The long Nine-month goodbye

Goodbye to those hobbies that only existed because of a thing called "spare time".

From Two to Tango: ...it should be a shared experience, with the father offering plenty of support, says Anne Hollonds, of Relationships Australia. "There is a vast gap that emerges; the woman becomes very educated and the guy feels left out, so one of the most important ways to support your partner is to stay involved and to find ways of being connected with the pregnancy".

I recommend going to every pre-natal check-up, classes and ultrasounds particularly. I really feel sorry for those fathers that wouldn't or couldn't. The birth itself is of course even more important, but ultrasounds have improved from indecipherable black and white smudges to 3d(4d?) colour and sound recordable movies. Thus, there will not be an excuse even if you are posted overseas. Technology is not quite there, but it is tantalisingly close, and then every expectant father can have a "sympathy pregnancy".

I have found a very strong correlation between how involved a father is during pregancy/childbirth and how involved he is further down the track. I have not met a "dead-beat dad" yet that had shown up to pre-natal classes and/or ultrasound checkups. Those females that discourage such involvement are just as culpable if they cry foul down the track about the lack of support. I challenge any expectant father to listen to a few minutes of fetal heart-monitor sound and then decide that you don't really want involvement until the child can interact back.

Life is of course an interminable balancing act however, and at times during my "own" last four pregnancies/childbirths, I was torn between important values of work (providing for family), diet obsessions (right foods for baby etc.), expenditure & savings (what to spend on - how much to save), sports (won't have time, but how to keep fit?), home improvements and leisure. In the big picture, I don't think it matters if you miss an ante-natal visit if you were going to get the sack if you didn't show up to work, or if you bought junkfood because you didn't have time to cook or if you went to play volleyball while your wife was having contractions five minutes apart at full term. Sometimes you just have to make a call under tough circumstances, and it doesn't mean you don't love your partner.

There are a large range of "developing" technologies of variable merit that warrants our attention when we start to looking at the future of father's roles during pregnancy and childbirth. Most of the associated technologies are medical, and the continuing push is for doctors to know as much about the developing fetus as they would have for anybody under their care. Parents are increasingly taking the obstetricians to task over any and every intervention. If anything goes wrong, it is they who are questioned or accused, perhaps more than any other medical specialty. It is no surprise therefore, that obstetricians are either leaving or demanding extravagant fees (if only to pay for their extravagant insurance premiums) for their services. Any problems that happen in pregnancies in the future will be exacerbated by the crisis of accessibility of expert medical staff. However, the technology for keeping track of bub, like a security camera will mean that fathers can be there one way or another. Any diagnosed ailment can be researched via the internet, sidestepping reliance on doctors for advice, using them when they are avalable to fill in the gaps of knowledge or diagnosis. You heard it here first, there will exist devices like i-pods that constantly transmit sound and vision from the baby 24/7.