This one's for the dads

So much of pregnancy is about the mums and the bond between mums and the baby. Johnson & Johnson's tagline is "When a baby is born, so is a mother." Sometimes we forget "When a baby is born, so is a FATHER."

My father was over the moon when I was born and he would rush home from work to cuddle and play with me. This was in an era when taking care of babies was "women's work" and the other men would give him weird looks when they saw him helping to feed me.
Thankfully, most guys these days are a lot more involved. Lots of guys I worked with would rush home to play with their children and kept weekends strictly for family time. There have been many times when our girls' get-togethers happened only because the men in their lives were only too happy to be baby-sitting the little ones.

So mums-to-be, get the daddy-to-be involved from the start. Share with him your feelings, your hopes and your fears. Remember, he's had a hand in this miracle too and he deserves to be there every step of the way. Tell him what it's like when the baby moves about in you. He can't feel it the way you can, so describe it to him and let him imagine what it must be like. My husband is fascinated when I tell him what the movements feel like and I can tell that he's trying to imagine what it's like.

Sing lullabies to the baby together. Watch his face change with all the emotions he's feeling inside when he comes along to the check-ups and he sees the baby's scan or hears the tiny heart beat for the first time. Tell him your pregnancy fears and when you can't hold back your tears, love him for keeping strong to comfort you. Encourage him to talk to the bump - my husband never fails to say good morning and kiss my bump goodbye before he leaves for work. Talk with him about parenting styles, get him involved and thinking early about this - will you be strict or liberal? Daydream with him about the day your little boy grows up to be the champion golfer/footballer he'd always wanted to be but couldn't because he had to do something else more down-to-earth.

All this mummyhood talk isn't just to share with your mum, your sisters, your girlfriends. He deserves to share all that too but in a different way because I know for sure my Top Monkey gets bored when I start talking about matching baby clothes with my clothes while the girls all squeal, "Oh that's soooo cute!" But he lights up when I tell him things like how the baby responds when I play Poke Me games with him. And he enjoys it when I tell him stuff like "Stop eating beans on toast! Our baby is x weeks old and he's as big as a baked bean, so it's like you're eating heaps of babies!" It helps him visualise how our son is developing inside me.

The bonding between father and child doesn't have to wait till the little one is born. It can start right now, right here.