What goes on in the Minds of men once they find out they are going to have a baby? Lots! And if ‘lots’ causes confusion even if you are one of those dads-to-be who really planned and wanted your partner to get pregnant then the veil is about to be lifted, clarity will prevail and you’ll begin to move forward with the confidence so becoming in a father and partner.
Does that confusion go away quickly? Not for too many men. In fact you’re more often going to hear women talk disparagingly about how their husband/partner didn’t understand them during pregnancy, could do nothing right, was so hopeless at the birth and afterwards with their newborn. It seems as though the belief that men can’t express emotions, only have a 2000 word vocabulary and lack in empathy and compassion is alive and well in the 21st Century.
Consider this. Who is teaching you, a father-to-be, the skills you need so you can grow alongside your pregnant partner and unborn?
Here’s a stark reality. Once a woman has conceived, the baby is on a fast track of development. Cellular development in your baby’s earliest days isn’t quite as fast as yeast in beer but pretty quick. Throughout the almost year of pregnancy your baby has a biological mandate to grow. This pulls the mother-to-be along. Even for those women who really wanted and planned this pregnancy the growth of a baby inside opens up the Pandora’s Box of Complexity. In other words, the woman is obligated to grow, not just her belly or breasts but her emotions expand, are more changeable and her future is no longer on the same track as BP (before pregnancy).
The woman in your life is now ‘becoming’ a mother. Giving birth will be the one event that moves her out of the phase of ‘becoming’ into ‘being’ a mother. Pregnancy is the same time that shifts you into ‘becoming’ a father and The Birth is the same event that moves you from ‘becoming’ into ‘being’ a father.
So as a father-to-be you are faced with two people in your family who are rapidly, day-by-day, changing by a biological imperative unequaled in our human lives. Where does this leave you and most men? Often bewildered. This state of Hhummmm can change once you understand you not only have a ‘choice’ to grow in parallel with the woman and your baby but there are a very specific set of skills. This matters.
You can keep pace and end up moving through ‘becoming’ a father to ‘being’ a father with confidence, competence and capability. How would that make you feel? Keep in mind you are a human being even before you’re a man, partner and father. As a human being you deserve to feel good about yourself.
There are some simple things you need to know: Pregnancy is divided roughly into 5 Phases. Conception to 12 weeks, 12-24 weeks, 24-32 weeks, 32-term then The Birth.
The skills you can now choose to learn repeat themselves in slightly different forms throughout these 5 phases. Here’s the list of skills. Awareness, Kindness, Patience, Paying attention to detail, Seeing what needs to be done and doing it, growing a second set of arms, growing another set of eyes, Delight, Humor and Clarity. All of these skills are vitally important human skills with different flavors. As you can see they aren’t complex and even mentioning them can make you think: ‘They make common sense.’ They do but no one has told you to grow these qualities during this specific Time.
No matter when you discover these skills during pregnancy you can start learning right away … and you don’t have to tell anyone. However, you and your partner can share them and discuss them. She’s growing them as well but from her viewpoint.
Each skill has three components: personal use, directed toward your partner and to your child. Go through each of them in your mind, put them into action, notice how much better you feel and become engaged. Now you can enjoy this journey because you know the skills that will become the foundation for your role as a dad.
Men have always had a complex relationship to pregnancy and birth due to cultural and religious diversity. Mostly we see each other’s differences rather than our commonality. However, all men are hard wired to understand both pregnancy and birth because every man grew inside a woman’s body and was born out of one.
Beyond our cultural and religious diversity, we are all One Humanity and share much more in common then we believe and often take for granted. One hundred percent of pregnant women will give birth and any man can impregnate any woman. This means that men can and should grow in parallel to the changes experienced by the woman and the child inside her … a boy or girl. By growing skills during pregnancy fathers-to-be are teaching their unborn children what men/fathers do.
