Dad's Guide to Pregnancy For Dummies. Sharon Perkins

sleepiness, (fatigue), unexplained tears, and baffling cravings for the oddest food combinations imaginable.

      Because your baby’s major organs form during this time, he’s most susceptible to injury from environmental factors, such as certain medications ingested by your partner. He’s also growing in a way he never will again. By the end of the first trimester, your baby grows to be about 3 or 4 inches long and weighs approximately 1 ounce.

      By the time he reaches the end of the first three months, your baby’s arms, legs, hands, and feet are fully formed, and he’s able to open and close his fists. The circulatory and urinary systems are fully functional, meaning that, yes, he urinates into the amniotic fluid on a daily basis. Secondary body parts, such as fingernails, teeth, and reproductive organs, begin developing.

      Want more information on the miracle that is the first trimester? Head to Chapter 4 for all the minute details.

      On the practical side, don’t forget to take a look at your medical insurance and make sure you understand your benefits.

      Second trimester

      During the second trimester, most of your partner’s early pregnancy symptoms, such as extreme fatigue, disappear, but she finally begins to look like the pregnant person she is. She may begin struggling with the not-so-fun aspects of carrying another human being around, such as weight gain. She may also exhibit characteristics you associate more with your grandmom than your partner, such as forgetfulness.

This is also the pregnancy period when the fun stuff begins. Around 18 to 20 weeks, your partner has the ultrasound that can determine the baby’s sex — if you choose to find out and if the baby allows the ultrasound technician a clear view. It’s also the time when you register for your baby shower, prepare the nursery, weed through countless baby names, attend birthing classes, and think about baby-proofing your house.

      By the end of the second trimester, your baby is roughly 14 inches long and weighs about 2 pounds. Her skin is still translucent, but her eyes are beginning to open and close. Your partner is also likely to start feeling movements and even baby’s tiny hiccups. Check out Chapter 5 to find out more about the second trimester.

Third trimester

      Assuming all goes according to plan and your baby bakes until he’s full term (meaning he isn’t born before 37 weeks) or later, the third trimester can be one of the longest three-month periods of your — and your partner’s — life. Your partner begins to feel uncomfortable as her ever-increasing abdominal girth makes it difficult to move and sleep normally, and you both get antsy about the impending arrival.

      

To make the most of the time, you and your partner need to take care of business by doing the following:

       Picking a pediatrician who you’re comfortable with and who has a similar parenting philosophy as you and your partner

       Crafting your birth plan (and hiring a doula if you want one)

       Getting your maternity and paternity leave squared away

       Creating a phone tree to announce baby’s arrival

       Finishing up any odd projects around the house that need to be done prior to baby’s arrival

      During the third trimester, your baby is fully developed and focused on growing larger and stronger for life on the outside. See Chapter 8 for the full details.

      

The third trimester is also the last time for many, many years that you and your partner exist solely as a couple, so be sure to take the time to indulge yourselves in the things you love to do together. (take your “babymoon” but don’t plan travel after 36 weeks in pregnancy). Life may feel like it’s on pause for at least the first six months of baby’s existence, so get out now and enjoy the freedom of childlessness. Soon enough, your life will be a lot more complicated and busy — and happy, too. Very, very happy.

      WHILE YOU WERE GESTATING: CREATING A PREGNANCY TIME CAPSULE

      Because the first few weeks of pregnancy are likely to be rather uneventful, now is a good time to start a time capsule for the year your baby will be born. Many years down the road, when your child is an adult, it will be a touching, informative look back at the time when she entered the world. For you and your partner, it will be a fun, celebratory action to kick off the pregnancy festivities.

      Keep movie ticket stubs, takeout menus, a newspaper from the day you found out your partner was pregnant (as well as clippings of the most important headlines of the year), favorite ads, magazine clippings, and so on. Include pop culture elements that define the year as well as some of your favorite things.

      As you choose names, add the list of all potential names to the time capsule. When you choose a paint color for the nursery, put in the paint color card. Any decision you and your partner make for the baby is a good candidate for inclusion. It may seem silly now, but in 20 years it will be the best gift you can give your child.

Chapter 2

      Your Conception Primer

      IN THIS CHAPTER

      

Realizing why getting pregnant is sometimes harder than it looks

      

Improving your health and lifestyle to help your chances

      

Determining the right time for fertilization (and making it a good time)

      

Confronting and coping with infertility issues

      

Talking to your family — or not — about your baby plans

      You may have spent years trying not to get pregnant, so the change from not trying to trying can be rather unsettling. Having trouble with something even the most clueless people manage to do effortlessly can cause you to lose sleep at night and can turn sex into a job. Getting pregnant is hard work … sometimes.

      In this chapter, we tell you how to make the getting-pregnant process painless and fun — even if it takes longer than you expected.

Sperm, Meet Egg: Baby Making 101

Getting pregnant requires that several key players be on the field at the right time: namely, good sperm, a mature egg, and a suitable landing place in the uterus. If sperm and egg meet in the fallopian tube (the conduit from the ovary down to the uterus), join together to form a fertilized egg, and then float down to a uterus with a lining that’s exactly the right thickness to facilitate implantation, then pregnancy occurs. If any of those factors are amiss, well, that’s when things get complicated.

      Producing a mature egg

      Before she’s even born, a woman has all the eggs she’ll ever