The Expectant Father: The Ultimate Guide for Dads-to-Be by Armin A. Brott & Jennifer Ash

Author:Armin A. Brott & Jennifer Ash [Brott, Armin A.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Abbeville Publishing Group
Published: 2015-05-25T16:00:00+00:00

Sex—Again

While the second trimester is frequently a time of increased sexual desire and activity, during the third trimester your sex life is bound to suffer. The most common reasons for this are:

• A mutual fear of hurting the baby or your partner.

• Fear that your partner’s orgasm might trigger premature labor.

• Your partner’s physical discomfort.

• Your partner’s changing body makes the “usual” sexual positions uncomfortable.

• Your sense of changing roles. Soon your partner will no longer simply be your partner; she’s going to be a mother—someone just like your own mother. Remember that as she begins to see you as a father, she may have similar (often subconscious) thoughts.

Unless your partner’s doctor has told you otherwise, sex still poses no physical risk to the baby or to your partner. As we discussed on pages 123–126, if you’re both still interested in sex (and I’ve heard from a lot of dads whose sex drive actually increased toward the end of the pregnancy), now would be a good time to try out some new and different positions. Again, if you and your partner aren’t in sync, sexually speaking, it’s critical to talk things through.

Several researchers have noted that a small number of expectant fathers have affairs during the late stages of their partners’ pregnancies. But these “late-pregnancy affairs” rarely happen for the reasons you might think. Jerrold Shapiro found that most men who have had a late-pregnancy extramarital affair share the following characteristics:

• They felt extremely attracted to their partners and were very interested in “affectionate sexual contact” with them.

• They felt particularly excluded from the pregnancy and birth process.

• The affair was with a close friend or relative of the woman. (This would indicate that the person with whom the man had the affair was also feeling excluded from the mom-to-be’s life during the pregnancy.)

Expectant mothers also have affairs during their pregnancies. In fact, Shapiro suggests that women are just as likely to have affairs as men. Couples who suddenly find themselves with no sexual outlet—and are feeling misunderstood by their partners—may be tempted to satisfy their needs elsewhere.

STAYING INVOLVED

Birth Plans

Just about every expectant couple—together or individually—has a vision of how they’d like their baby to come into the world. Sometimes these dreams come true, but babies aren’t particularly good about going along with the program. And in most cases—especially with first pregnancies—what actually happens during labor and delivery won’t look very much like what you hoped it would. Which is why the words birth and plan really don’t belong in the same document, let alone the same sentence.

Nevertheless, a lot of childbirth instructors and other folks still recommend that expectant couples write up a comprehensive birth plan that outlines every aspect of labor and delivery, lays out their demands for the way they want things to go, and makes it very clear that the expectant parents—not the medical staff—will be making all the decisions.

While birth plans may sound logical, they almost always cause more trouble than they prevent. You and

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