The Allen Birthing Center, located in historic downtown Allen Texas, is the birthing center my daughter chose to deliver her baby in May 2009. Allen Birthing Center is a free-standing birth center, staffed by 3 experienced and highly-educated certified nurse-midwives (CNMs), offering prenatal care, labor support, delivery and exam of the newborn, postpartum care, well-woman exams, family planning, and primary care.
As soon as my daughter learned about her pregnancy, she had what seemed like a million questions and fears for a first-time mother, which is understandable. We discussed birthing options, the average cost of delivering a baby in a hospital vs. a birthing center or homebirth, pros and cons of each option etc, so she could make an informed choice for herself and her baby.
I was very careful to just explain the facts of each option because I didn’t want her to feel any pressure or influence from me about how or where to have her baby. Just because I chose the home birth option to deliver her and her older brother, and hospital births for my first four children, doesn’t mean she should make the same choice I did.
My daughter asked me, “If you could do it all over again, which option would you choose now?” I had to be honest and tell her that if I had known years ago about certified midwives, birthing centers and homebirth options, I would have chosen to give birth to each of my children at home. The differences between laboring and delivering a baby in a hospital vs. delivering at home or at a birthing center for low-risk pregnancies are huge.
I suggested she check out Ricki Lake’s Business of Being Born documentary, and explained that she needed to create a birth plan where she would list her personal preferences for labor and delivery, including how and where she would decide to give birth. I also explained that she needed to decided whether or not she wanted pain medication or an epidural for pain relief during labor, because that would have everything to do with where she would labor and deliver her baby.
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Believe it or not, expectant fathers have just as many questions, concerns, worries and doubts about pregnancy and parenthood as expectant mothers do. Unfortunately, there aren’t nearly as many resources and helpful literature available for the father-to-be to get advice and helpful tips about pregnancy as there are for the mother-to-be. Most pregnancy books tell women to eat right, exercise, and maintain a low-stress lifestyle, but they offer very little in the way of explanation of how such choices affect the baby, and those books don’t address the concerns of the dad-to-be.
, and is in my opinion the best guidebook for fathers- and mothers-to-be in their journey through the nine months of pregnancy and beyond, far and above any other pregnancy book for men or woman combined. Also included in this edition are chapters on labor and delivery, a chapter on Cesarean sections, as well as a chapter that addresses questions and concerns you may have regarding caring for and getting to know your baby in the first few weeks after bringing him or her home.
If you’re expecting your first child, you’re in for a number of surprises, most of them being good ones. Pregnancy can begin with a wide range of emotions for the father (and the mother), stimulating feelings of both fear and hope, so understanding your feelings during this time can help you begin to see how your role from man to dad is developing, and how you can best stay connected and involved in the pregnancy right alongside the mother. Men who are about to become dads often express concern about their partner’s and the baby’s health, worries about money (How are we going to afford this?), and concerns about what type of father you will be (Will I be a good dad?).
There is discussion on prenatal communication, sex during pregnancy, finding childcare, dealing with late-night wake-ups, changing diapers, dressing babies and young children, sex after pregnancy etc., all from the expectant father’s point of view. Time magazine has penned Brott with the nickname “the superdad’s superdad” and for very good reason. 
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