Dad's Guide to Pregnancy For Dummies
Overview
An invaluable handbook to being the best father-to-be you can be during one of the most exciting times of your life
Dad’s Guide to Pregnancy For Dummies walks you through the ins and outs of how to best support your partner through the logistical, physical, and emotional challenges of pregnancy. Yes, we know that you won’t be doing the lion’s share of the work over the next nine months, but you can do your part by getting a head start on learning critical information about the ins and outs of pregnancy, labor and delivery, and the first few months of baby care.
You’ll get the lowdown on topics like setting up a nursery, how to be helpful during childbirth, and the best way to change a diaper. You’ll even find advice about when to let other people in on the fact that you’re expecting.
The book also offers:
- Comprehensive info on ultrasounds, caesarean sections, infertility treatments, and other pre-birth and birth-related subjects
- Brand-new updates on using a surrogate, sperm donation, and what dads can do when they won’t be physically present during the pregnancy
- Strategies for handling prenatal depression
Full of authoritative and easy-to-follow tips and techniques to get you ready for the big day (and all the days that follow it), Dad’s Guide to Pregnancy For Dummies is your survival guide to pregnancy, childbirth, and fatherhood.
Read More
About The Author
Matthew M. F. Miller is a father and uncle. He is the author of Maybe Baby: An Infertile Love Story.
Sharon Perkins is a mother and grandmother, as well as a seasoned author and registered nurse with 25+ years’ experience providing prenatal and labor and delivery care.
Sample Chapters
dad's guide to pregnancy for dummies
CHEAT SHEET
Becoming a dad is both an exhilarating and a terrifying experience. Planning ahead and being prepared are the best ways to handle what’s coming up in the next nine months and beyond. Doing what you can ahead of time, such baby-proofing your house and packing your hospital bag, will save precious time later on and help you feel like you’re in control (at least a little bit).
View Cheat Sheet
View Cheat Sheet
HAVE THIS BOOK?
View Book Companion Site
Access practice tests
Additional Book Resources
Articles from
the book
More and more dads are making the decision to leave the workplace behind to stay at home and take care of their children. Whether you’re leaving the workforce altogether or balancing work with childcare responsibilities, it’s important that both you and your partner acknowledge that raising a child is a job. And although you aren’t pocketing a paycheck to look after your little one, managing your new role as you would a traditional career will keep you from pulling out your hair and feeling underappreciated.
Not all safety measures need to be in place by the time baby comes home from the hospital. But before the first six months are up, you’ll need to make sure to baby-proof with some basic safeguards installed in the following areas of your home:
Stairways: Install baby gates at the top and bottom. Never use a pressure-mounted baby gate at the top of the stairs, because it may fail.
General Pregnancy
Put down the twigs and leaves new dads— this isn't that kind of nesting. The nesting referred to is all about making the concept of baby a real thing in your everyday life.
Nesting can give you a sense of progress in the seemingly endless pregnancy and serves as the first of many acts of giving and loving that you'll show your baby.
General Pregnancy
By the end of the first trimester of pregnancy, a new dad's baby's vital parts are all in place and beginning to perform the functions they'll carry out for the next 80 or so years.
By the end of the second trimester, the baby's lungs, one of the slowest organs to mature, are almost capable of supporting life with assistance if he's born very prematurely (23 to 24 weeks is considered the earliest that a fetus can survive if born early).
General Pregnancy
Infectious diseases sound scary to new dads. Many infectious diseases of old (30 years ago!) have been eradicated, or nearly so, because of vaccines. However, vaccines haven't been developed for everything, and sometimes a baby is exposed to an infectious disease before she gets the vaccine for it.
Chicken pox, measles, mumps, and rubella (German measles) vaccines, for example, aren't given until age 1, and roseola, a common infectious disease in infants, has no vaccine.
General Pregnancy
Let's just get the myths out of the way for you new dads right now: Your penis isn't long enough to hit or poke the baby during sex. The baby can't see your penis when you're having sex, and she isn't afraid of your penis during sex. Your semen won't get all over the baby upon completion of sex.
Sex is perfectly healthy during pregnancy.
