A Man's Week-by-Week Guide to Pregnancy: Weeks 1 and 2

When a man learns for the first time that he is going to be a father there is a definite flood of emotion that follows, followed by months of fear and preparation. This fear is not in relation to being a father, but just the basic primal need to provide for a man's family. Men who are more enlightened must spend a little bit of time in the early months of pregnancy learning about the process that mommy and baby are going through. As outsiders to the birthing experience, we must educate ourselves in relation to what is happening and when. Using gestational age of the baby, this is a look at what men should know about weeks 1 and 2.

Weeks 1 and 2 of gestational age for your baby are quite easy to understand as they will be the two weeks between the mother's last period and conception. As a woman must be ovulating to get pregnant and ovulation is roughly two weeks after the last period this is when conception is assumed to have taken place. It may be weird for you to get used to the idea that your partner is 10 weeks pregnant, but the baby is 8 weeks old as there is no conception until the end of week 2 or early week three.

The reason that doctors and other medical professionals made switches to gestation age is that it is easier to point to and count from. As it is obviously difficult to decide when conception occurs for people who are actively trying to get pregnant, this way is much easier. If you happen to be one of the people that was trying actively to get pregnant you can think of these first two weeks as the time that you were "trying" and enjoying the process. So what is it that a man should know about their partner in this time?

Understand that as a man this is the equivalent of learning that you will be starting in the Super Bowl, BCS National Championship, World Series, NBA Finals, Final Four, every PGA Major and you won a gold medal in the Olympics all at once. Then, take this feeling and multiply it by a million and it is what a woman who wanted to get pregnant and did get pregnant will feel like when she discovers it worked. Your job is to make the time that you are "trying" to get pregnant very special for the (hopefully) expectant mother.

Make the actual moments of possible conception special, but more than that, make sure that your partner knows that this is very important to you too. Make special meals, go to a special dinner or movie, make the night special because it is the night your entire life will change.