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A father of five, with a sixth on the way, reviews a new book for expectant dads and finds that nurturing a loving family is never by the book.
By DAVE SCHEIBER
© St. Petersburg Times, published June 3, 2001
The other day, a co-worker left a book on my desk, a dangerous place to leave anything. Books, papers, cash, small pets -- all have been known to disappear forever in the Bermuda Triangle of clutter.
But the paperback caught my eye. The title: The Expectant Father: Facts, Tips and Advice for Dads-to-Be.
This is a topic I know a little something about. I'm a dad-to-be. And I'm a dad-that's-been. My wife and I have five daughters, ages 16 to 2, and are expecting our sixth child in September.
So anyway, I grab this book and start leafing through it, wondering what I might learn or what I might have missed along the way.
Twenty pages in, my head is spinning with dozens of recommended questions I'm supposed to ask obstetricians, to ask midwives, to ask both obstetricians and midwives.
Sample: "Are you willing to wait until the umbilical cord has stopped pulsating before you clamp it?"
I've cut an umbilical cord or two in the delivery room, but I must admit I've never kept up with the clamp-the-pulsating-cord debate. You say "clamp it," I think Uncle Jed and Ellie Mae.
I plow through the pages. Each chapter is neatly organized into three categories: what's going on with your partner, what's going on with the baby and what's going on with you in each month of the pregnancy.
My palms start to sweat, and I'm only starting Chapter Two. I feel like I'm back in college, cramming for a final exam. So much material to absorb and so little time:
The book gives detailed breakdowns of hospital expenses ($2,500 to $6,500 for basic deliveries and as much as $17,000 for C-sections), tells everything you ever wanted to know about morning sickness (did you know it may be the body's way of protecting the fetus from harmful toxins?), lists exercise regimens (No. 1 tip: no high-impact sports), hails the merits of grains and complex carbs and green and yellow vegetables (your partner should have seven servings a day of fruits and veggies -- and I always thought it was six), and discusses irrational fears (60 percent of dads in one survey had a nagging feeling that the mailman or some other guy was the real father).
My own irrational fear: How could I find time to read all this, let alone remember everything?
Co-authors Armin A. Brott, who provides the male narrative, and collaborator Jennifer Ash, the female perspective, have done an admirable job in conducting endless interviews with expectant couples and assembling an all-encompassing guide for soon-to-be fathers and repeat dads.
But here's the thing: I don't think expectant fathers really need this. Or at least, this much. I'm not saying the information is not well-presented or not potentially helpful. But my overkill sensors started flashing early on. Reading page after page of insights, advice and "must-have" material began to feel too much like, well, work, and I already have plenty of that, what with five daughters in the house.
Lead writer Brott, a former Marine and father of two girls, makes some unusual suggestions and observations in the 249 pages. His "all-time favorite" comes in the Sixth Month chapter: making a plaster belly cast of his wife as a way to stay involved.
"It's a little complicated but well worth the trouble. Long after the baby is born, you, your partner and your friends will be absolutely amazed that your partner was ever that big." He even recommends a place that sells the belly cast kit.
I'm happy for Brott. Yet, I am fairly certain that if I made a belly cast of my wife, she would make sure I ended up wearing it as a helmet. Then again, it might make a handy pasta bowl for big family gatherings. Such as our dinner hour.
In the Eighth Month chapter, he lays out a what-to-pack list for her, for the baby and for you. Included in the "you" list, along with cash, a small birthday cake, toothbrush and change of underwear, is this item: tennis balls for back rubs.
In my experience, one should proceed with extreme caution while giving a woman in heavy labor a back rub -- a wrong move and you could get smacked. So my advice is, unless you plan to do some juggling to entertain your wife and the nurses between contractions, leave the tennis balls at home.
I should add that my wife and I both come from large families ourselves and have received advice and support from others around us. Those men who have not might find that reading an exhaustive fatherhood book is great, a path to peace of mind, a way of getting where they need to be: more involved in the process.