Here is an explanation of epidural anesthesia for dads. It consists of medications given through a catheter placed in the spinal canal. The pro of epidurals is obvious: They decrease pain. They do have other benefits as well, in some cases. For example:
Epidurals can help a tense mom relax. Tension can slow labor; women who are especially tense may benefit from an epidural to help them relax.
General Pregnancy
When you and your partner are trying to get pregnant there are some do's and don'ts for scheduling sex. Just because you've written sex down on your calendar doesn't mean it's just another obligation that eats up your time and lacks excitement. After all, this appointment has a far bigger upside than the average visit to the dentist.
General Pregnancy
At the start of the third trimester, your baby is fully formed, although you wouldn't think so if you got a look inside the womb. The eyes are still fused, the skin is gelatinous, and the body fat is nonexistent, but everything that the baby needs to develop into a normal newborn is present and accounted for.
Basics of your baby's third trimester added pounds and maturing
Week 28 starts off the final trimester of pregnancy, and don't think your partner will let you forget for one minute that she's been hauling this child around for six months already.
Something to have in your new dad's arsenal is a doula. Although the word doula may have you picturing some sort of metal-studded medieval torture device, a doula actually can be a soon-to-be dad's secret weapon — one that can take some of the pressure off your very tense shoulders. A doula is a person, generally a woman, with a comprehensive understanding of the birthing process.
General Pregnancy
For many women, the libido is back on the ascent during the second trimester, which is a big sigh of relief for any dad who has patiently waited through nausea, exhaustion, discomfort, and a lack of sexual energy for some long-awaited sex. In fact, some women become very sexual during this time because they're flush with hormones and feeling in touch with their bodies.
General Pregnancy
Pack a bag for the hospital in advance so that when your pregnant partner goes into labor, you’ll be ready to race out the door without worrying about finding deodorant and a phone charger. Your mind will be focused on the labor and new baby, so if you aren’t prepared in advance, you’ll probably forget items you wish you had.
General Pregnancy
Few things strike fear into the hearts of inexperienced dads like the first bath. Take a squirmy baby, soap him all over to make him incredibly difficult to hold on to, and then put him in a tub of water. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, or at the very least, parental heart failure, but it doesn't have to be.
General Pregnancy
Sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, is one possibility of the scary things new dads face. SIDS has decreased since pediatricians began recommending that babies sleep on their backs with the "Back to Sleep" campaign, but it's still the third most common cause of death for infants up to 1 year old. More than 7,000 babies in the United States succumb to SIDS each year.
General Pregnancy
Postpartum depression occurs in between 9 and 16 percent of women. Dad's are on the look out for this condition. Some of the symptoms of baby blues and postpartum depression overlap, but postpartum depression is more pronounced, lasts longer, and includes serious signs that need immediate medical evaluation.
How dads can recognize symptoms of postpartum depression
Women with postpartum depression may have the following symptoms:
Anger and irritability: Her anger may go far beyond a few swear words when she drops a quart of milk, and it can be frightening.
General Pregnancy
You may think babies discover the world of their own volition without the help of his new dad and mom, but the truth is that you need to give your little one a push. In fact, the more time you put into teaching and nurturing your baby, the prouder you'll be when she learns to roll over, clap, wave bye-bye, or play with a toy.
General Pregnancy
Newborns demand to be held a lot, and their brains thrive through touch. As a new dad you're going to find yourself carrying the baby around quite a bit during the first few weeks.
Babies who are colicky (cry a lot) are often more comfortable if you keep moving, and moving also helps dispense your tension and anxiety when you're on hour two of a colic episode.
General Pregnancy
Admit it — your son or daughter is the most beautiful sight you've ever seen. As a new dad you stare into the wondering eyes of your newborn, you may think it impossible to ever feel anything but absolute adoration for this child.
However, babies often are exhausting and unmanageable beings that wake you up in the middle of the night, cry endlessly without giving you a clue as to what's wrong, and require 100 percent of your attention.
General Pregnancy
Newborns don't look anything like the smooth-skinned, dimpled, smiling babies on TV, so be prepared as a new dad. A new baby emerges from nine months in a dark, watery environment, and her skin shows it. She squints like she's just emerged from a cave.
Although your newborn may not look exactly like the baby in your idealized dreams, she'll look perfect to you — at least after you get used to her in a day or two.
