My wife Barbara and I are expecting a baby sometime around February 14. Yes, I can hear the "awws" now. You can give it a rest. Please. Barbara's birthday is July 5, and she's not entirely convinced that it's a good thing to have a birthday near a big holiday.

Barbara's pregnancy has been astonishingly routine. Note how I phrased that. "Her" pregnancy. Barbara is the person pregnant. Not me.

I emphasize that because there is this trend among couples to say "we're pregnant." Call me old-fashioned (um, not really), but I believe that women are the people who can and do get pregnant. Us guys have our jobs to do, but we are decidedly NOT pregnant.

Which is not to say I'm trying to shirk my responsibilities as a dad-to-be. Barbara has long joked that if men could incubate babies we would have five kids by now. An obvious overexaggeration.

We'd have four.

But she's right about my desire to be involved and to have kids in general. I'm not going to be one of those "smooch 'em and hand 'em to mama" dads. In every sense, I'm going to be a modern dad.

But I'm not pregnant. And I don't think I'm minimizing my role in the pregnancy process by refusing to say that "we're" pregnant. I'm simply emphasizing that Barbara is putting her body on the line for this kid. She's doing the heavy lifting (literally) and enduring the increased blood flow, hormonal rushes and all the other (ahem) joys of carrying a child. I wish I could do all that. I don't think I'd be any better at it, but like most guys if there's something I can do to make my wife's life easier I'm happy to do it.

In this case, I simply cannot. There's no two ways around it. She's pregnant. I'm not. She has to prepare for the physical rigors of childbirth. I have to prepare for the mental rigor of watching her go through intense pain and strain while being able to do little more than hold her hand and say "just a little bit longer."

I understand why people are saying things like "our" pregnancy and "we're" pregnant. Some dads think that they've been left out of the equation. That they need some kind of way to feel connected to the impending birth. Also, some mothers think that if they include their husbands on the pregnancy statement that the future dads will be more willing to truly get involved in the reading and classes and doctors appointments and such. I applaud the sentiment. But I think the application goes too far.

Look at the first sentence of this column. I said "we're expecting." I think that's fair. We are both expectant. We both expect to have a child cooing, screaming and squirting around the house by the end of February. But there's only one person pregnant here, and it's not me. I've done a lot of reading (not nearly as much as Barbara, but I have trundled through six or seven books), I've attended almost all of her doctor's appointments and my attendance at childbirthing classes has been perfect. I'm even doing alright at the practice (homework for the classes), though it's obvious I still need some work. I'm involved and invested in this pregnancy. Barbara's pregnancy.

I simply don't want to take anything away from her and what she's doing. She is allowing her entire body to change and warp just to bring a child into this world. There are a number of ways in which she will never be the same. This isn't a bad thing, necessarily, as change is part of life. But facts are facts. She's doing the hard work. I'm simply trying to make life as easy for her as possible (when I remember that that's my job, of course).

Maybe pregnancy is a state of mind as well as a physical condition. Maybe I'm being too much of a literalist here, that I'm stumbling over meaningless semantics. It's happened before. Maybe this all does stem from the fact that I wouldn't mind being able to be pregnant (and being pregnant myself), and so I resent the fact that I would be getting such recognition without actually physically experiencing the wonder itself.

On the plus side, in a little more than three months, I won't have to worry about this silly little issue any more. Rather, I'll up to my ears in diapers and sleep depravation.

That's when the fun really begins.

Jon Worley played with dolls when he was little.