Sharon Perkins - Dad's Guide to Pregnancy For Dummies

If getting pregnant takes longer than expected, you’re also setting yourself up to have to deal with the inevitable questions about the delay. On the plus side, if you and your partner must deal with infertility, you need all the support you can muster.

Just make sure you’re both ready to continue sharing information and dealing with questions from the people you tell. Trust us when we say that after their curiosity is piqued and their excitement sparked, there’s no turning back, especially for a first-time grandmother-to-be.

You may think you have a handle on lovemaking, but after you announce to the world that you’re trying to have a baby, it may seem like all the folks in your life suddenly morph into Dr. Phil.

Now that reproduction is fodder for morning news programs and countless blogs and Internet sites, more people have more sound bites and nuggets of wisdom to offer you and your partner than ever before. If your mother tells your partner she shouldn’t be eating that grilled hamburger because the Today show said so, or if she tells you that you really should be wearing boxers rather than briefs, you may find yourself at wit’s end before you even make it to the bedroom.

If your loved ones start interfering or offering advice that you don’t want, thank them for their excitement and interest, but reassure them that you have the situation under control. Remind them that people have been having babies forever and let them know that being bombarded with all this information — be it from them, the TV, or the newspaper — stresses out you and your partner, and that can decrease your chances of conception.

Not all unsolicited advice is about the act of having sex. Some people may think you’re too young or too old to have kids. Your parents may chime in about how expensive kids are, implying that you’re not financially ready to have a baby. Perhaps your stressed-out brother (and father of three) tells you to enjoy your freedom while you still can.

Whether somebody thinks you’re too immature to be a father because you still play video games or that your wife’s job is too demanding for her to be a mother, remember that the only voices that matter are yours and your partner’s.

Chapter 3

IN THIS CHAPTER

Becoming a dad in a non-traditional way

Putting together your new family

Spelling out who’s who in your baby’s life

Staying involved when you’re out of town (or country) during the pregnancy

Not all dads are part of a mom, dad and baby makes three scenario.Maybe you don’t have a partner. Or maybe you do — but you’re both guys. In today’s world of reproductive science, you can become a dad even if you’re short a few eggs. There’s always a way.

That’s not to say becoming a dad under these circumstances is necessarily easy, and it’s often not cheap. And you’ll certainly be faced with more decisions to make than the traditional Mom, Dad, and Baby household. But in this chapter, we help by walking you through the decisions you’ll have to make about egg donors, carriers, and who gets to know the details.

On the other hand, you might be part of a traditional family—most of the time. But, for whatever reason — maybe you work on an oil rig, are in the military, or have decided to take a year off and live in a commune to find yourself — you can’t be home for all or part of the pregnancy and birth. Although we can’t magically whisk you home for all the exciting parts, in this chapter we can show you how to stay involved and help your partner feel your support even if you’re half a world away.

If you’re a guy, you can supply half your baby’s DNA, but you still need someone to supply the other half. This is true whether you’re a single guy alone or if you have a partner who’s also a guy. In either case, your first order of business will be to find someone who can donate an egg to you. Unfortunately, donating eggs isn’t nearly as simple as donating sperm, so finding a friend or someone altruistic enough to donate to you might be difficult. In that case, many fertility clinics have egg-donor programs in which carefully screened women of childbearing age go through the donation process in exchange for a monetary fee.

The legality of this gets tricky from one state to the other, so make sure you know what your state’s regulations on egg donation are before going too far into the process.

If just finding the right egg were all you needed to do, this process wouldn’t be so difficult. But, you also need someone to carry the baby for nine months and give birth to them. You also want to make very sure — as sure as is humanly possible — that the person you choose will want to give your baby to you at the end of nine months. States have regulations on surrogacy as well, but this is the kind of sticky mess you want to do everything in your power to avoid.

There are more than a few moving parts to coordinate in this type of baby-making scenario. If you’re a couple, you and your partner need to decide whose sperm is going to be used. You also need to determine whether your egg donor and your gestational (pregnancy) baby carrier are going to be the same person. This is a complicated question that deserves some really hard thinking on your part.

If you’re using a relative as egg donor, you may feel fairly comfortable using her as the carrier also. After all, you probably have a reasonably good relationship and you know where she lives if there are any problems. If your relative or friend feels funny giving you her eggs, you could use an anonymous egg donor and someone you know as gestational carrier. Or the other way around. You can see why this takes some serious thought.

It’s a little trickier still if you don’t know your egg donor or gestational carrier. In this case, choosing a separate egg donor an a gestational carrier can be a prudent decision. The carrier won’t have a biological tie to your baby, which could prevent legal issues if something goes wrong.

If you’re a single guy alone, identifying the person responsible for supplying the sperm is pretty straightforward — that would be you. If you have a male partner, this question becomes a bit more complicated. Does one of you already have children? Does one of you have better sperm than the other? Is one of you more invested in the whole idea of having kids? Talking through these issues to make a decision can take time, so don’t rush it. You can also mix your sperm together and let nature make the decision.

Sperm donation is simple and not very time consuming. Some centers let you donate ahead and have sperm on ice waiting for the day it’s needed. Others let you collect the sperm at home, as long as you can bring it to the center within a reasonable time frame. The center will concentrate the sperm and optimize it for fertilization.