General Pregnancy
Co-sleeping, or sleeping with the baby in your bed, goes in and out of vogue. Right now co-sleeping is popular with many Dads, although it comes with a twist in some cases: The baby may sleep in a little sidecar, or co-sleeper, that attaches to your bed. You get the whole bed to yourself, but the baby is right nearby.
General Pregnancy
As a new dad, congenital defects, defects that exist at birth (also simply called birth defects), sound scary. But, they are common. Some are minor issues that no one but the parents would ever notice; others are more serious. The most common birth defects include
Heart defects: One in 100 to 200 babies has a heart defect, which can range from mild to severe.
General Pregnancy
Many new moms and dads keep baby books that chronicle their baby's progress and eagerly await each milestone: the first smile, the first step, the first word. When milestones aren't met when books say they should be or when your friends' babies are meeting them but your baby isn't, doubt, concern, frustration, and a cold fear may begin to creep into your days.
So when is a fever a fever? Knowing can be hard, especially when dads juggle half a dozen methods of temperature-taking in an attempt to get an accurate reading. The following guidelines explain what your medical practitioner means when he talks about a fever:
In an infant up to three months, a rectal temperature of 100.
When preparing to become a dad, it's important to realize that all babies fuss from time to time, and many have a short fussy period every single day, usually around the time when you're the busiest and have the least patience for it. Although all screaming seems pretty much the same to you, fussiness can be caused by one end or the other of the gastrointestinal tract.
General Pregnancy
Dads peer into their infants' mouths looking for teeth like gold miners sifting through the silt for nuggets of gold. When it comes to teeth, the best thing you can do is relax. All children, with very few exceptions, get teeth eventually, and prying your kid's mouth open to search for a pearly white doesn't make them come in any faster.
Small children and babies vomit more easily than you and your partner when they're ill. Vomiting once at the beginning of an illness is common and requires no special treatment, but repeated vomiting requires medical evaluation because of the risk of dehydration.
Signs of serious dehydration require medical treatment.
Bottle-feeding has never been more complicated, dads! Not only do you have to choose a formula and a nipple type, but you also have to worry about the materials from which the bottle is made.
Recent reports about the high levels of BPA (a chemical used in plastics) released when bottles are heated in the microwave or dishwasher led the FDA to ban the use of BPA in all baby bottles and sippy cups.
Cesareans comprise over 30 percent of deliveries in the United States, so the odds of having one are high. As a new dad, you may want some information about this procedure. Although Cesareans are major surgeries, they're generally safe for your partner and the baby.
Basics of scheduled C-sections for dads
You can schedule a Cesarean ahead of time if you know your partner's going to need one.
General Pregnancy
Yes, new dad, you're expected to attend childbirth classes. The good news is that today's market offers a variety of choices that are welcoming to both mother and father. And they aren't just about learning how to breathe! These classes are an opportunity to ask questions, build confidence, and connect with other couples going through the same experiences you are at the exact same time.
General Pregnancy
Babies have immunity to many illnesses for their first six months because of antibodies passed on during pregnancy. Here's a Dad's guide to the illnesses you're most likely to encounter in baby's first year.
Common colds explained for dads
The common cold is so common that it comes in more than 100 varieties, which is why having a cold this month doesn't mean you won't get another one next month.
General Pregnancy
In the interests of making you, the new dad, familiar with all possible aspects of labor and delivery, some of the procedures you can expect to see during labor are detailed below.
Vaginal exams explained for dads
Vaginal exams — when the cervix is checked for dilation — are often uncomfortable, especially when they're done during a contraction, but they're the only way to assess labor progression.
Fetal monitoring devices record the fetal heart rate and the frequency and duration of the contractions. Sounds cool, right? Here's a Dad's guide. Just don't let yourself become so enamored with the technology that you forget about the person at the other end!
Many men love gadgets and start watching the monitor like it's the educational channel, but it is guaranteed that if you do that, your partner won't appreciate it.
General Pregnancy
Grief is intense sorrow due to loss. The loss of the perfect child, the perfect partner, or perfect family can cause grief in dads. The most important thing to remember about grief, no matter what the cause, is that it takes time to work through. Don't be hard on yourself or your partner when you're grieving, and don't expect you'll be in the same stages at the same time.