But my point is, you can figure this all out for yourselves, first-time dads. Just employ common sense, communication, sensitivity and instincts as your compass.
As an expectant father, I've always liked the Dick Van Dyke approach. You may remember the episode: Daddy-to-be Rob Petrie, ready for Laura/Mary Tyler Moore to go into labor, climbs into bed clad in his street clothes. Too jittery to sleep, he practices grabbing his hat and leaping into action, ready to whisk his wife out the door when she announces it's time to head for the hospital.
There you have it: Rob shows ample concern, planning, ingenuity, love and creative use of nervous energy all at once, before the chaotic moment suddenly arrives. I doubt he read a book.
No book could have prepared me for the experience of our first daughter's arrival. Two long weeks after the due date, my wife's labor finally started, and we sped off to the hospital. Once we were there, the doctor said things were progressing so well that the baby would probably be born in an hour or two.
Which became three hours, then four, then eight. Turns out our baby had gotten too big and was having trouble making an appearance. Hours of grueling, no-progress labor for my wife quickly turned scary. The baby's heart rate started to drop dramatically. The doctor no longer looked so reassuring. He ordered an emergency C-section.
I was shuttled from the delivery room into a room the size of a closet. My wife, meanwhile, was wheeled into surgery and given a rapid dose of general anesthesia. The only problem: It didn't take right away. So, as the incision was being made, she started screaming, which was more than loud enough for me to hear in my waiting closet.
I feared the worst, and it seemed like an eternity waiting for news, any news, from the operating room. Finally, about 30 minutes later, a nurse arrived, apologizing for forgetting to come and get me 10 minutes earlier. All was fine, she said, we had a healthy baby girl. Once you go through a trial-by-fire delivery like that, it takes a lot to faze you. (To The Expectant Father's credit, there's plenty of space devoted to C-sections, even emergency ones.)
Our second delivery two years later was another C, but planned -- and as calm as the first was frightening. I even got to attend this time, and my wife was awake, a big improvement for both of us.
My wife also started a little tradition that we have carried on for each new arrival. I see it as sort of baby payola, a way for the new kid to bribe her way into the good graces of the older siblings. Here's the system: We buy presents ahead of time for each of the older girls, stash them in the hospital room, and when the siblings come to the hospital the next morning -- presto, they get a gift from the baby, who has somehow managed to do a little shopping before showing up. This way, nobody goes home empty-handed.
By the time our third baby was due, some three years after the second, I figured I had the routine down like a pro: get to hospital at 7 a.m., get to see the baby by 8. But another era had now dawned: Our new doctors favored natural childbirth. We were given a videotape to review breathing techniques and quickly began to see a pattern: Nothing would be as we expected. For starters, our doctors were concerned with the baby's low weight and wanted to induce three weeks early. My mistake was to assume that inducing meant producing. On the contrary, after 13 grueling, painful hours (and that was just me), the baby finally made her entrance.
I did come away with one key insight: When in doubt, bring reinforcements. With my mother-in-law's help, I could pace myself and perform additional important duties, like monitoring the hospital room TV for quality programming during lags in the action, or sampling the cafeteria cuisine.
Five years passed. We were done with diapers and our three girls were 11, 8 and 5. But we'd always left the door open for a larger family, and the trio was about to become a quartet. I have a brother, my wife has a brother, so I really was expecting a boy. When the sonogram indicated otherwise, I had a fleeting cinematic vision: Four Weddings and My Funeral. But the truth is, we were thrilled.
Here is the main pearl of wisdom I can pass on from this go-round: Never attach the birth of a child to a deadline. By chance, I had a personal essay scheduled to appear in the paper on the day after the doctors were to induce labor. (This time, they were inducing to make sure the baby didn't get too big and cause a repeat of our first frantic C-section.) I had the brilliant idea of announcing the birth of Baby No. 4 in that holiday season story. To do so, of course, I had to write the piece ahead of time.
