Over the past several months I've heard repeated stories of the "nesting instinct" in the later stages of pregnancy. The behavior typically includes the pregnant woman obsessively cleaning and organizing the home before the arrival of the bundle of joy. The way it was labeled an "instinct" made me think of how my dog digs at the rug and circles before laying down, or how birds collect bits of straw and other materials to insulate a nest for winter. After experiencing nesting first hand, I would no longer be surprised to see my wife doing either of these things.

I never discounted the phenomenon, but when I heard about the "nesting" phenomenon in pregnant women I didn't think it would apply to my wife. My thinking was the she already cleans everything to a surgically appropriate level, so she couldn't possibly clean or organize any further.

I was wrong.

In the past couple of weeks she has been taking a very active approach towards cleaning and organizing our house. She he been throwing things out on a regular basis to make sure we have enough room for the baby. I'm not quite sure how large she expects the child to be, but we have sufficient space just in case she births a linebacker.

My wife now cleans things with greater frequency and gets increasingly agitated if I interact with the sterile environment she is trying to create. I am frequently seen as the source of things that need to be cleaned. I feel guilty moving pillows out of place to sit down.

She has washed clothes and reorganized the baby's dresser multiple times, apparently using some derivative of the Dewey Decimal System to classify every tiny piece of clothing . Each time she makes a change to the drawers she wants to show me what she's done, but it still looks the same to me. The difference is imperceptible without a micrometer, but she knows exactly in which part of which stack of fuzzy items the organic cotton onesies are located and where to find the towel with the duck head. Meanwhile, I have trouble matching two of my own socks, so there's no way I'm going to be able to maintain this level of smooth, cotton perfection.

My wife has also hinted at redecorating and moving major pieces of furniture, to which I say nothing but hope pregnancy fatigue overcomes her before she makes our house unrecognizable.

Nesting during pregnancy is actually somewhat endearing, the things that you expectant fathers should expect, plan for and participate in include

- Increased house cleaning
- Getting the nursery ready
- Reorganization of furniture, cabinets, shoes, your life
- Packing a hospital bag that has the contents for a 3 week stay
- Buying diapers

Just make sure she stays away from caustic cleaning substances that can be harmful to the baby or exposure to paint fumes which have harmful volatile organic chemicals (VOCs).

If any of you have any experiences with nesting during pregnancy, please leave them in a comment, I'd love to hear them.