General Pregnancy
The idea of having your baby at home may appeal to you and your partner. Home delivery may be an option for you if you meet all the following strongly suggested guidelines:
You've found a midwife who's willing to deliver at your home.
You live fairly close to a medical facility in case of emergencies.
You're not delivering in Montana in January or any other area where roads are impassable during the part of year you're due.
Hospitals today love to stress to you and your partner how much like home they are while still having all the most up-to-date equipment at their fingertips. And though hospitals have come a long way in improving the overall birthing experience, they're still not home. Some, however, are better than others at creating a welcoming, open-door policy for families.
General Pregnancy
A pregnant woman at the end of the second trimester still looks pretty much like her normal self to a dad-to-be. Your partner may not even be wearing maternity clothes at this point, letting large shirts (probably yours) and pants a size or two larger than normal cover her cute little belly.
All that changes in the third trimester for most women.
As excited as new dads are for your second-trimester ultrasound, the actual event can sometimes be a bit of a letdown. Reading ultrasounds is an art, and unless the ultrasonographer is really patient about pointing things out, you may be unsure of whether you're viewing the baby's head or his tush.
Much depends on the direction the baby's facing.
General Pregnancy
Knowing how much food a breast-fed baby is getting is very difficult, especially when your partner is just starting out. To make sure baby is getting enough milk, keep track of wet and poopy diapers for the first week, taking note of the number and type of soiled diapers. Comparing your notes to the following norms can put your mind at ease or can alert you to a breast-feeding issue that may need attention:
Every day, baby should dirty 8 to 12 diapers total.
General Pregnancy
Becoming a dad is both an exhilarating and a terrifying experience. Planning ahead and being prepared are the best ways to handle what’s coming up in the next nine months and beyond. Doing what you can ahead of time, such baby-proofing your house and packing your hospital bag, will save precious time later on and help you feel like you’re in control (at least a little bit).
General Pregnancy
Babies don't need a lot of stuff. A new dad may feel like he needs someone to tell him what they do need, which tends to be a bit on the expensive side. If your partner isn't breast-feeding, you'll have to spend a great deal of money on formula, which is quite expensive.
Parents opting to use only organic, chemical-free goods for their baby will find the costs increase as well.
General Pregnancy
Child care is expensive and can be difficult for Dads to navigate the decision making process. Paying someone else to care for your child 40 to 50 hours each week will become your new number-one expense. In fact, depending on where you live, it very well may cost you more than your mortgage or rent.
Taking care of a baby is big business, but it's also a huge responsibility, so it comes with an equally huge financial burden.
General Pregnancy
Blood tests during a pregnancy have two purposes that will be covered here for all you new dads-to-be. Some prenatal screening tests are for your partner's overall well-being and check for potentially harmful medical conditions. Second-trimester quadruple-screen blood tests are aimed at determining the risk of genetic anomalies in the fetus.
General Pregnancy
Immunizations are a very hot topic today for Dad's and one that many parents have vehement opinions about. Although studies haven't supported fears that immunizations are responsible for the increase in children diagnosed with some form of autism, a brain disorder that now affects 1 in 105 babies in the United States, many parents believe the increase in immunizations and increase in autism are tied together.
Unfortunately for you dads, labor usually doesn't begin on that imprecise due date you've been hanging your hat on for the last nine months. Babies can come early, and with so much to get ready for, you may find yourself putting off creating and sharing your birth plan.
Make time to write your birth plan toward the beginning of the third trimester, which gives you plenty of time to share it with your birthing team and any inquiring relatives and friends.
A dad getting a baby to take medicine isn't as easy as it seems. Even small babies seem to have an uncanny sense that you've spiked their evening bottle with medicine, and if your partner is breast-feeding, spiking the boob with baby Motrin just isn't going to work.
When drawing up a dose of medication, remember that a kitchen teaspoon isn't always a teaspoon; it can range from half a teaspoon to 2 or more.
General Pregnancy
From the time you and your partner share the news of your coming baby, you'll be inundated with advice and visitors. Nobody will want to be more hands-on than your family, and it may grow tiresome and become a source of angst very quickly the closer to labor and delivery your partner gets, and especially when you get home from the hospital and crave some family time.
