Birth Chart

Ever since we discovered that my wife was pregnant, life itself changed drastically for both of us. We were no longer the misty eyed, loving couple we had once been. Almost overnight, as soon as the pregnancy test turned positive, we morphed into what I can only describe as a pair of paranoid, over concerned would be parents. But the changes were more than mind deep. They went deep down into our souls and schedules. And nothing could have impacted our lives than the discovery of the birth chart.

My wife, in her constant trawl on the web for baby resources, had come across a birth chart. Simply put, this birth chart is nothing but an excel file that tracks the progress of the pregnancy month on month and keeps us updated on the changes that she would be undergoing. Notice that I say she, but what I actually mean is we. After all, being directly responsible for the pregnancy in the first place, I could not hope to escape the havoc that the birth chart would wreck now, could I?

Anyways, to get back to the birth chart, it soon became an integral part of our lives. My wife had printed out the whole thing and it ran into 40 pages of color coded blocks of text, indicating the various stages of her pregnancy. While I was initially enamored by the birth chart, as the pregnancy progressed, my wife began looking at it as some sort of bible that would tell her how to live her life.

The first area where the birth chart had an impact on our lives was naturally on our diets. Suddenly, some of my best loved foods were banished from not just the kitchen, but the household as well. When I tried to question her, she gave me that ‘ I know what is best for me and our baby’ look and effectively silenced me. The second area that was soon invaded and conquered was the waking and sleeping moments. Rather than wait for the baby to be born in order to adjust our sleep cycles, my wife mapped out the predictions and comments in the birth chart to regulate our sleeping moments. Which is why I would suddenly find myself rudely being shaken out of my beauty sleep in order to feel the baby move at all odd times of the day and night.

But I drew the line when the birth chart was used to regulate my dressing as well. I mean how did it matter what I wore as the baby could never see me of hope to be influenced by it. If I had a nagging suspicion before that my wife was using the birth chart to gain control over my life, it was now confirmed. And so, out went the birth chart and in came normality.