Being a dad is officially cool. With role models like David Beckham, Jamie Oliver and Brad Pitt to aspire to, fatherhood now means a whole lot more than bringing home the bacon and dishing out the discipline. If you’re about to become a dad for the first time, what can you do to get ready?

Fatherhood may be fashionable, but it’s not the walk in the park it may appear with celebrity dads. Being a hands-on dad is amazing and rewarding, but it’s also hard work – emotionally as well as physically.
So as soon as you know your partner’s pregnant, start doing your research. She will probably pore over any pregnancy and baby information she can get her hands on, spend hours online, and ask for advice from anyone who’s had a baby, finding out about stuff she’s unsure of. Blokes can sometimes find it hard to ask questions or get advice, but this is a great time to start.

Doing your homework
It’s not always easy – literature, websites and health professionals are geared up to talking to women having babies, but only slowly getting round to presenting this information to dads. “Men tend to be invisible,” says Fathers Direct’s Jack O’Sullivan. “There is a serious lack of information for dads. This is a problem because we’re not prepared for fatherhood at school or in our early lives. We can approach midwives, health visitors and so on for advice but we’re still missing out on a lot of opportunities.” You could do a lot worse than read your partner’s magazines and books. They may not be aimed at you, but they’re not exclusive to mums and are crammed with useful information.
You’ve made a great start by logging on to Bounty.com. Read more about pregnancy, having a baby and being a dad in our guides or by downloading the pdfs from each section of the site.

Mood swings
Your partner may well be a slave to the hormones raging through her body. She may get tired, moody, weepy, illogical, and serenely happy – sometimes all in one day. Don’t get mad, get used to it. Be sympathetic. Do stuff for her. Get used to doing more housework/shopping/cooking/washing – it’s good practice. And although you may not have the raging hormones, you too could well be confused, anxious and emotional. Let her know how you feel and talk about it with her or with friends who are dads or dads-to-be.

Sex and the dad-to-be
Sex is going to change. The first three months of pregnancy (first trimester) can be partnered by sickness and tiredness and she may not feel much like getting it on. Sex is perfectly safe for the baby, in case you were wondering, but be aware that occasionally for mums-to-be there may be health reasons for avoiding penetrative sex. From the fourth to sixth month (second trimester), many women feel better, and although the bump’s getting bigger, hormones may make her feel especially sexy. Once she’s beyond seven months (third or final trimester), she’s likely to start feeling more tired and uncomfortable so you may have to use your imagination, try different positions, think of alternatives to intercourse. Make the most of each other, as once you’ve had the baby you’ll both be too shattered to even think about sex for some time. It’ll be at least six weeks after your baby’s born before your partner can have sex, to give her time to heal and recover from the birth. But it could be longer than that before she wants to – exhaustion and breastfeeding don’t make a new mum feel very sexy. It could be longer than that before you want to – hard as it is to believe before the birth, you’ll be so focused on/exhausted by your baby, you’ll fall asleep as soon as you lie down. So give her time but don’t steer completely clear of her as she’ll want to know you still fancy her even if she’s not up to sex.

Money matters
Start saving. Your partner will get some maternity pay (see page 95 of the Bounty Your Baby guide or download chapter 21 here, but it’s unlikely to be as much as she was earning. If both of you set aside a bit each month it will help cover some of your costs later. Do boring, but amazingly helpful things like drawing up a budget, keeping your receipts so you know how much you’re spending and finding out about the cost of childcare and baby essentials such as nappies, car seat, buggy, cot. If you’re on a budget, and who isn’t, avoid being tempted by impossibly cute but unnecessary baby kit such as expensive designer buggies (check out www.kiddicare.com for buggies and more at great prices), baby bedroom furniture (they’ll grow out of it), baby changing tables (a changing mat can go on any sturdy flat surface) lots of baby toys (your face and voice, and, from about four weeks, a simple mobile over their changing mat is more than enough to keep a tiny baby entertained).

