My involvement with the pregnancy got a whole lot more shocking this week as Faith got hold of a TENS machine. TENS stands for Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation. I looked it up on Wikipedia, so it must be true. Let me tell you this: ‘Nerve Stimulation’ is the understatement of the century.
As I casually watched a bit of TV, my wife asked if I would mind trying the TENS machine she’d gotten hold of that day. She said that she’d do it herself but the instructions suggest she wait till after 37 weeks, and she’s a few days shy. This all sounded viable, and I trustingly pulled up my jumper so she could stick on the sticky bits. For those of you unfamiliar with a TENS machine, it’s a hand-held box with four wires coming out of it, each of which ends with a sticky pad. These pads are then put on the subject’s (in this case, my) back.
The first thing that should be noted was that they were ridiculously cold (mental note: warm them up first). My second and biggest mistake was that Faith was holding the control unit. For the next three or four minutes, Faith pressed buttons and said stuff like:
“Do you feel that?
I couldn’t.
But then, all of a sudden, something awful happened. The electric shock caused me to jump forward and scream:
“Turn it off!”
She didn’t. In fact, I think she turned it up.
Slightly hysterical, I tried again:
“Turn it off!’
Crying with laughter, she eventually located the off switch, and I collapsed onto the sofa with my back still tingling unnervingly. How this helps labour pain is an absolute mystery to me. Personally, I don’t believe it. I think it’s a scam for pregnant ladies to let out a little aggression on their husbands.
Seriously friends, don’t believe the lies. If your wife asks you to have a go with her TENS machine, run…and don’t stop running until dawn.
