The Expectant Father: Facts, Tips and Advice for Dads-to-Be, Second Edition

A quick Amazon search reveals 3,523 pregnancy books on the market. How many of these are written for the mother? About 3,510. A dozen others use sarcasm and exaggerated humor -- often at the expense of the pregnant mother -- rather than useful information to draw the heathen male into the future world of parenting. There has got to be a better way for a father-to-be to learn what he has gotten himself into.

Fortunately there is. The Expectant Father is that 3,523rd book. It is a well-written, month-by-month explanation of what is going on both emotionally and physically with the mother, the baby, and you the father. At 250 pages plus references, it is packed with information while still being portable. It doesn't necessarily go into a great amount of detail on each subject, but it mentions most important things at least in passing, and you can always refer to the Internet or What to Expect... (which your partner will undoubtedly have on her nightstand) for more details.

Be forewarned: this book is slightly new-agey at points. But hey, Brott is just offering suggestions that the reader is free to ignore. Overall this is a useful reference written with the father-to-be in mind as a principal reader, not an afterthought.

My wife bought this book for me during our fourth pregnancy. We both enjoyed reading it - I to read the perspective of another father and her to see if I was doing things the way I was supposed to. All in all, the book provides a broad spectrum of information for fathers-to-be - including everything from the physical and emotional changes occurring to the mother to how to plan for your financial future as a dad. The Expectant Father got me to thinking on many occasions and served as a starting point for many pregnancy-related conversations with my wife. Two other books I highly recommend are: A Child is Born which contains outstanding pictures and explanations of the development of the baby, and We're Pregnant!, a great book to read together because it was written by an expecting couple and provides a true-to-life rendition of the ever-changing life of expecting parents.

The author has the idea that the sooner dads get involved in being parents the better they'll be and that the best time to get involved is during pregnancy. I know this is true for me. I know it sounds funny but I felt like I was a real participant in the pregnancy. Yeah, my wife was carrying the baby but I was going through a lot of psychological stuff too and this is the only book out there that dealt with what my issues at all.

I read this book twice--the first time when my wife and I were expecting our son and then again during the months before the daughter we'd adopted from Korea arrive. Both times I was amazed at how calming and educational and really funny this book was. I'd never been a dad before. Never even held a baby before my wife got pregnant and I wasn't too sure about what to do. Of course it's all pretty natural, but this book really made me realize that all the worries I was having were normal and it gave me lots of great ideas of ways to be more involved in the process. It also got me thinking about the kind of father I wanted to be and whether I wanted to be the kind of dad my dad was or some other kind.

Being a father is really important for me and this book has made me a much better dad. I've been reading the next books in the series and they're just as reassuring and helpful.

Thanks, Mr. Brott!

PS I've caught my wife looking through the book and she's told me that it helped her understand me a lot better and made her see how important it is to me to be a good parent.

My wife just had our first child a few months ago. While she was pregnant two of our friends gave me copies of The Expectant Father, which they recommended highly. I have to agree. I'd been reading my wife's pregnancy books, which were absolutely useless--they barely mentioned dads at all except to say that I should be sensitive to my wife's needs, which I already knew. And I'd checked out a few of the other pregnancy books for dads but they were so condescending and insulting that I practically gave up reading altogether.

This book is completely different. It deals with men's concers in a straightforward, sensitive, funny way. It's filled with very insightful information that helped me make sense of the feelings I was having during my wife's pregnancy and activities that I could do to stay involved. It's not always easy to take the stand to be an involved dad and this book helped me realize that I wasn't alone in what I was going through. I know that this book has helped me be a better father than I ever would have before. I'll be giving it to all my buddies whose wives are expectant. AND, I've already started the next book in the series, The New Father: A Dad's Guide to the First Year. It's great too!

My appreciation for "The Expectant Father" grows as I read more fatherhood books. Most authors spend 90% of their book trying to convince new fathers that fatherhood really isn't so bad, that we should be nice to the mother and perhaps show up for a doctor's appointment once in a while. For those of us who are already excited about the prospect of having a child, this tact doesn't cut it.

Brott certainly advocates being involved during the pregnancy, but he spends much more time explaining how to be involved. Topics from when to tell your friends about the pregnancy to financial planning are covered. More unusually for fatherhood books, Brott describes what the mother is experiencing and how the baby is developing. This has been extremely helpful as my wife's pregnancy has progressed.

I keep this book handy, and refer to it at least monthly.