My wife is currently 37w4d pregnant with our first child and she’s already had enough and just waiting for the birth.
She’s on medical school and I know that I can’t begin to understand what she’s going through, having to attend lectures and walk around all day on the hospital, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling exhausted myself.
I feel like I’m doing 95% of the chores. Basically everything but laundry. Take the dog out for a walk on the morning, work full time job, comeback and take the dog out again, make dinner, clean up after, go to appointments, help her with bedtime routine and almond oil, prepare food for the week, etc. I feel like the only time I have for myself is after 10pm when she goes to sleep.
I know it will be different (probably worse) after the birth but I’m just tired all the time and I won’t complain or ask her to do more.
You’re tired because you’re doing a hard thing in a hard season. That part is real. But here’s the truth you don’t want to hear:
This is not “extra.” This is not you being taken advantage of. This is you becoming a father.
Your wife is growing an entire human while finishing medical school. Her body is under chemical, hormonal, structural, neurological, and emotional stress that literally does not exist anywhere else in normal life. She’s not “tired.” She’s in a medically extreme condition that ends in either surgery or a full-body trauma event called birth.
So yes—you’re carrying more right now.
That’s not imbalance. That’s triage.
Right now your job is not “split the chores evenly.”
Your job is be the stable platform so she can survive the finish line.
This is what love looks like before it turns into the Instagram version.
You’re not losing yourself.
You’re being forged into someone stronger.
And here’s the good news:
This season has an expiration date.
It is intense.
It is temporary.
It is not a permanent sentence.
But the man you become in it?
That part lasts forever.
You’re not being drained.
You’re being built.
Now hydrate, sleep when you can, lower your expectations for “me time,” and stop narrating this like something is wrong.
You’re exactly where a good father is supposed to be.