the birds on treetops, and the setting sun, and the neighbors will say, “Oh, what a lovely couple.” If the weather is bad… but why would you want to cozy up to each other in a rainstorm unless you’re Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst?

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IF you’ve been following this column the past weeks, you will notice this little Tuesday space we have here has become a sort of repository of my experiences as an expectant father. I didn’t know that until last Sunday, when I bumped into fellow Sun.Star Cebu columnist Mayette Tabada at the mall.

“I follow your baby blog,” Mayette told me. Baby blog! That disturbed me, because I was expecting her to say, “Since when did you start thinking you’re the marrying type?”

Then it hit me. What a disservice this column has been to you, my dear readers. As a columnist in this paper’s Opinion Section, I am supposed to give you my expert’s opinion on what’s going on in the world around us: Libya, Japan, New Zealand, Joavan “The-Son-Of-God” Fernandez, The Fall of Sharon Cuneta, The Showbization of Philippine Football, and Justin “What-Have-We-Done-To-Deserve-Him” Bieber.

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A NEWS article written by Sun.Star staff reporter Rebelander S. Basilan last Sunday sent me running to the Department of Education (DepEd) 7’s Ecotech Center in Sudlon, Lahug yesterday morning. It was raining, which would have been enough reason for me to stay in bed and to hell with Basilan’s story.

And there was this message in my phone that said: “Warning: At 4:30 a.m., the nuclear power plant in Fukumi, Japan exploded. When rain falls anytime today, just stay inside the house, and if you are outside, see to it that you have a raincoat or an umbrella because the rain may be acidic and may cause skin cancer. Please pass this to your friends and loved ones even if you know this chain advisory is crap, just like those Marian prayers that promised you a life of misfortune and profound sadness if ignored.” OK, I made the last part up, but what the heck.

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I BELONG to the extremely rare type of fathers who get pregnant with their wives. What I mean is that I will be offended if you approach me and say, “When is your wife due?”

If you want to deal with me during these bumpy days of our pre-natal excitement as a couple, the more politically correct thing to say would be, “When are you both due?” Because that would mean it’s me and my wife who are pregnant. Cute? Wait till you finish this article.

Call it my Freudian desire to grow a uterus and fallopian tubes. So far, I’ve only succeeded in growing my hair long like a frustrated seductress with limited budget for shampoo. And you know what? I sometimes find myself stuffing a pillow under my shirt to look like I’m eight months pregnant, to the delight of the wife during those boring spiels of her, I mean our, pregnancy.

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MAYBE I watch too much “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” that I find our own police investigators funny, to be generous with my comments. The more I watch this monster hit of a television series, the more I wish I lived in Miami, New York, or Las Vegas where forensic experts solve crimes in less time than it takes for your evening coffee to get cold.

In this show, everything in the crime scene is a valuable piece of evidence. Every particle of dust, the way the furniture has been moved, the lipstick stain on an empty cup, the way the wind blows to the east, they all say something about the guilty one. Even a burp smells of somebody’s DNA.

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THE first thing I do upon waking up is turn on the AM radio and listen to the news.

It’s a habit I acquired from my years as reporter covering the police beat. Although I hate it because it interrupts my sleep, it gives me the heads up on what’s the day’s news on a daily basis.

The problem is that at six in the morning, I’m asleep and awake at the same time. This means that sometimes I interpret what I’m hearing on the radio as continuation of an interrupted dream, or nightmare, depending on the news.

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Last weekend, I and the wife had an amazing encounter with modern prenatal technology – the 3D Ultrasound. Yeah, I know, 3D ultrasound is ancient technology. It is 30 years old.  For all I care, it could have been invented by obstetrician-gynecologist dinosaurs to determine the sex of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. But when it’s your baby right there being scheduled for the first photo op of his entire amniotic life ever, all technology in the world becomes modern and high tech, and beautiful.

So we decided to have this 3D thing for the same reason as those of other expectant parents: to determine if we’re not expecting a dinosaur. No, just kidding. But yeah, we wanted to take advantage of this technology that would tell us if there was nothing wrong with the baby inside. We would count the fingers and the toes and examine the nose, etc. Oh, it’s grandpa’s nose. No, it’s lola’s nose. Stuff like that. And on a deeply personal note, I wanted to know if the baby was not sucking at a bottle of beer instead of his thumb.

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FOR ALL the romance and sadness it evokes, rain the past days is not cute. With just the right amount, rain makes you want to stay in bed all day and think only of nothing but love and getting plenty of it.

If you’re a girl, rain makes you feel like you’re Mary Jane Watson in that what’s-the-big-deal-about-it upside-down-kiss scene with Spider Man. If you’re a boy, you’d feel like you’re a teenager in 2002, flushed with excitement at the sight of Kirsten Dunst in a wet shirt.

Do you know why you don’t imagine yourself as Spider Man? Because you’re grownup and you know a real hero doesn’t waste precious time kissing a girl upside down when all the thugs in the world are out to get her, especially if she’s Kirsten Dunst. I’d kiss Kirsten Dunst right side up anytime, rain or shine.

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