General Pregnancy
Problems that affect your partner's health sometimes develop with frightening speed, and you'll want a Dad's guide. Other times problems develop insidiously and build to a crisis point. Neither type of problem is easy to deal with, especially if you feel like you need to stay strong to support your partner during a tough time.
General Pregnancy
Remember dads, the first three months of pregnancy are the time of organ development, so it's also the time when your partner needs to be most careful about what she eats, drinks, and ingests. Let her know — nicely — that you're willing to do whatever you can to help her quit any bad habits or to stay as healthy as possible during these critical months.
General Pregnancy
Whichever birth practitioner you and your partner choose, the best way to know whether you're in the right place is to ask and what to ask. Accompany your partner to her visit when discussing options because if the practitioner isn't onboard with your partner's plan, she may think she can just wait and talk some sense into the absent parent — that would be you.
General Pregnancy
Remember guys, not all pregnancy emergencies involve medical crises: Some are all about cold, hard cash — or the lack of it. You may have taken a quick glance at your health insurance policy before you got pregnant, just to make sure you had the sterling coverage you thought you had.
You may have even checked the limits of coverage without ever dreaming that you might rack up a hospital bill of more than a million dollars for one little baby.
General Pregnancy
Although the majority of pregnancies really do go like clockwork, things can and do go wrong, which is a fear for new Dads. In early pregnancy, the biggest threat is miscarriage. One in four women has a miscarriage at some point in her reproductive life. Another, less common threat is an ectopic pregnancy.
Miscarriage is more common as women age, and though you may not consider your partner "old" if she's older than 40, Mother Nature does, at least for childbearing purposes.
General Pregnancy
Not every mother (or father, for that matter!) decides to go back to work. Others have to do so for financial reasons even when their hearts and tear ducts tell them otherwise. And some mothers and fathers are excited to get back to the daily routine and job they love.
Everyone's experience is different, but regardless of what choice you and your partner make, the transition is challenging.
General Pregnancy
Making the decision to be a stay-at-home mom or Dad can be the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for some parents and a total surprise to others. If you and your partner make the decision that she'll stay at home to care for the baby, thus begins another exciting, challenge in your new parenthood experience.
However, it isn't a decision that you should take lightly.
General Pregnancy
As you consider what a Dad can do to create a smooth admission process, think back to the last time you arrived at a crowded shopping mall with a parking lot packed to the gills with cars and you ended up walking ten minutes just to get to your store of choice.
Now imagine that you drive right in and, miracle of miracles, the parking spot closest to the door is waiting for you.
General Pregnancy
Although you and your partner discussed pain medication options during the pregnancy, nothing is written in stone on the day you become a dad, when labor starts.
A staunch au naturel supporter may find herself asking for an epidural the minute she hits the labor floor, and a woman who was sure she's epidural material may find herself breathing through labor and deciding she'd rather do without one.
General Pregnancy
The adjustment to being a stay-at-home mom can be just as challenging for your partner as heading back to work, only in different ways. As wonderful as it is to have the opportunity to raise your own child during the day, it can be an isolating experience. Some women find themselves a bit stir-crazy from all the indoor time and begin to crave adult interaction.
General Pregnancy
If your partner has a risk of early delivery or other problems, your medical practitioner may put her on bed rest. Depending on the condition's severity, bed rest can mean anything from not going to work and taking it easy to not getting out of bed at all, even to go to the bathroom.
Having your partner on bed rest is difficult for both of you.
Car accidents are a fact of life. As a new dad, having a baby in the car with you or your partner can make that fact of life scarier. You can't always prevent other drivers from driving badly or from running into your rear end at a stoplight. This is why a properly fitted, age-appropriate, approved car seat is absolutely essential.
General Pregnancy
Fun should rule the day when it comes to setting up the nursery, but overanxious parents-to-be, including new dads, often try to tackle too much at once. Begin your nursery designing with a planning session. Draw a bird's-eye floor plan of the room.
Then start filling in the space with all the things you need and decide on the placement of all the furniture.
