The Expectant Father. Armin A. Brott
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• Support your partner. Encourage her to talk about what she’s feeling and don’t make any judgments about what she says. And try to keep her calm. As the pregnancy progresses, for example, and she can feel the baby’s movements, she may become fixated on counting them—worried that there are either too many or too few. Just so you know, anywhere from 50 to 1,000 a day is normal.
WHAT SHE SHOULD DO
• Make an appointment with her health-care provider for a preconception physical. The doctor will:
• Evaluate any and all medications your partner is taking to see whether they’re safe during pregnancy.
• Probably prescribe prenatal vitamins and possibly folic acid supplements (folic acid lowers the risk of some birth defects of the brain and spinal cord).
• Address any medical conditions, such as diabetes, asthma, high blood pressure, depression, epilepsy, obesity, or any problems with previous pregnancies. All of these reduce her ability to get pregnant, and if she does conceive, can increase pregnancy complications and the risk of miscarriage, preterm delivery, and birth defects.
• Make sure her immunizations are up-to-date, in particular chicken pox (varicella), German measles (rubella), and hepatitis B.
• Screen her for sexually transmitted diseases.
• Discuss the birth control methods she’s been using. If she’s been on the pill, she may need to go through a couple of pill-free months before trying to conceive.
• Get healthy. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 11 percent of women smoke during pregnancy, and 10 percent consume alcohol. Of women who could get pregnant, 69 percent don’t take folic acid supplements, 31 percent are obese, and about 3 percent take prescription or over-the-counter drugs that are known teratogens (substances that can interfere with fetal development or cause birth defects). Getting healthy means:
• Limit caffeine. Some studies show that caffeine can decrease a woman’s fertility and increase the risk of miscarriage or other problems. Other studies find no connection. Just to be safe, though, it’s probably best if she cuts back to no more than two or three cups of coffee per day or switches to decaf.
• Exercise. It’s much better for a pregnant woman to continue an exercise routine she already has in place than to start a new one. If your partner hasn’t been working out regularly, add this to the list of things to talk about with her health-care provider.
• Watch her weight. If she’s overweight (her doctor will tell her whether it’s a problem or not), now’s the time to start slimming down. She definitely doesn’t want to be dieting during the pregnancy. According to the CDC, “reaching a healthy weight before pregnancy reduces the risks of neural tube defects, preterm delivery, diabetes, Cesarean section,” and other conditions associated with obesity.
• Pay attention to diet and nutrition. What your partner eats immediately before conception and in the first days and weeks of the pregnancy can have a big impact on fetal development and the baby’s long-term health. See pages 35–44 for details on her diet and nutritional needs.
• Quit smoking and drinking. Both decrease fertility and increase the chances of a premature or low-birth-weight birth, or pregnancy loss.
• Stay out of hot tubs. A recent study by health-care giant Kaiser Permanente found that women who used a hot tub after conception were twice as likely to miscarry as women who didn’t. Other studies haven’t found much of a connection, but Kaiser’s lead researcher, De-Kun Li, recommends that “women in the early stages of pregnancy—and those who may have conceived but aren’t sure—might want to play it safe for the first few months and avoid hot tubs” as a way of reducing “unnecessary risk of miscarriage.”
WHAT YOU SHOULD DO
• Talk to your doctor. Give him your medical history and tell him about your plans to do the dad thing. You want to find out whether there are any issues that you need to address before you start planning those romantic, candlelit, birth-control-free evenings. One especially important topic you’ll want to discuss is how to make sure your sperm is healthy. Here are some ways to do that:
• Keep your balls cool. Sperm is very sensitive to heat, which is why your testicles—where those little swimmers of yours live—hang outside your body, where it’s a few degrees cooler. Heating them up by a couple of degrees (say, by spending any more than five minutes in a hot tub or hot bath, sitting with your legs crossed for extended periods of time, or wearing tight underwear that keeps your testicles up against your body) could reduce sperm production or cause abnormalities. We all know that women have fertility cycles, but were you aware that we do too? Turns out that sperm are on a ninety-day cycle, meaning that whatever happens to them today won’t show up for three months or so.
• Call in the vice squad. Smoking, using illegal drugs (or misusing legal ones), and drinking alcohol have all been linked to lowered fertility, miscarriage, and birth defects.
• Watch the toxins. Hazardous chemicals, pesticides, and even noxious fumes could damage sperm and, if you inadvertently bring them home (for example, on your clothes), they could hurt your partner too.
• Lose some weight. Dr. A. Ghiyath Shayeb, from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, found that obese men produce lower volumes of seminal fluid (the liquid that carries the sperm) and have a higher proportion of abnormal sperm. “[M]en who are trying for a baby with their partners should first try to achieve an ideal body weight,” writes Shayeb.
• Have a little more fun. Traditional thinking has it that if you want to improve your chances of getting your partner pregnant, you should not ejaculate for at least a couple of days before trying. But Australian OB David Greening disagrees. Greening studied men with DNA-damaged sperm. After seven days of ejaculating daily (no, it didn’t matter how), the percentage of damaged sperm dropped significantly. And motility—a measure of how straight and how quickly sperm swim toward those ever-elusive eggs—increased.
• Hang out with some dads. Talk to other guys about what it’s like to be a dad, the challenges they’ve faced, and how they overcame them. Ask a ton of questions.
WHAT BOTH OF YOU SHOULD DO
• Make sure you’ve discussed any possible medical issues with a qualified health-care provider. If you haven’t already, talk over any and all pregnancy-related risk factors. These include:
• Her age. Getting pregnant at thirty-five or older increases the risk of certain genetic abnormalities, such as Down syndrome.
• Your age. (See pages 296–297 for more).
• Family history. Could either of you be a carrier of any genetic disorders, birth defects, or conditions such as cystic fibrosis or hemophilia?
• Belonging to a high-risk ethnic group. African Americans may want to be tested for sickle-cell anemia. Individuals of African or Mediterranean descent may want to be tested for thalassemia; Jews of Ashkenazi (Eastern European) descent may want to be tested for Tay-Sachs and/or Canavan disease.
• Take a quick look at your HR manual and investigate your family leave options. We’ll talk about this more on pages 136–42. But the more time you have to prepare yourself and your employer, the better.
• Look at your finances. How are you going to pay for all this? Do you have insurance? If so, check your deductibles and copays—and whether you have maternity coverage at all. If you or she just started a job, does the policy have a waiting period before benefits kick in? If you don’t have insurance, what are your options? Could you qualify for Medicaid?
• Sit down with your