Let me clarify again that I am not going and its a decision that I have made, and have been and will continue to support and be there for my wife in every way possible, mentally, physically, and emotionally. As I have been since day 1.

I appreciate all the comments and getting into different possible worst case scenarios and options.

You’re jumping to some pretty big conclusions there, Northern Star.

As I’m currently 7 months pregnant, I’ll offer that perspective…
First, my doctor told me no travel farther than a 2 hour drive (which means definitely no air travel) starting at 34 weeks. With the caveat that I’m going to the dr every 2 weeks between now and my due date and they could pull the plug earlier if something crops up. I would apply the same restriction to my husband as much as possible… but probably not a blanket rule. After all, my going into labor in the air could mean me or the baby dies, it’s just not the same risk for him.

Second, being pregnant is a strain. She’s been dealing with it for her whole pregnancy, and my guess is that you think since you’ve been picking up her slack you are also putting in the work. But it’s hardly the same thing. Have you taken off work for every prenatal visit and then made that time up on weekends and evenings while she played video games because you’re banking time off for paternity leave? Have you woken up every time she got up to pee? Have you done kick counts and worried if you haven’t felt the baby move in awhile? Have you dealt with aches and pains in weird places and gotten winded going up a flight of stairs? Your sacrifice really is nothing compared to hers so try to have a little compassion at what all she’s given up for this child.

Finally, on the matter of “is she unreasonable?” Idk, maybe she is and maybe she isn’t. I cried for 3 hours last weekend for pretty much no reason. My husband had to make dinner by himself because I just sat on the floor hugging my dog and bawling my face off. Reasonable? No. But pregnancy hormones can make you unreasonable. Definitely think you should have some empathy for that- unreasonable or not, she can’t really help how she feels.
I took my blood pressure post-crying-jag and it was way high (I have white coat syndrome so my BP is always high at the Dr office, so my Dr has me taking my blood pressure at home every day and recording it to ensure that I’m not getting preeclampsia). Reasonable or not, that freakout was a strain on my health. If your wife doesn’t want you to go and you go, you are probably going to have a similar impact on her health while you are gone.

I think it sucks that things worked out this way. Not exactly the same scenario but one of his cousins is getting married in Mexico 3 weeks after my due date. Obviously I won’t be going, but I told my husband I don’t think he should plan to go because we don’t know when I’ll have the baby and if it’ll be healthy or how my recovery will be… and I don’t want him to plan to leave me alone with a newborn that early. He was definitely bummed but agreed it was the right choice.
I feel very badly that my husband isn’t going to that wedding, I spent a long time going through mental gymnastics of whether we could make it work, if my mom could come stay with me or something. But I just couldn’t get comfortable with it, with so many unknowns. Maybe I’ll have an easy delivery and a quick recovery and a healthy baby who nurses well and sleeps great and we’ll spend that weekend thinking “yeah, you coulda gone to Mexico.”
In my business we use a table similar to this to assess risk as a combination of likelihood and consequence: http://archive.mpi.govt.nz/portals/2/Documents/adaptation-toolbox/step3-risk-table.jpg
Something that is low risk but very high consequence is generally not accepted because the consequence is so bad even if its very unlikely. If you can honestly say that the consequence “miss brother’s wedding and spend the weekend being bummed I’m not there” is equal to “miss birth of my child” then… I don’t even know what to say.

So much has already been said, but I did want to weigh in…

This truly is about the comfort level of the woman carrying the baby. She isn’t comfortable with Tom being gone 3 weeks before her “due date,” which Miel so aptly explained, is a huge estimation. I work about 45 minutes away from the hospital I delivered at but with rush hour, that could have easily been double the time, so at 37 weeks, I started exclusively working from home. I had my baby one day after my due date and I was bored out of my fucking mind being at home for 3 weeks, having wrapped up most of my work obligations in the event I had my baby “early.” In hindsight, I didn’t have to be home that whole time, but the chance that I would have the baby prior to 40 weeks existed and I wanted to be prepared. In fact, I had a play to see for my neice about 60 miles away at 37 weeks and pressured my husband to come with me “just in case” as who knows if I would have been able to drive myself, etc.

Also, there is just no replacement for your partner at that point in time. I had a pretty easy labor and delivery. I got the epidural, snoozed on and off, had some good laughs with my husband, threw up a couple times, and then pushed for an hour. No one else would have been a good enough substitute for him at that time. Not to even MENTION the actual birth and moments immediately after delivery where you just look in awe at this little human you created together. *I say all this with the assumption this is the situation of the OP based on what he’s told us, and know that there are also situations of single parents, etc that would clearly have a different experience than I did*

I also have experienced miscarriages and for one, I was out of the country and away from my husband. It made it that much more stressful, sad, scary, etc.

All of this to say, if your wife is saying she’s not comfortable with you leaving her at 37 weeks pregnant, just say, “ok, honey. I will be here for you.” and leave it at that.

Meant to say, the wedding was in Buffalo, NY and we live in the Boston area.

Tom, on page 10 is the first time you actually said you weren’t going, not a time to “clarify again.” Everything before that was about what’s reasonable and what the statistics are.

And I hope you didn’t tell or even hint to your wife that she’s being unreasonable, because even if she were that would hardly be supportive. Also being called unreasonable is more likely to result in the crazy being dialed to 11 rather than someone calming down… whether or not they were being unreasonable in the first place.