Sharon Perkins - Dad's Guide to Pregnancy For Dummies

What will happen if the baby has any health issues discovered during the pregnancy

Plans for the baby if your relationship dissolves for any reason, or if you die (yes, grim but essential)

Nutrition, travel, and lifestyle guidelines for your carrier, including how much say you’ll have in any or all of these things

You’ll also need to file a court order that establishes your child’s parentage so that your name can be placed on the birth certificate. This is called a pre-birth order . If you don’t have this done, you may need to adopt your own child after she’s born.

How involved you’ll be during the pregnancy should be spelled out in your legal documents. However, things can change during the pregnancy: You and your carrier may really hit it off and find yourselves going out to dinner once a week and calling each other on a regular basis. Or you may find that you’re not crazy about each other and keep contact to the bare minimum. If you’re dealing with a family member, you probably already have established routines for how often you see each other. In either case, realize that awkwardness wll probably be part of this new relationship.

It’s always a little strained when you’re getting to know someone new. It’s especially awkward when that person is carrying your child. This is something you really have to feel your way through; a legal document only covers so much. As the pregnancy goes on, you may feel more comfortable with each other and find that talking about constipation, swollen feet, and sex is more natural than you thought it would be. Or not.

It’s important to let your carrier take the lead on this, though. If she’s not comfortable letting you in on all the details of her personal life, you’ll have to accept that. If she wants to overshare and you’re really not that into knowing all the details of what she did last night, you may have to grin and bear it in order to maintain a good relationship. Don’t expect to be best friends right out of the gate. And don’t push for too much when you’re still basically strangers. Hopefully, over the next nine months, you’ll work out a comfortable balance between friendship and business relationship.

Friends or family members can present a different sort of problem. With friends and family, you most likely have already set some boundaries in place in your lives, even though you might not think of it that way. When that person is carrying your baby, the rules may shift, sometimes to the point that one or the other of you isn’t comfortable with it. For example, your partner’s sister might not want both of you — or either of you — at her doctor’s appointments. Your best friend might not want to share all the details of her sex life with you now that she’s pregnant with your baby — even if she always did before.

Boundary setting won’t just involve your carrier. Your parents, other siblings and other friends may want to put their oars in the water and tell you how you should be handling things or what they think about the situation. Parents, in particular, often can’t seem to help but share their opinions about what’s going on in your life, especially when a new grandchild is in the offing. Think this through ahead of time, considering what you already know about your family or friends, and set limits, at least in your mind, on how much interference couched as advice will be acceptable.

Sometimes, even in traditional mom-dad-and-baby families, you aren’t able to be around during a pregnancy. Your job might take you to another part of the country, or out of the country altogether. Dads today expect to play a much bigger role as a support person and active participant during pregnancy than they did a generation ago. Being unable to be as involved as you want can make for a difficult pregnancy, for both of you.

Fortunately, it’s never been easier to stay involved when you can’t be there physically, in most cases. No, it’s not the same as actually being there, but it’s better than it was 20 years ago, when today’s stay-in-touch technology was just a gleam in someone’s eye. With a little work, you can stay in the loop and involved during a long-distance pregnancy.

No doubt you already have the basics covered — setting up accounts on Facetime, Skype, Whatsapp, or Zoom, if you can. If you’re a servicemember, video chats are difficult, if not impossible. The timing can be off, especially if you’re on the other side of the world. You’re also presumably away to do a job, a job that may not be very flexible as far as sitting in the front of the phone or laptop goes. Getting your schedules synched can take some doing, especially if your partner is also still working on the other side of the world at a job without a lot of flexibility. And for some assignments, particularly in the military, you may be completely out of touch for weeks at a time.

The best thing to do in this type of situation is for your baby to be born at a time when you’re not fathoms under the sea and completely out of contact. But babies don’t always come when we plan them, which, if this is your situation, you’re undoubtedly all too aware.

One of the best things you can do in this type of situation is to make sure your partner has a lot of support at home; in some cases, this might mean having her stay with her family or having family members stay with her while you’re gone. She gets to make the decisions as to what kind of help she wants and for how long. Even if you and her mom are at constant odds at the best of times, this is the time where you just have to deal with having her mom, sister or best friend knowing more about what’s going on at home than you do.

After you’ve helped line up a support team, take care of as many of the household tasks ahead of time. Replace things that might need replacing before you leave, create an up-to-date list of repair people, get the car’s routine maintenance out of the way, and generally take everything you can off your partner’s shoulders before you leave.

It’s also important for you to keep up with what goes on during different months of pregnancy. This book gives you a lot of info on what happens during each stage of pregnancy, and you can find other books that go into greater month-by-month detail, such as Pregnancy For Dummies by Joanne Stone and Keith Eddleman (John Wiley & Sons). Knowing what’s going on at different stages allows you to ask relevant questions and to empathize with what your partner’s experiencing at different points of pregnancy.

Being separated during such an important time will be hard on both of you, but your partner is the one dealing with hormonal changes that can make going through pregnancy alone really difficult. Although you’re probably feeling the strain of not being there as well, remember that she’s dealing with much, much more. Some guys don’t want to hear the details of her pregnancy, baby shower, doctor’s appointments, and so on because it reminds them of everything they’re missing. If you’re one of those guys, try really hard to overcome it. And although it’s okay to mention how hard it is to be away at such a special time — your partner will probably be upset if it doesn’t upset you, honestly — remember not to make it all about you.

The complex emotions of a far-away dad can be hard for a mom-to-be to understand, since she feels just as lonely and sad that you’re apart at such an important time — and she’s the one dealing with taking care of the house and herself, not to mention heartburn, swollen feet, and the inability to bend over.