Finding out that your other half was pregnant has to be to be one of the best feelings a man can experience in his life-time. It is fair to note that not every man has been happy with the news of a little one on the way and in most cases I guess people can often be shocked to find out that they have conceived.
There has long been the opinion of men naturally being scared and or wanting to run away once a woman has told them they are expecting. Personally I am not sure where this has come from and I can only guess it's from the soaps and the trashy magazines. In my experience I was over the moon and from speaking to my followers on Twitter so were they.
It was amazing to find out the circumstances and experiences of other fathers the other day on Twitter. I was left feeling proud after hearing that many of the dads I chatted with actually had been fighting for a pregnancy or had planned theirs. Here are their replies:
As you can see many of these fine gentlemen all had unique experiences. Now I suppose I better tell my story as i am the 10th dad.... Well in a nutshell my partner has PCOS, so we never thought that she could conceive without help. It seems that Mother Nature had other ideas as after a week or two of feeling unwell my partner decided to take a pregnancy test when I was on a night out on the town with the "lads". She wasn't expecting a positive result but wanted to check anyway, she did and she was pregnant.
She then proceeded to call my mobile and after several attempt s my drunken self-answered, unable to hold back my partner came straight out with it... I am pregnant. My reply.... Are you sure? - the classic line I assume is generally the first words slipping out of many a man's mouths when they are told this. After a few minutes of talking I was ecstatic, we both were and I rushed home as fast as my legs could take me to go and celebrate the great news.
I was scared, we both were, people are not trained well to deal with the pressure in the first few months of pregnancy. We had no idea what was around the corner, no idea what we had to do at all and instead of turning to our nearest and dearest I guess we did what many do these days and jump onto a search engine.
Google was great and first time parents can find a wide range of resources to help them get through their pregnancy. We found that many resources had different opinions and were often vague. I turned to Twitter to ask some of the important questions like when is the first scan, when should I feel the baby kick and how can we work out the due date. Twitter was a fantastic network for us, I was able to speak directly to honest parents about their experiences of becoming a parent for the first time.
It is hard to keep a pregnancy a secret when you have to run off to appointments and your partner can't drink at social events. As soon as you get that first scan over and done you should find that the path to parenthood is laid out in front of you.
What was your experience?