Paternity planning
Check out the paternity arrangements where you work. How much paid time off can you have? Can you take extra time as holiday? Talk to your partner about whether she can afford to or wants to return to work part-time or whether she’d like to take additional maternity leave (as yet unpaid), so you can plan around that. Go to www.worksmart.org.uk to find out more about your rights at work. She may not know what she wants to do until the baby is born, but you can both start making plans based on her going back part-time, say, and then adapt them later. Would you be able to work part-time too, or maybe even take on the childcare? More dads are doing just that – go to www.homedad.org.uk to read about some of their experiences.

Birth basics
Go to antenatal appointments and parentcraft classes with your partner to support her but also to ask the midwife about anything to do with pregnancy and the birth. Most dads want to be at the birth, and most mums want them there, but if you’re getting worked up about it, discuss it with your partner. Recent research by the Royal College of Midwives revealed that more than a third of mums don’t necessarily want the dad-to-be at the birth, and that four out 10 dads felt ‘useless’ in the delivery room. Prepare yourself for what’s involved in giving birth by taking a look at the Bounty Your Pregnancy guide, chapters 36 to 40. Think about practical things too such as noting down the numbers of the midwife and hospital, checking on the quickest way to the labour ward and talking through your partner’s birth plan with her.

Once your baby’s born, be prepared for the most incredible waves of emotion, expressed beautifully by one dad, Ben Whitworth:

“Although I had done everything possible to ensure we were physically ready for Amelia, I was completely unprepared for the emotional impact of her arrival. The first week after her birth I was constantly on the verge of tears. I felt I was teetering on the brink of something so big – bigger than anything I had ever had to deal with. I also felt hugely empowered by what we had created – Amelia’s birth has been a wonderful way of putting into perspective what is important and what isn’t.
“I am besotted with my daughter. Watching her grow and develop is an incredibly generous reward. Even now, five months later, her smile simply melts me. Having a child makes me feel that my existence is qualified and that this is just the right thing to do. And I feel I will never be able to overcome the indebtedness I feel towards my wife for giving me my child.”

So tired
Once your feet are back on the ground, be prepared to be exhausted. Even if it’s your partner’s inescapable role at first to wake up in the night to breastfeed the baby, your turn will come as the baby gets older. You can’t lie in any more to get over sleepless nights, so get used to going to bed early. And if you don’t already eat a well-balanced diet, make a start as it will give you more, much-needed long-term energy. Go to www.eatwell.gov.uk/healthydiet/ to get some tips.

Depression is a dad’s issue The hormones that ran riot round your partner’s body during pregnancy settle down after the birth. But many new mums still experience mood swings and may experience some form of postnatal depression after the birth. Read more about this common but debilitating condition here . And it’s not exclusive to new mums – it’s now being recognised that dads can also suffer with depression as they try to adjust to the changes and challenges of life with a new baby, (and that you can experience hormonal changes similar to your partner’s during the pregnancy). If you experience any of the symptoms of depression, don’t wait for them to go away on their own, discuss what you feel with your partner’s health visitor or a sympathetic GP. To find out more go to www.maledepression.com or www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk

Be there
Get involved as much as you can with the day-to-day (and night) life of your baby so you can get to know each other and avoid having to ask your partner things like, “What time does she need to go to sleep again?” “Why is he crying like that?” “Is that poo a normal colour?” If you get stuck in, you’ll know the answers. Change nappies, take your baby out for walks, or with you when you go shopping, have a bath with him, look after him as much as possible to give your partner a break, and give him plenty of ‘you’ time and cuddles.

The birth of your baby and those first exciting, exhausting weeks and months are just the start of your adventure as a dad. “The most amazing thing is that caring for this little, helpless creature makes you find joy in the most unexpected places,” says proud dad, Nic Ford. “There’s joy in wearing vomit-stained clothing as a badge of office. There’s joy in sleeplessness, if it helps him sleep. And there’s even joy in changing nappies. No, there is. There really is. Trust me on this one.”
Read more about why dads are so important to their children here and other issues concerned with being a dad at www.parentlineplus.org.uk