We went in at 7 a.m. By noon, no baby. By 3 p.m., no baby. By 7 p.m., I was frazzled, and not just from being drained as Ace Breathing Coach. It was now a real possibility that the baby might miss deadline on her first assignment. At 8, I found a moment to call the office to advise my editors of the delay. Thirty minutes later, I called with another no-progress update. Thankfully, journalism genes prevailed, and the new addition made it out with two hours to spare before first edition.
Having four kids triggered a fair share of quizzical comments from people around us. Even Robert Young on Father Knows Best only had Princess, Bud and Kitten. So when we let it be known that we were expecting our fifth daughter in 1998, we became something of novelty. My wife and I are in a band, and the kids play instruments and sing, so we were suddenly a potential Partridge Family, heavy on the estrogen.
Aside from a slow starting labor, helped by yet another induction ceremony, the fifth arrived in timely fashion. I brought two assistants this time: my mother-in-law and sister-in-law; hey, why be a hero? The older four siblings couldn't have been more excited about having a baby sister to show off to their friends. We were also well on our way to having built-in babysitting, an advantage if you're going to have a big family.
So now we've moved into uncharted territory. Six kids: one more than my wife's family, two more than mine. We've gotten some funny looks, but a big family suits us. Our kids are our biggest joy. They keep us young (constantly changing diapers in middle age -- I'm 47, my wife 42 -- will do that to you). We deal with every phase of youth, from adolescence to infancy, at any given moment, and most times simultaneously.
Two months ago, my wife went alone for her first checkup with a new group of doctors, the past group having retired (yes, we've worn out a whole group of doctors). During a routine sonogram, the nurse asked, "Are you going to find out the baby's sex ahead of time?" My wife replied, "Yeah, but I'm sure it's a girl."
"Well," the nurse said, "you're going to have a boy."
My wife was stunned. "No way!" she said. The nurse seemed concerned. "You don't want a boy?"
"It's not that," my wife answered, "We've just never had one, we have five girls." The doctor peered at the screen and all but confirmed the news. "Ninety percent," he said. The nurse took that as a challenge and maneuvered for a better view. The doctor looked again. "Ninety-nine percent," he said with a smile.
That night, my wife secretly made up a little card, with each page giving an extra hint, and the final page containing a Polaroid of the sonogram, with a certain part the nurse had circled. She handed it to me, and when I got to the final page, I was as stunned as she had been. We've always wished foremost for a healthy baby and have absolutely loved having girls. But the idea of leveling the playing field a little at this point appealed to me -- to be honest, bonding with my certifiably crazy male Labrador hasn't cut it.
When we shared the card with our older girls, they made a dash for the phones -- we have two lines and a cell -- to relay the stop-the-presses bulletin to their friends. The two younger daughters, 5 and 2, quickly got caught up in the frenzy and now are as excited as any of their sisters. After all, he's on their team for future three-on-three hoops games.
With all these experiences over the past 16-plus years, you might think I'm an expert. I simply know what I know from being part shareholder in six pregnancies. In that light, I now will boil down everything expectant fathers need to know into two basic tips, free of charge:
1. Make sure the expectant mom and you select an OB/GYN you (mostly she) like and trust, based on recommendations of friends, family, firsthand experience, whatever. If you have questions for the doctors or nurses, always ask them; in my experience, they'll try to give you a reasonable answer. Otherwise, listen to what they say and do what they tell you. They get paid to know this kind of stuff, and you don't.
2. For nine months or longer, your wife is in some serious discomfort. You will probably forget that from time to time, as I still sometimes do, and perhaps not remember she needs extra rest, extra slack and understanding, extra help to lighten her load. So remember, if you have a disagreement about something, she is right, you are wrong. If she wants you to do something, barring grave consequences to your well-being, just do it.
The pregnancy experience will be much enhanced. And you won't need to buy a book.