The Couples’ Pregnancy Guide: How to Navigate Pregnancy and Childbirth as a Team

The Couples’ Pregnancy Guide: How to Navigate Pregnancy and Childbirth as a Team

Practical strategies, checklists, and planning tools to help couples navigate the pregnancy, childbirth, and newborn stages together

Preparing for the birth of your child is a life-changing experience, but it doesn’t have to be an overwhelming one. Couples can tackle everything that needs to get done if they work together as a team, all while setting the foundation for a strong partnership that carries them through the next stage as first-time parents. The Couples’ Pregnancy Guide offers supportive advice, strategies, and checklists couples need to create a plan that works for their unique relationship. There’s no script for how things will go in pregnancy, but you can get through it with confidence and optimism when you do it together.

The Couples’ Pregnancy Guide features:

• A month-by-month breakdown of discussion-worthy topics, from prenatal screenings and parental leave to childcare options and birth plans

• Guidance on how to support your partner to improve communication, strengthen emotional attunement, and lay the groundwork for a strong parenting team

•Checklists and worksheets to share responsibilities and empower non-birthing partners, and brainstorm solutions when joint decisions are particularly tricky

•Practical advice for challenges like easing tight finances, moving past communication impasses, and advocating for yourself in medical settings

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INTRODUCTION

As we sit in our living room, Rachel feeding Aaliyah and D’Anthony playing with Taj, we can’t help but reminisce about the two pregnancy journeys that have brought us here. Beautiful, educational, and eventful journeys filled with excitement from month to month as we anxiously awaited—and then experienced—all the pregnancy milestones we had only heard about. And now we are so excited to help you begin your first pregnancy journey together!

But first, a little bit about ourselves: We are D’Anthony and Rachel Ward, partners in life and parents of two beautiful children, Taj and Aaliyah. We’re a Black millennial couple whose world lit up with a new understanding of “family” when we became parents—so much so that becoming a father inspired D’Anthony to launch The Dad Vlog, a digital-content brand that celebrates the simple joys of raising a family. Now, together, we’re excited to join forces to share with you our story as a couple, as you begin your own momentous journey through pregnancy, childbirth, and life with your own unique and miraculous creation.

What’s special about this book is that it’s as much focused on you two as a couple as it is on pregnancy or parenting. It’s about how to navigate the various stages and challenges you will inevitably face together with grace and efficiency, and with a commitment to teamwork with the precious person you’ve chosen to take this life walk with. It’s about making your parenting story work for you, because these defining times will teach you so much about each other; hopefully enough that you feel, going forward, you can conquer anything as a team.

But so much of life isn’t big challenges. Much of life involves everydayness, the potentially mundane. And it’s easy to let these moments fly by without notice. When we were pregnant with our eldest, Taj, we often found ourselves jumping ahead, debating on which HBCU he would attend, or what gift we would get him for his 16th birthday. By the time we were pregnant with Aaliyah, we’d gotten more adept at appreciating all the little everyday details. Throughout all this, we knew there would be many moments, and many decisions to be made. And instead of agonizing over every little decision, we took comfort in knowing that any decision that was made, we made it together.