General Pregnancy
Dads have to know what to do after a baby falls. Even a newborn can scoot well enough to fall off the changing table or bed, which is why you're not supposed to leave a baby unattended, without your hand on him, for even a second.
Babies usually bounce pretty well and rarely break bones in a fall, but the parental guilt may be enough to put you in a rest home for a week.
General Pregnancy
Every parent wants his child to get the best college education money can buy. There are options to consider for all Dads. Not all parents, however, can afford that education, nor do they want their children to accrue massive amounts of student loan debt.
If you have the luxury of being able to save some money for your child's education, here are a few common savings options:
Parents can invest money in a Coverdell Education Savings Account (CESA), which allows you to save $2,000 a year tax-free.
Changing diapers is the task new dads are probably least excited about. If you and your partner find yourselves playing rock-paper-scissors to determine which of you gets stuck changing the runny yellow poop that has overflowed out of the diaper and on to the sleeper, your shirt, and the new leather sofa, you're normal.
General Pregnancy
Buying life insurance for your baby is a controversial and unsavory topic for new Dads. Many financial experts say it's a waste of money because a life insurance policy is necessary only when the death of the individual causes financial stress on a family. For many lower- and middle-income families, however, a policy that would cover the funeral cost is well worth the monthly payment.
The neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is like nothing you've ever seen before and it can be scary for new dads. Although hospitals put more emphasis than they used to on keeping NICUs quiet, they are, by necessity, fairly noisy and busy, with alarms going off, lights on day and night so hospital personnel can see what they're doing, and at the center of it all, your little baby.
General Pregnancy
When you find out your partner has been choosing baby names since she was about 12, you may get the idea that picking a name for your baby is a Really Big Deal. And you’re right. A name is one of the first gifts you give your child, and unless he goes to court to change it, it’s a gift that lasts a lifetime. It’s easy to mess up this gift, though, by not thinking things through clearly.
General Pregnancy
Spreading the news far and wide can be both exhausting and time-consuming. Luckily dads can use a phone tree to spread the news. After a delivery, you and your partner likely won't be up for talking to everyone you know. Nor will you have the time! Nonetheless, everyone you know will request to be alerted within seconds after baby's arrival into the world.
Newborns are active from the minute they're born. As a new dad, you may want to rate these reflexes. Your baby will yawn, grimace, and even seem to smile a little. (Yes, the smiles are really caused by gas at this stage, just like your mother says.) Babies also have certain reflex actions that are normal at birth.
General Pregnancy
If your partner decides to breast-feed, you may be breathing a sigh of relief that the nighttime duties won't fall to you, but not so fast! Breast-fed babies usually eat more frequently than bottle-fed babies because they digest breast milk more easily.
If you're co-sleeping or even if the baby is across the room, you'll probably be awake at 12 a.
Women in labor need lots of support. Your partner needs to hear that she's doing well, that things are progressing as they should, and that she really can do this. Even if her mother, sister, doula, and five of her dearest friends are with her, she needs you.
Support means different things to different women, though, and your job is to figure out what your partner needs while in labor and do it.
General Pregnancy
By no means is the stay-at-home dad a norm in our society. As of 2012 there were roughly 189,000 stay-at-home dads in the United States, a number that has grown slowly in the past decade. If you decide to stay at home, remember that the rules outlined for the stay-at-home mom are no different from the rules for you.
General Pregnancy
Food allergies affect around 1 in 18 babies before age 3, and may affect your baby. As with many facets of being a father, the ideas for solid food introduction and allergies has completely changed since you were a baby, a fact that can result in heated discussions between you and your parents.
How to introduce new foods
At one time, introducing solids early was all the rage in parenting, as if having your two-month-old chow down puréed carrots merited some sort of parenting prize.
General Pregnancy
The first stage of your partner's labor encompasses the time between the first labor pain and complete dilation, when your partner begins to push. Because quite a few things happen during the first stage of labor, it's further broken down into three types of labor: early, active, and transition.
Basics of early labor
Early labor is the time between the start of labor and dilation of the cervix to 3 centimeters.
General Pregnancy
Navigating the health insurance mélange has always been a bit of a headache for new dads. HMO, PPO — what does it all mean? For the most part, your insurance won't be any different after you have a baby. The only thing that definitely changes is the cost. For those parents without insurance — or those who can't afford it — the process is a bit more complex.
