Being a police wife is a strange lifestyle. Very few things compare. Besides the weird hours and the fact that your husband goes to work in a Kevlar vest and a belt full of guns and pepper spray, there are unusual dinner conversations about dead bodies and drugs up people’s butts.
Yeah, JD and I have had some unnerving conversations about work, but after a while, what used to seem strange becomes your norm. It’s not unusual to get a text at 11pm along the lines of, “Going on a drug raid. EPIC!!!!” In the beginning, I wasn’t really sure how to react to these types of texts, but I’ve learned just to say something like, “Have fun and be safe,” because, to him, it IS fun, but for my sake, I want him to be safe.
He often comes home and tells me about the names he was called that day. “Skinhead” and “Nazi” are amongst the most popular, but to be fair, someone also called one of his African-American co-workers a Nazi as well. Not sure how that works.
There was the time a woman’s water broke in the back of his squad car. I also think several drunk people have peed in the back of his car as well. Not to be gross, but there’s been a lot of bodily fluid back there. Don’t get arrested, if for no other reason than you wouldn’t know what’s been in that car before you (and yes, they clean it, but still).
And then there are the hookers. I mean, how many women can be like, “So my husband was talking to this hooker today… no big deal.” That’s right, JD spends an unusual amount of time around hookers, because there are a bunch in his district. And he knows them by name. Some have even hit on him. Perhaps this should concern me, but I actually find it pretty amusing. Real-life hookers don’t look like they do in the movies. He usually shudders when he tells me about them.
Of course, conversations about my day are usually more traditional. He’ll ask if anything exciting happened, and I’ll be like, “Oh, you know, helped out a sales manager, saved someone from cancelling their… advertising.” These are probably the types of things normal couples discuss over dinner, but compared to his work stories, mine are really tame (in a good way, I’d rather not have stories that involve bar brawls and chasing down suspects).
***********
In baby news, JD got to feel his first kicks this week! I’ve been feeling her move for a while, but the movements hadn’t been strong enough for him to feel up to this point. We tried. I feel her the most when I’m laying down in bed, so in the evenings I would wait till I felt her moving and then have him put his hand in that spot. When I felt her move, I would ask if he felt anything, and this was always met with a disappointed, “no.” I felt bad because I knew he felt a little left out that I was so connected to her and he wasn’t able to be a part of it yet. This week, we were lying in bed and she was making quite a statement down there, punching and rolling around. So I put his hand on my belly and waited, silently begging her to kick her daddy to say hello. After a motionless couple of minutes, I felt a big kick right where his hand was.
“Did you feel that?” I asked hopefully.
He pulled his hand away and his eyes got wide. “Yes,” he replied. “It was freaky. It’s like you have an alien in there.”
“Well,” I laughed, “there IS a baby growing in my belly.”
She wasn’t done yet, so I put his hand back on my belly so he could feel some more kicks. In that moment, I could tell he was connecting, and I was so happy that he could feel her and say hello.
