Copyright Oggbashan October 2002 The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
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I drove through the country lanes with the summer evening sun glinting in my rear view mirror. I should have been enjoying the scenery but I was slightly nervous. I was going to an ante-natal class. The classes were privately run and held in the instructor's large living room. This time I was without my wife Maureen. She would be late tonight. She would come by taxi after her appointment with the doctor. Although I had been going to the classes with her since she had joined, I have never been without her. Why should I? She was the one who was pregnant, not me.
Maureen originally thought that I ought to know as much about her pregnancy as she did but recently I had been irritating her. I knew MORE than she did. We'd argued about it. She told me that I was upsetting the other class members as well. Perhaps I had. I'd read the set book before the classes had started. I did the homework each week. I wasn't tired out by carrying a heavy lump. Although all eight lady members were due to give birth in a month or less, I was better informed than they were.
The other husbands had come to the first lesson or so but now I was the only husband still attending. The others had found excuses not to come. Perhaps, although I wouldn't admit it even to myself, I continued to come because I found pregnant women incredibly sexy.
As usual I carried two foam sleeping mats and the bag of Maureen's equipment. Tonight's class would be slightly different. After the breathing and relaxation exercises there would be a talk from a teacher from a breast-feeding support group. That group encouraged breast feeding and provided one-to-one support from recent mothers who were feeding or had recently breast fed their own baby. The breast-feeding teacher would bring a mother who had attended an earlier series of the ante-natal classes.
As with many clubs and groups in our town, all the members knew each other. It is a small town. Not only did I know all the members of the class, I knew their husbands too.
I had no clue that the class was planning a different evening for me. Maureen hadn't given a sign that anything other than the normal class was arranged.
If I'd known that the "mother" attending was Geraldine, Maureen's brother's wife, wild horses wouldn't have dragged me to that class. I had been engaged to Geraldine a few years ago. We broke up angrily and both said things we'd rather forget. She told me that I was a self-opinionated prig and I made rude comments about the small size of her breasts. We had to meet sometimes but the atmosphere between us could still be cut with a knife.
We started as usual. We laid down on the sleeping mats to start the relaxation exercises. This was my weakest point. I couldn't relax easily. Hazel, the instructor, came over to me.
"Brian! You are not relaxing. It's really important in the later stages of pregnancy. Look at Wendy and Clare. They have flopped. You are still tense. I think you need some help understanding what hard work it can be carrying a baby around." She turned to Wendy.
"Wendy, can you get the empathy box, please?"
Wendy left the room and returned with something that looked more like a suitcase than a box. It was obviously heavy.
Hazel turned to me.
"We have been loaned this empathy kit. It is intended to give husbands some idea of what their wives have to endure while pregnant. Since you are the only husband left I think that you should try it."
She opened the case and pulled out a heavy corset. It looked like a costume for playing Falstaff - very big-bellied.
"This has been designed to feel like carrying the weight of a pregnancy at eight months. I want you to put it on."
Hazel paused. I wanted to protest but Wendy and Clare were squatting either side of me. They are normally large women and now, eight months pregnant, they were enormous. They looked as if they'd be delighted to assist Hazel in getting the empathy kit on me. I gulped. I'd upset both Wendy and Clare during the classes.
"Brian!" said Wendy "You can't put it on dressed as you are. You'll have to strip to your pants!"
I was about to protest but the look in Wendy and Clare's eyes was enough. I stripped. I heard faint giggles from some of the others. I don't think there was anyone sympathetic to me. I'd upset all of them at one class or another.
Hazel lifted up the corset and tried to put it on me. It was vest-shaped and laced at the back. It wouldn't go over my head so she put it down and totally unlaced the back. Then she offered it up for me to put my arms into the armholes. I couldn't. The armholes were too small and wouldn't pass beyond my elbows.
"Oh dear," she said "It must have been designed for someone smaller than you. I want you to wear it but I can't see how."
Wendy leant forward and whispered in her ear. Wendy seemed to have a mischievous glint in her eye.
"Well ... I suppose so." said Hazel quietly. "Do you really think so, Wendy?"
Wendy nodded.
Hazel said to me "Wendy suggested that we put it on with your arms inside it. It seems to be the only way it could go on."
"But I wouldn't be able to ..." I started to say before the rest of the class applauded the idea.
I didn't want to put it on like that but I was surrounded by women that I'd irritated. They weren't prepared to accept a "No" from me.
Wendy helped Hazel to put the corset round me. It may have had small armholes but the rest of it was large enough. It was really heavy. While Hazel adjusted it on my shoulders Wendy and Clare laced the back. One of them pulled my hands down and round to the lower back of the corset. The other laced it tightly. Somehow she tied my wrists into the corset's lacing before knotting it. Then I was released.
I staggered as I felt the full weight of the "empathy lump". It was dragging me forward and down. Instinctively I arched my back to compensate. The weighted "breasts" dragged on my shoulders. My head went back.
