Guys – if you are running out of ideas what to cook or buy for your pregnant partner, check out the following article submitted by Carolyn Friedman.

Most people are already very familiar with the foods that pregnant women must avoid – alcohol, excess caffeine, raw seafood, and the like – but few take pause to think about what they should consume. Experts generally recommend that pregnant women stick with the portions recommended by the USDA’s Food Pyramid guidelines, with specific boosts to certain nutrients such as iron, folic acid, fiber, Vitamin C, protein, calcium, Vitamin A, magnesium, and a few others.

The following is a practical list of foods that contain these nutrients and ought to find their way into a pregnancy diet, even if some of them must be ingested in moderation or within certain parameters: Iron Supplements, Kidney, Beans, Beef, Cereal, Dark Meat Turkey, Chicken, Salmon, Eggs, Peanuts / Peanut, Butter, Oranges, Spinach, Cheese, Yogurt, Milk, Asparagus, Great Northern Beans, Tofu, Bananas, Brown Rice, Almonds, Dried Apricots, Avocados, Whole Wheat, Lamb, Veal, Oysters, Pork, Soy Milk, Pomegranates, Tomatoes, Walnuts, Swiss Chard, Pasta, Apples, Carrots, Pears, Strawberries, Kale, Dried Cherries, Liver, Soybeans, Grapefruit, Broccoli, Oatmeal, Chickpeas, Okra, Sunflower Seeds, Lentils, Pineapple, Portobello Mushrooms.

See below for more information on each food. These are, of course, merely suggestions. The best way for a pregnant woman to figure out what dietary path is right for her always has been and always will be consultation with a healthcare professional. Doctors and nurses are far better equipped to dispense advice based on a woman’s age, possible food restrictions, and overall health, as pregnancies and those experiencing them differ from instance to instance.

This is a casting call for all dads who decided to, or had to become a stay-at-home-dad as a result of the recession / global financial crisis. The story will be published on of the the UK's leading women's magazines - and best of all, the magazine is willing to pay £200 for your time - YAY!

So if you are based in the UK and are interested in giving it a go, write up a short summary of your story (including your age, former occupation, circumstances of shifting into the child care role, etc). A photo of you and your family would also be good.
Send it all to gerrie.associates@virgin.net or call Anthea Gerrie on 01580-200574.

After the selection process the journalist will do a full interview with you.

Good luck dads!

-Stef

After years of holding down steady jobs many fathers these days take a leap and start their own business. Why do they do it? Perhaps because having your own business allows you to control your destiny, get paid what you're really worth, work flexible hours, do what you've always been passionate about and so on. However these days many dads also have a desire to spend much more time with their Children. Self employment, on the face of it, offers fathers flexibility and time to spend with families and children.

Have you got a little champ who is really not keen on going to bed? Big dramas, tantrums and a lot of crying at bed time? Here are a few different strategies you can try out:

* Options - give your little one a range of options about what order they want to do things (before going to bed) such as reading a book, brushing teeth, putting on the jammies, etc. Also ask them to choose a book, etc. It's essentially a distraction technique and is aimed at getting you out of a deadlock situation.

* No sleep - tell your little on that she doesn't HAVE to sleep ... she just needs to have the lights off and stay in her bed. Get some "glow in the dark" stars or animals which can present the perfect reason for switching off the light. Chances are once they are lying on the bed for 15 minutes (trying to stay up) they'll be asleep anyway.

Did you know that there is a certain type of bamboo in Japan that only flowers once every 120 years? It's certainly puzzling how this plant can keep track of time, but everything that happens in the 119 years before it germinates will determine how much the bamboo will bloom. And that's a long time to wait to see the results.

In the same way, children don't always blossom on your timetable. The love, discipline and instruction you pour into their lives cannot be immediately seen. Your job as a father is to prune and nourish your children in anticipation of their blooming. And once they do, you'll see them grow rapidly into patient, loving and consistent people. So be encouraged, the latest bloomers often produce the most striking and beautiful flowers.

Posted with permission from www.allprodad.com

Car safety is your responsability when driving in a car with your baby, not only is there good driving practises to follow for driver responsibility there is also correct baby seat restraints and the rules around the use for optimal baby safety. For example a 3-6 month baby will still need to stay in their rear facing car capsule (or rear facing car seat that fits like a capsule). Use ‘Baby ON Board’tags on your rear window as well as window shades to keep the sun from their eyes and face.

This letter is written specifically to you so you can grow into the father you want to be. You don’t want to wait until your newborn is in your arms to start to develop fathering skills and if you think they will spontaneously erupt out of you like Christmas lights you’re wrong. BTW … mothering skills don’t automatically turn on either.

So this letter is written to encourage you to use pregnancy:

• As your time for ‘becoming’ a dad (grow some great fatherhood skills during the 5 Phases of pregnancy)
• To help your pregnant partner prepare her body to let a very big object out (no, not a watermelon but a big grapefruit).
• To learn your birth coaching/support skills so that you can also effectively work with your baby’s efforts to be born in whatever birth you have even if its not the birth you wanted.

Are you a political animal?

As we all know New Zealand is a unique country in many ways not only because there’s MMP. Besides Number #8 wire, The All Blacks and The Bee Hive, New Zealand is the only country in the world that has a Midwifery led maternity system.

Like most men you are probably couldn’t give a hoot about the politics of childbirth. Frankly it’s boring. However, you’re about to have a baby so both the wonderful aspects of our NZ midwifery centered maternity system and some unintended negative consequences of this system will impact you, your baby and its mother and the experience you have. Even if your baby or partner needs obstetrical care, your midwife or GP will continue with you.

For this short period of your life:

• You need to learn a whole new language about pregnancy and childbirth.
• Figure out what you want and what will happen within this system.
• And determine the best way for you to act, behave, manage, cope and deal with this unique period as a man, partner and father-to-be.

If birth politics really bores you to death then skip over the benefits and cut to the chase. Read the negative aspects because these impact all expectant fathers and you probably don’t know it!

Clap Your Hands

The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a four-term U.S. Senator, had this to say about the importance of fatherhood: "From the wild Irish slums of the 19th-century Eastern seaboard to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history: a community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families - dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future - that community asks for and gets chaos."

Watch this short video about the importance of being a good father.

Huddle up with your kids tonight and ask: How can I be a better dad?

Posted with permission from www.allprodad.com

Dear DIYFather-to-be

Take a deep breath then consider your life: work, sports, hobbies, technical expertise even driving a car or knowing how to wash the dishes. All of these require learned skills and then using them.

Think a bit back to when you were 7 or 8 years old and consider how many skills you’ve learned since then … beyond being able to hold your liquor!

We think skills just arrive

Often we’re not even aware of all the skills we’ve learned, practiced, perfected and use. Learning skills can come so easily to some people and in some areas that people don’t recognize how much time they practiced or repeated doing something over and over again in order to become skilled. But skills can be difficult. If schoolwork was not your strength then you know that learning can be a struggle and unsatisfactory. In fact, you know how badly you can feel when you don’t feel skilled, particularly if those skills are expected of you.

Read the instructions...

Everything has instructions. There is no shortage of things that come with instruction booklets. Most people who write the guides and setup manuals to the things you buy are from other planets. They write as if you already know how to do what they're supposed to be informing you about.

I personally hate to read instructions but find it a necessary evil.

Here's the deal...

Step one: Read step one...

If you don't learn to read "instruction language" you won't get it when you really need to build something, set up something, or accomplish something that requires your deciphering of the instructions.