The Expectant Father. Armin A. Brott

Going On with the Baby

      You can’t very well have a pregnancy without a baby, right? This section lets you in on your future child’s progress—from sperm and egg to living, breathing infant—and everything in between.

      What’s Going On with You

      This section covers the wide range of feelings—good, bad, and indifferent—that you’ll probably experience at some time during the pregnancy. It also describes such things as the physical changes you may go through, your dreams, your changing values, your relationships with other people, and the ways the pregnancy may affect your sex life.

      Staying Involved

      While the “What’s Going On with You” section covers the emotional and physical side of pregnancy, this section gives you specific facts, tips, and advice on what you can do to make the pregnancy “yours” as well as your partner’s. For instance, you’ll find easy, nutritious recipes to prepare, information on how to start a college fund for the baby, valuable advice on getting the most out of your birth classes, great ways to start communicating with your baby before he or she is born, tips on finding work/family balance (hint: there’s no such thing, but with planning, you may be able to get close). And sprinkled throughout, you’ll find suggestions for how to be supportive of your partner and how to stay included at every stage of the pregnancy.

      The Expectant Father covers more than the nine months of pregnancy. We’ve included a detailed chapter on labor and delivery and another on Cesarean section, both of which will prepare you for the big event and how best to help your partner through the birth itself. Perhaps even more important, these chapters prepare you for the often overwhelming emotions you may experience when your partner is in labor and your child is born.

      We’ve also included a special chapter that addresses the major questions and concerns you may have about caring for and getting to know your child in the first few weeks after you bring him or her home. If someone hasn’t bought them for you already, I’d recommend that you rush right out and get copies of The New Father: A Dad’s Guide to the First Year and Fathering Your Toddler: A Dad’s Guide to the Second and Third Years. These books pick up where this one leaves off and continue the process of giving you the skills, knowledge, confidence, and support you’ll need to be the best possible dad. All of them are also available as e-books.

      Toward the end of this book there is a chapter called “Fathering Today,” in which you’ll learn to recognize—and overcome—the many obstacles you may encounter along the road to becoming an actively involved dad.

      As you go through The Expectant Father, remember that the process of becoming a dad is different for every man, and that none of us will react to the same situation in exactly the same way. You may find that some of what’s described in the “What’s Going On with You” section in the third-month chapter won’t really ring true for you until the fifth month, or that you already experienced it in the first month. I’ve tried to tie the ideas and activities in the “Staying Involved” sections to specific stages of the pregnancy. But, hey, it’s your baby, so if you want to do things in a different order, knock yourself out.

      A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY

      Wife, Girlfriend, Lover, He, She …

      In an attempt to avoid offending anyone (an approach I’ve discovered usually ends up offending everyone), we’ve decided to refer to the woman who’s carrying the baby as “your partner.” And because your partner is just as likely to be carrying a boy as a girl, we’ve alternated between “he” and “she” when referring to the baby (except where something applies specifically to boys or girls).

      Hospitals, Doctors …

      Not everyone who has a baby delivers in a hospital or is under the care of a medical doctor. Still, because that’s the most frequent scenario, we’ve chosen to refer to the place where the baby will be born as “the hospital” and to the people attending the birth (besides you, of course) as “doctors,” “nurses,” “medical professionals,” or “practitioners”—except, of course, in the sections that specifically deal with home birth and/or midwives.

      As a rule, today’s dads (and expectant dads) want to be much more involved with their children than their own fathers were able to be. It’s my firm belief that the first step on the road toward full involvement is to take an active role in the pregnancy. And it’s our hope that when you’re through reading The Expectant Father—which is the book Jennifer wishes she could have bought for her husband when she was pregnant and the one I wish I’d had when I was an expectant dad—you’ll be much better prepared to participate in this important new phase of your life.

      So why should you get involved now, before you actually become a dad? Simply put, because it’s good for your child, your partner, and yourself. As mentioned above, involvement during pregnancy is a good predictor of involvement after the pregnancy. And children who grow up in homes where the dad is involved do better in math and science, are more sociable, are more tenacious when solving problems, and, thinking waaaay out into the future, are less likely to use drugs or alcohol or become teen parents.

      When the dad-to-be is involved during the pregnancy, he and his partner are more likely to be together for their child’s third birthday than partnerships in which dad isn’t as involved. Pregnant women whose partners are involved prenatally are more likely to get prenatal care and, if they smoke, to quit. And according to researcher Jacinta Bronte-Tinkew, women whose partners aren’t supportive during the pregnancy are “more likely to view their pregnancy as unwanted.” Finally, your being involved now makes it more likely that your partner will breastfeed your baby (we’ll talk about why that’s so important later on).

      For you, being an involved dad will reduce the chance that you’ll engage in risky behavior. You’ll probably start taking better care of yourself, you’ll be happier in your relationship with your partner, and you’ll even perform better at work.

      WHAT’S NEW IN THIS EDITION

      In the years since the first edition of The Expectant Father was published, I’ve received literally thousands of letters (yes, people still do send letters) and emails from readers offering comments and suggestions on how to make this book better. I’ve incorporated many of them into this edition, and I know that the book is greatly improved as a result. Let me give you a quick rundown:

      • ADOPTIVE FATHERS. Although your partner may not actually be carrying a baby, the two of you are still very much “psychologically pregnant.” There’s a lot of research, in fact, that suggests that in the months leading up to the adoption of their child, expectant adoptive fathers deal with many of the same emotional and psychological issues that biologically expectant fathers do.

      • MULTIPLES. We’ve expanded the sections geared toward expectant fathers of twins, triplets, and so forth.

      • OVERCOMING INFERTILITY. As the average age of new parents increases, more and more couples are experiencing infertility. So we’ve included a whole chapter on infertility in the Appendix as well as information on what you can do to increase the chances that you and your partner will conceive.

      • THE ART OF FATHERHOOD. An increasing number of couples are conceiving through the use of ART (assisted reproductive technology), which includes IVF (in vitro fertilization), artificial insemination, donor sperm, donor eggs, and gestational carriers (who used to be referred to as surrogates). We’ve included a number of sections that deal with the fascinating issues facing ART dads and their partners.

      • GI DADS. Every year, a huge number of men (and women) from all branches of the service spend at least part of their partner’s pregnancy thousands of miles away. Many of them come home to a child who was born while they were deployed. As a Marine myself (I got out long ago, but as we all know, there’s no such thing as an “ex-Marine”), I knew I needed to do as much as I could to help our service members. For that reason we’ve included several sections in this book designed to help expectant military dads stay involved before, during, and after the pregnancy so that they can hit the ground running when they get back home. I go into these issues in much more detail in my