For the Dad's - Enjoy it while it lasts
Aug 17 '00
My wife and I just had our first baby, a beautiful little girl named Maggie thank you very much, about 5 1/2 months ago. During the pregnancy, I avoided the "we're pregnant" description like the plague, after all she was really doing all the work and deserved the bulk of the credit (ok, I helped but that was fun).
Early on, the pregnancy was very much a spectator sport. Sure, it was tremendously exciting but I wasn't intimately involved with everything that was happened. I looked on, I cheered, I did a lot of cooking and cleaning the last few weeks (my wife was on bed rest the last few weeks because of high blood pressure) but I couldn't feel the baby move throughout the day and catching a kick in progress was random luck.
Some things that made this easier along the way were:
- Talking to the baby at night. Before we'd go to sleep I'd put my head under the covers and have a "private" conversation with the baby (we didn't find out gender until she was born). This was a lot of fun, since I would selectively allow my wife to "overhear" certain parts so we'd get to go to sleep after a good laugh. Incidentally, after Maggie was born and she was crying I talked to her and rubbed her leg while the nurse was doing all the measurements and Maggie quieted right down. I think this early contact paid off.
- Listen to the heartbeat. As Maggie grew bigger and stronger I found that I was able to hear the heartbeat, without the aid of a stethoscope, by pressing my ear against my wife's belly. This was important to me for two reasons. One, I could do something my wife couldn't with regards to the baby - this gave me a feeling of a special connection. Two, it made the baby feel more real to me. It become much less of a theoretical proposition.
- Go to the doctor with your wife - seeing the first sonogram of the baby (still on the fridge door and our web site) was absolutely incredible! Staying in touch with the baby's development, what's changed, is everything ok.
- Read up on babies. My wife attacks every project by buying every book possible (I lost count of the number of baby books) whereas I tend to pick one or two. In this case, I picked one book that was targeted towards the prospective dad. I tried to be up on the current month's development and then the next month's changed, which meant I'd re-read a chapter each month. What made this work is that my wife liked to talk about what was going on, so it helped that I actually had a bit of a clue.
The pregnancy period was a great time in our lives, and both my wife and I really enjoyed it. It doesn't compare, in many ways, to the joy of actually having the baby but then again we got more sleep <grin>
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Epinions.com ID:
jokeefe
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Member: John O'Keefe
Location: Stow, MA
Reviews written: 21
Trusted by: 2 members
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