We not only see ourselves, cultures and religions as distinct and unique, we see women and men as coming from Venus and Mars yet we share pretty much the exact same body. We all blink, cough and can tighten our rectum. We have the same bones and muscles in the same place and we can tense up and soften exactly the same. This means that fathers-to-be, when given a specific set of skills can help their partner prepare her pregnant body to become a birthing body. And this is another one of the skill sets that get put into place during the 5 phases of pregnancy, best starting at 24 weeks. In other words there are both emotional skills that become real behaviors throughout the 5 phases of pregnancy and physical skills that prepare the pregnant 3 dimensional container to free the 3 dimensional baby that has grown inside during the birthing journey.
Keep in mind that the birth journey involves two people: a woman gives birth and a baby is born. Skills permit you to work together throughout this journey.
Men excel at understanding this rather mechanical relationship. While growing a baby and giving birth is mysterious it does not have to be mystifying. Just as the growth stages from newborn to child is mind-blowing and physiological, the practical steps to nurture that growth are actually loaded with skills, skills and more skills by both mothers and fathers. Isn’t it better to be a skilled father handling your newborn and feeling confident so you can continue to teach and nurture your child for years to come?
Emotions are no different. All humans recognize a smile, tears, kindness or helpfulness. This is good news for you as a father-to-be. The role expectations have changed in the past two generations. We need more men to know how to grow through the phase of ‘becoming’ to ‘being’ a father and to actually have skills to prepare for the birth of their child and the skills to work with their partner’s efforts to give birth.
Having skills brings men through the transition from being an adult to being a father. Skilled families are more likely to work through the challenges in life.
There are still lots of obstacles that both women and men experience that hinder the growth of skilled men in our cultures around pregnancy and childbirth … and skilled women. Throughout our history our cultural, religious, linguistic and racial differences have separated us. If you have come from a culture where birth is ‘women’s business’ then you believe that is true. If you come from a culture where anyone helps and there are no designated midwives then that’s your worldview. People who are interested in the anthropology and sociology of pregnancy and birth can find heaps of material.
In our modern societies there is more homogeneity and we are moved more by trends that change every generation or so. In my lifetime there have been three trends.
- Follow doctors orders with men excluded
- Lamaze skills in hospital with men as ‘birth coach’
- The present ‘choice-based’ approach where skills are devalued and fathers reduced to ‘supporting’.
Now is the Time for a new paradigm to emerge because we need skilled fathers and mothers. We need a ‘skills-based’ approach to evolve for all pregnancies and every birth. This may or may not sit alongside the present ‘choice-based’ one. In reality many families do not have ‘choice’ when it comes to pregnancy or birth. Others find their Birth Plan changes, the unexpected happens and the choices they made might prove unrealistic or unachievable. However, skills can be used in every pregnancy as fathers and mothers move through the ‘becoming’ phase, through preparing the pregnant body to become a birthing body, self-learning, practicing and using birth and birth coaching skills to work together through their baby’s birth journey. Growing these two types of skills: those around pregnancy and those specific for The Birth matters deeply. Because immediately after The Birth both fathers and mothers stop ‘becoming’ and are now ‘being’ a father and mother. When we can move through dynamic Life transitions with skills then we feel better about ourselves, communicate better with others and solve problems more easily.
Because too many fathers have not be told that there are these simple pregnancy skills and birth preparation and birth coaching skills they are moving through this life-changing period feeling uncertain. Too often both the woman and man knows he has not been
effective help during the birth and this sets up failure as a new parent. How many men have fumbled with a diaper and an impatient woman says/thinks: ‘you were useless during the birth and are useless now. Get out of the way and let me do it’. And then 6 months later the couples are fighting because the woman says/thinks/believes: ‘I’ve got to care for one child and I don’t want to care for two (the man)’.
It’s time we value the men in our lives. It is time that fathers-to-be are given a road map of skills that can help them transform through ‘becoming’ a father during pregnancy and The Birth to ‘being’ a father.