Have you ever felt like your husband seems an outsider in your pregnancy? It’s completely normal! After all, our husbands are watching the whole process but not feeling it themselves. Luckily, there are simple ways to involve your husband in your pregnancy.
As it turns out, having your husband be an active part of your pregnancy has several benefits for you, your baby, and your husband. He’ll feel closer to you, closer to the baby, and you’ll start nourishing that family that you’re all building together.
There is really no downside to the whole thing.
But, how do you get to actually involve your husband in your pregnancy? After all, men don’t get pregnant, so they’ll never know, right?
Wong! There are several ways to get him on board the pregnancy train. You can start with these 8 simple hacks to involve your husband in your pregnancy!
#1 Share with Him How You Feel
This is the most straightforward item on this list.
Men never have and never will be pregnant, so they don’t know how it feels… physically.
Sure, sharing your emotional feelings with your husband will also do a lot of good to both of you and his involvement in the pregnancy. But sharing how you physically feel can have the power of really having him on the loop of things.
Every day I told my husband how I felt, as the weeks progressed he would know if the baby was kicking, or if I was feeling discomfort, or joy, just by looking at me. So I guess that’s the next best thing to being pregnant himself.
Here are a couple of things I shared with my husband that you could share with yours, to get you started:
- “I’m feeling cramps, constantly”
- “I’m feeling the baby kick!”
- “I’m feeling nausea”
- “I’m super bloated today”
It was like a weather report, but it kept him involved, and it made us both happier!
#2 Plan the Pregnancy Announcement Together
Pregnancy announcements can be as elaborate or as simple as you want. Just make sure you involve your significant other in the making.
This simple gesture goes a long way. A pregnancy announcement should be the decision of you both. So getting him to make choices about this is a natural way to involve your husband in your pregnancy.
We can get so caught up in our own pregnancies that we forget these simple things. Try to enhance his involvement by personalizing the announcement his way, too.
If your husband is into golf, for instance, then you can take a photo in a golf court. Or maybe you want to treat your family to dinner and let them know then and there. Just make sure you figure out then when, and the how, together.
If it serves as inspiration, we invited our closest family to dinner to let them know by the time I was 8 weeks pregnant. Then, we slowly rolled out the news via Whatsapp.
By the time I was 16 weeks pregnant, we decided to post it on Facebook, video game style. Here’s the pic we used:
My husband picked the shoes for that picture! I chose the colors, and he chose the theme!
#3 Take Your Husband to the Prenatal Appointments
Probably you and your hubby have mismatched work schedules.
But, if you can, try to involve him in every appointment, some way. Most of our pregnancies are lived through those moments seeing your baby in the doctor’s office or listening to advise on labour.
So, by sharing these appointments, you’ll be sharing the emotion at the moment with your husband. Making it an effective way to involve your husband in your pregnancy.
The most important appointments for him to be present are:
- The first appointment!
- The first echo sonogram!
- The 12-week appointment
- The 12-week echo sonogram
- The 16-week appointment
- The gender disclosure appointment
- The last week appointment.
All the others are important, too, but if he can’t go you can keep him on the loop by:
- Sharing pictures and videos with him immediately after you exit the doctor.
- Recording important conversations and then let playing them for him.
- Calling him to tell him what happened as soon as it happened.
#4 Decorate the Nursery Together
One of the things we enjoyed the most about my pregnancy was decorating and painting our son’s nursery.
My dad handmade the crib according to my husband’s specifications. We bought the most important things (like sheets, baby monitor, and foamy rug) together, and we decided to paint a Little Prince image on the wall together.
My husband made the drawings and I painted them (with zero-VOC paint), and we both put glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. The picture above is how our finished work looked like.
The result was far from perfect, but my husband was overexcited by the pregnancy by the time we were done. He kept going daily to check our masterpiece and told the baby all about how mommy and daddy made the perfect room for him when he came home.
It was extra sweet.
#5 Read or Sing to your Bump Together
This can be super awkward, or super easy. But remember that if it’s awkward for you, it’s ten times more awkward for your significant other. So encourage it anyway.
Sing to the baby yourself and ask for your husband to help with the chorus, or to find the lyrics. And build up his excitement slowly. It’s a cute and effective way to involve your husband in your pregnancy.
Men love to feel needed, so be sure to let him know how much you need his help in singing to the baby.
If you decide to read books, ask him for help choosing them, or making the male character’s voices. Find a way for him to feel that his intervention is useful, and he’ll soon be completely engaged and spontaneous about it.
When your baby is born, he’ll recognize your voice of course, but if your husband has talked to him too, he’ll recognize his voice as well, and he will turn his head looking for daddy.
It will be worth it.
#6 Make Him a Part of the Bump Pictures
We see all the time bump pictures that only have mommy (obviously) and baby. But daddy is behind the lens taking the picture.
Make sure you get him in the frame and try to get him to choose themes of the pictures.
Fun stuff you can do together for a photo shoot are:
- Let him paint your belly.
- Get funny mommy, daddy, baby T-shirts.
- Dress up completely.
- Strip down completely.
- Be creative with your photo shoot theme.
#7 Create the Baby Registry Together
Let him choose some items in your baby registry. For real. Even if you don’t agree.
Yes, even if they are silly.
You can make up some rules, like, each of you gets 3 vetos. But try to choose most of the items together.
When your husband sees the nursery full of stuff he picked up, he’ll feel inevitable more involved. And proud, and happy with himself.
Maybe your husband’s taste in baby’s stuff is not exactly yours. But try to find some middle ground, and don’t shop anything without showing it to him, first.
It’ll make all the difference in the world for him.
You can create a baby registry for free in Amazon, click here to get started.
#8 Let Him Pamper You
Again, men love to feel useful. Your husband probably will be going out of this way trying to please you, so let him!
Most women at one point or another feel super annoyed with their husbands during their pregnancy. I wasn’t the exception. I had to deal with cramps, morning sickness, dizziness, and… my baby-husband.
But he was trying, and at first, I didn’t acknowledge it. Luckily, my doctor attributed it to crazy pregnancy hormones and encouraged me to give him a shot.
So I did.
He helped me in so many ways, he cooked for me, massaged my feet, called me a zillion times a day, bought me my favorite video games, cleaned the house, did the laundry, comforted me, you name it!
He was so happy to be helpful, and I was glad for the help. This was what finally did it for us, it’s an essential step to involve your husband in your pregnancy.
Not only did this bring him closer to the pregnancy, but it also leveled up our relationship altogether!
Skipped to the End?
No worries, here’s a short video summary:
That’s a Wrap
There you have it. 8 Simple Ways to involve your husband in your pregnancy.
All in all, our husbands normally mean well. And, if you think about it, it’s really not their fault that they can’t get pregnant for us.
Let him know how important he is to your pregnancy. It’ll help you, your husband, and your baby!
Have you tried these? Do you have a piece of wisdom to share? Give us a shout in the comments!
Did you enjoy these 8 tips to involve your husband in your pregnancy?
Follow me on Pinterest for more great content!
If you enjoyed this article please share it or Pin it!
[DISPLAY_ULTIMATE_SOCIAL_ICONS]