Here you are standing on the border between pregnancy and The Birth. This means you stand on the border between ‘becoming’ a father and ‘being’ one. Perhaps by tomorrow morning, your baby will be born.
Can you see where ‘clarity’ is a guiding skill at this time? We hope you’ve worked through Birthing Better Childbirth Preparation Online Course and have clarity about your skills as the birth support/coach. If you have the Birthing Better course yet haven’t learned the skills enough, there is always right now! Time is Now. Clarity, clarity and more clarity.
Clarity is also about being in the present … being here and now. Any skill you or your pregnant partner learn right Now and use in The Birth, the better the birth experience will be.
All the skills we’ve talked about are qualities to grow because they are needed during the birthing process and with your newborn. These are the skills we’ve addressed in the #4 phases of pregnancy. The Birth is phase #5.
- Kindness
- Patience
- Awareness
- Attention to detail
- Being able to see what needs to be done
- Growing a second set of arms (I’ll explain later)
- Growing two more sets of eyes (I’ll explain later)
- Humor
- Delight
- Clarity
The transformation in yourself as a man to growing your fathering skills is now getting more focused. The end of pregnancy focuses all your senses toward ‘The Birth’. Birth focuses your senses on getting to know and taking care of your child. Being a father focuses you on the relationship you have to your child’s mother.
Clarity, focus. These are qualities of our human mind, unique to us as human beings. We can intentionally focus. This is clarity.
A one-off is soon to happen
We’re almost coming to the natural end of this blog for expectant fathers. The Birth will happen, you can’t redo it or replay it. As The Birth happens all your skills absolutely must come into play. Your birthing partner deserves your help. All your skills become focused and challenged into a one-off primary, dynamic, BIG, important and transforming experience. The Birth is show-time!
Once your baby is born you are no longer an expectant father. You are a father.
Can our Trust and Birthing Better Childbirth Preparation move you through the Gateway of childbirth? Hopefully, we’ve done a good job to encourage you and your pregnant partner to become skilled and take becoming skilled a serious and essential part of preparing for your baby.
It’s been your choice
You’ve done your work, you’ve grown your fatherhood qualities when you had a choice not to. You’ve taken pregnancy as the time to mature yourself just as your baby and its mother had to do.
While you, your baby and baby’s mother have traveled these past few months on slightly different but distinct paths, now the three of you are meeting on one path … heading toward The Birth. Using skills during the birthing process means you can all work together focused on one goal … your baby’s birth. Your baby wants to be born and start its life so he or she can move through the childhood phase, become an adult, become and then be a parent.
So during this transition period just before the birth, take time to enjoy your past growth. Go out together in your last meals without a child/or another child. Celebrate the before time and begin to put it behind you. This will give you a new focus … The Birth … then put that behind you … a new focus … being a father.
I want you to stand up and breathe into your body … come into your body totally. Be you. Feel yourself being you. Feel how your chest and heart feels stronger now that you have grown your fatherhood qualities. Feel your pride in yourself … first as a human being, second as a man, then as a father and as a partner (of the 4 this is the only one that is variable, the other 3 are inescapable.)
Bottom line:
Give yourself permission to remember this moment … being totally yourself.
Head to Udemy for all the Fathers-to-be Pregnancy Academy courses. Then at 24 weeks of pregnancy, come back here for the online birthing classes and start with the birth preparation and birth-coaching skills … all developed by hundreds of dads and moms.
Birthing Better skills are housed in Common Knowledge Trust.