Dad's Guide to Pregnancy For Dummies. Sharon Perkins

is placed into the womb. Fertilization can take place by either placing a concentrated semen sample in a dish with the egg or via intracytoplasmic sperm injection, or ICSI. In ICSI, a single sperm is injected directly into a mature egg. Even with ICSI, fertilization may not occur, because the egg or sperm may be chromosomally abnormal, which in some cases isn’t evident just by looking at them.

      

Try not to make too many long-term decisions about how far you’re willing to go because undergoing fertility treatments is like riding a roller coaster — after you’re on, it’s harder to get off. Especially when it feels like your baby could be just around the next corner. Make decisions month to month and procedure to procedure to avoid stress and allow for an open, ever-changing dialogue with your partner.

Sharing Your Decision to Have a Baby

      Deciding to try to have a baby is a very big, very exciting step for most couples, and increasingly it’s something many people choose to share with a select group of friends and family members. News of an expanding family is usually met with joy, cheers, and even a few inappropriate jokes about your sex life. But although sharing good news is fun, you also need to be prepared for people in the know to ask nosy questions and offer unwanted advice — all of which becomes less fun if it takes longer than expected to conceive.

      Considering the pros and cons of spilling the beans

      

Sharing the news means you’re turning your quest to have a baby into a mini-reality show that your loved ones are going to closely follow. Having a well of support during this time can be great, but having your mom and dad hinting for info every time you talk on the phone can also feel intrusive.

If getting pregnant takes longer than expected, you’re also setting yourself up to have to deal with the inevitable questions about the delay. On the plus side, if you and your partner must deal with infertility, you need all the support you can muster.

      Just make sure you’re both ready to continue sharing information and dealing with questions from the people you tell. Trust us when we say that after their curiosity is piqued and their excitement sparked, there’s no turning back, especially for a first-time grandmother-to-be.

      Handling unsolicited advice about reproduction

      You may think you have a handle on lovemaking, but after you announce to the world that you’re trying to have a baby, it may seem like all the folks in your life suddenly morph into Dr. Phil.

      Now that reproduction is fodder for morning news programs and countless blogs and Internet sites, more people have more sound bites and nuggets of wisdom to offer you and your partner than ever before. If your mother tells your partner she shouldn’t be eating that grilled hamburger because the Today show said so, or if she tells you that you really should be wearing boxers rather than briefs, you may find yourself at wit’s end before you even make it to the bedroom.

      

If your loved ones start interfering or offering advice that you don’t want, thank them for their excitement and interest, but reassure them that you have the situation under control. Remind them that people have been having babies forever and let them know that being bombarded with all this information — be it from them, the TV, or the newspaper — stresses out you and your partner, and that can decrease your chances of conception.

      Not all unsolicited advice is about the act of having sex. Some people may think you’re too young or too old to have kids. Your parents may chime in about how expensive kids are, implying that you’re not financially ready to have a baby. Perhaps your stressed-out brother (and father of three) tells you to enjoy your freedom while you still can.

      

Whether somebody thinks you’re too immature to be a father because you still play video games or that your wife’s job is too demanding for her to be a mother, remember that the only voices that matter are yours and your partner’s.

Chapter 3

      Non-Traditional Dadhood

      IN THIS CHAPTER

      

Becoming a dad in a non-traditional way

      

Putting together your new family

      

Spelling out who’s who in your baby’s life

      

Staying involved when you’re out of town (or country) during the pregnancy

      Not all dads are part of a mom, dad and baby makes three scenario.Maybe you don’t have a partner. Or maybe you do — but you’re both guys. In today’s world of reproductive science, you can become a dad even if you’re short a few eggs. There’s always a way.

      That’s not to say becoming a dad under these circumstances is necessarily easy, and it’s often not cheap. And you’ll certainly be faced with more decisions to make than the traditional Mom, Dad, and Baby household. But in this chapter, we help by walking you through the decisions you’ll have to make about egg donors, carriers, and who gets to know the details.

      On the other hand, you might be part of a traditional family—most of the time. But, for whatever reason — maybe you work on an oil rig, are in the military, or have decided to take a year off and live in a commune to find yourself — you can’t be home for all or part of the pregnancy and birth. Although we can’t magically whisk you home for all the exciting parts, in this chapter we can show you how to stay involved and help your partner feel your support even if you’re half a world away.

Becoming a Two Dad or Dad Alone Family

      If you’re a guy, you can supply half your baby’s DNA, but you still need someone to supply the other half. This is true whether you’re a single guy alone or if you have a partner who’s also a guy. In either case, your first order of business will be to find someone who can donate an egg to you. Unfortunately, donating eggs isn’t nearly as simple as donating sperm, so finding a friend or someone altruistic enough to donate to you might be difficult. In that case, many fertility clinics have egg-donor programs in which carefully screened women of childbearing age go through the donation process in exchange for a monetary fee.

      The legality of this gets tricky from one state to the other, so make sure you know what your state’s regulations on egg donation are before going too far into the process.

      If just finding the right egg were all you needed to do, this process wouldn’t be so difficult. But, you also need someone to carry the baby for nine months and give birth to them. You also want to make very sure — as sure as is humanly possible — that the person you choose will want to give your baby to you at the end of nine months. States have regulations on surrogacy as well, but this is the kind of sticky mess you want to do everything in your power to avoid.

      Who’s supplying the egg? The sperm? The womb?

      There are more than a few moving parts to coordinate in this type of baby-making