The Expectant Father. Armin A. Brott

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СКАЧАТЬ Fear you won’t find her attractive anymore

      • Continuing moodiness

      • Fear of an early miscarriage, especially if you used ART

      WHAT’S GOING ON WITH THE BABY

      During this month, the baby will officially change from an embryo to a fetus. By the end of the month, he or she (it’s way too early to tell which by looking) will be about the size of an almond and will have stubby little arms (with wrists but no fingers yet), sealed-shut eyes on the side of the face, ears, and a tiny, beating heart (on the outside of the body). If you bumped into a six-foot-tall version of your baby in a dark alley, you’d run the other way.

      WHAT’S GOING ON WITH YOU

      The Struggle to Connect

      Just about every study that’s ever been done on the subject has shown that women generally connect with their pregnancies sooner than men do. Although they can’t feel the baby kicking inside them yet, the physical changes they’re experiencing make the pregnancy more real for them. For most men, however, pregnancy at two months is still a pretty abstract concept. For me—as excited as I was—the idea that we were really expecting was so hard to grasp that I actually forgot about it for several days at a time.

      Excitement vs. Fear

      But when I remembered we were about to become parents, I found myself in the midst of a real conflict—one that would plague me for months. On the one hand, I was still so elated that I could barely contain myself; I had visions of walking with my child on the beach, playing catch, reading, helping him or her with homework, and I wanted to stop strangers on the street and tell them I was going to be a father. On the other hand, I made a conscious effort to stifle my fantasies and excitement and to keep myself from getting attached to the idea. That way, if we had a miscarriage or something else went wrong, I wouldn’t be devastated.

      Dads who have been through a miscarriage on a previous pregnancy or done several unsuccessful ART cycles are especially susceptible to this kind of self-protective (and completely understandable) denial.

      Increased or Decreased Sexual Desire

      It was during the times when I let myself get excited about becoming a father that I noticed that my wife’s and my sex life was changing. Perhaps it was because I was still reveling in the recent confirmation of my masculinity, or perhaps it was because I felt a newer, closer connection to my wife. It may even have been the sense of freedom resulting from not having to worry about birth control. Whatever the reason, sex in the early months of the pregnancy became wilder and more passionate than before. But not all men experience an increase in sexual desire during pregnancy. Some are turned off by their partner’s changing figure; others are afraid of hurting the baby (a nearly impossible task at this stage of the game). Still others may feel that there’s no sense in having sex now that they’re pregnant.

      Whatever your feelings—about sex or anything else for that matter—try to talk them over with your partner. Chances are she’s experiencing—or soon will be—very similar feelings. One thing you may not want to discuss with your partner is your dreams. According to Berkeley, California (where else?), psychologist Alan Siegel, a lot of expectant dads experience an increase in dreams about having sex—with their partner, old girlfriends, and even prostitutes. For some guys, these dreams are an expression of their concern that the pregnancy will mess with their sex life. The brain is probably saying to itself, “Well, big guy, if you can’t get any in the flesh, you can still have some pretty wild fantasies … ” For other guys, sexual dreams are a way of reassuring themselves that fatherhood—and all those mushy, protective feelings that go with it—in no way detracts from their masculinity.

      STAYING INVOLVED

      Going to the OB/GYN Appointments

      The general rule that women connect with the pregnancy sooner than men has an exception: men who get involved early on and stay involved until the end have been shown to be as connected with the baby as their partners. And at this stage, the best way to get involved is to go to as many of your partner’s OB/GYN appointments as possible.

      Although I always love being told that I’m healthy as a horse, I’ve never really looked forward to going to the doctor. And going to someone else’s doctor is even less attractive. But over the course of three pregnancies, I think I missed only two OB medical appointments. Admittedly, some of the time I was bored out of my mind, but overall it was a great opportunity to have my questions answered and to satisfy my curiosity about just what was going on inside my wife’s womb.

      There’s no doubt that you can get at least some basic questions answered by reading a couple of the hundreds of pregnancy and childbirth books written for women. But there are a number of other, more important reasons to go to the appointments:

      • You will become more of a participant in the pregnancy and less of a spectator. In other words, it will help make the pregnancy “yours.”

      • It will demystify the process and make it more tangible. Hearing the baby’s heartbeat for the first time (in about the third month) and seeing his or her tiny body squirm on an ultrasound screen (in about the fifth month) bring home the reality of the pregnancy in a way that words on a page just can’t do.

      • As the pregnancy progresses, your partner is going to be feeling more and more dependent on you, and she’ll need more signs that you’ll always be there for her. While going to her doctor appointments may not seem quite as romantic as a moonlit cruise or a dozen roses, there are very few better ways to remind her that you love her and reassure her that she’s not in this thing alone.

      • The more you’re around, the more seriously the doctor and his or her staff will take you and the more involved they’ll let you be (see pages 75–76 for more on this).

      Looking for Validation

      If you’re adopting, the time between your decision to adopt and the actual arrival of your child could be considered a “psychological pregnancy.” Unlike a biological pregnancy, you won’t, in most cases, know exactly how long it’s going to take from beginning to end. But what’s interesting is that most expectant adoptive parents go through an emotional progression similar to that of expectant biological parents, says adoption educator Carol Hallenbeck. The first step is what Hallenbeck calls “adoption validation,” which basically means coming to terms with the idea that you’re going to become a parent through adoption instead of through “normal” means. During their psychological pregnancy, adoptive parents often experience the same kind of denial that I described above, not letting themselves get too excited out of fear that the adoption could take far longer than they expected or that it will fall apart completely.

      If you and your partner have hired a surrogate, there’s a good chance that you’ll be going through a psychological pregnancy as well. Unlike an adoptive couple, you have a much better idea of when your baby will be born, but you may still go through what might be called “surrogacy validation.”

      This may seem straightforward, but it’s usually not. For many parents, according to researcher Rachel Levy-Shiff, adoption (or surrogacy) is a second choice, a decision reached only after years of unsuccessfully trying to conceive on their own and after seemingly endless disappointments and intrusive, expensive medical procedures. Infertility can make you question your self-image, undermine your sense of masculinity (how can I be a man if I can’t get my partner pregnant?), force you to confront your shattered СКАЧАТЬ