General Pregnancy
The better new dads understand how your insurance covers pregnancy, the less likely you are to receive an unexpected (and unexpectedly large) hospital bill upon your return home. The second trimester is a perfect time to dive into your insurance benefits so you can make sure you have a crystal-clear picture of what's covered and what's not prior to delivering your bundle of joy.
General Pregnancy
The birth rate of twins, triplets, and more has exploded if you, the new Dad, and your partner use in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other advanced reproductive technology. Seventeen percent of twins and 40 percent of triplet births are results of infertility treatment. In 2012, the multiple-birth statistics in the United States broke down as follows:
Twin births occurred in 33 of 1,000 live births
Triplets or higher-order multiples (quadruplets, quintuplets, and more) occurred in 124 of 100,000 live births
What multiples are and who has them
Although infertility treatments are the largest risk factor for multiples, you're more likely to have multiples if
Your partner is black.
Not very long ago you wouldn't need a guide to paternity leave. New dads were expected back on the job the day after welcoming a baby into the world. Sometimes, they worked right through the whole experience!
Although American society is still a long way from having equal time off for both mother and father, strides have been made to allow new dads time to bond with their new family.
General Pregnancy
Second-stage labor lasts from the first push to the final delivery when you meet your new baby and become a dad. This can take anywhere from two minutes to three-plus hours.
Women with epidurals often push less effectively, and medical practitioners may let the baby labor down — meaning that the baby descends through the birth canal under the force of the contractions, without pushing — if your partner is comfortable and the baby is doing okay.
General Pregnancy
Preemies don't exactly look like the babies you've pictured in your mind throughout the pregnancy as a new dad, especially if they weigh less than 5 pounds. If your baby is born before 35 weeks, this is what he may look like:
Big-eyed: The lack of fat in his face gives your preemie a wide-eyed look.
Boys may have underdeveloped genitalia: Don't worry, dad — they'll grow.
A pregnant woman has more prenatal doctor’s appointments than you’d ever expect, but the checkups are necessary to monitor her health and the growth and health of the baby. To screen for complications, the obstetrician (OB) performs different tests on the mother and baby at various stages of the pregnancy, an
General Pregnancy
As a new dad, you may at times look at your partner and wonder who this woman actually is. The sweet-tempered woman you once knew may have been replaced by someone whose head appears to be rotating at times, and the woman who used to party all night long barely makes it into the living room to collapse on the couch after work.
If the suggestion of free stuff has you lacing your sneakers to run out to the nearest baby goods store, take a breath. Dads, registering isn't as easy as it sounds. Babies need a lot of gear, but they don't need everything, so you have to think through your particular wants, needs, and style before you point the scanner and click.
If you’re feeding your baby out of expensive pouches — or grinding up food for her in the food processor — you may be wondering when you can start feeding her the same food everyone else is eating. Actually, babies don’t have to eat pureed food at all; you can give them big-people food from the start as long as you give them the right types of food and avoid the dangerous ones.
General Pregnancy
In recent years, movies, TV shows, and even commercials have begun to transition from the bumbling, know-nothing father of yore to the modern dad who's just as comfortable changing a diaper as he is fixing a car. Fathers today range from traditional to single parents to equal partners in every aspect of parenting.
General Pregnancy
When the embryo first implants in the uterus, about a week before a menstrual period is missed, it's too small to be seen without a microscope. Within a week, though, you can see the first signs of pregnancy via vaginal ultrasound.
Although the embryo still isn't discernible, the gestational sac that surrounds the embryo shows up as a small black dot.
Nobody likes to feel like he doesn’t understand what’s going on, but when you enter a strange new environment — like the labor and delivery floor — it’s normal to feel completely out of your element. When it seems as if everyone is speaking a foreign language, you may feel intimidated, overwhelmed, and ready to hide behind a newspaper or magazine so you don’t have to deal with feeling or sounding like an uninformed dad.
Load More Articles
Related Books
0:00
0:00
https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6630d85d73068bc09c7c436c/69195ee32d5c606051d9f433_4.%20All%20For%20You.mp3
Frequently Asked Questions
No items found.
