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For as long as I can really remember I've thought about being a father. To me, having kids is possibly the most important thing I will do with my life. Part of me will go on with my children, and their children and so on for generations to come.

I'm 24, not exactly old, but no longer a kid myself. A little over a year ago I met my partner over an internet dating website (that'll be another article). We fell very much in love and moved in together in July last year. At the beginning of September we found out she was pregnant.

We weren't planning for a child, but it wasn't entirely unexpected either. Amy (my partner) had been having some problems with her pill and we hadn't been entirely careful with protection. Needless to say when we found out she was going to have a child there was absolutely no decision as to what we'd do with it.

Our baby is due on the 17th April. Thats a little under 3 months away now. The last six months have been a rollercoaster of emotions, excitement and preperations. I can't pretend to be wise, or to have any real qualified answers, but I can share with others in my situation.

1) Give a lot, take a little.
I've really learnt how to give much more freely and willingly. Whereas before it might take me 5-10 minutes to get off the sofa and make a cup of tea for my partner, now I do it straight away. I offer to help her as much as she likes but I never pester her to accept. That way she can choose what she wants me to do and how much she wants to be fussed over. I don't ask for much in return, a thankyou is all it takes every once in a while. She's got the hard job of going through the pregnancy, not me. I just do what I can to support her.

2) Paternal instincts can take a while to kick in.
My partner dove straight into getting ready for the baby and it was pretty scary at first. She'd have what seemed like crazy urges to just go off and buy something or get something ready for the baby. It took me a while but I'm there now too. Money's been tight and we haven't been able to do everything we'd have liked to have done but it doesn't matter because we know our baby won't ever go short of anything. I learnt to accept my partner's early maternal instincts and just go with them and in turn that helped my own feelings develop too.

3) Talking to your partner more really helps.
My partner has what seems like a million different sources on pregnancy and yet not once has there anything just given to me as the father to tell you what to expect. I talk to my partner, read bits every now and then in her books and just generally ask a lot of questions. The fact that we talk through whatever she reads in her books not only helps me prepare for whats to come but also puts her mind at ease about it.

4) Just accept the strange as if it was normal.
My partner woke me up a couple of weeks ago at 1am saying she'd had a nightmare about her family's house burning down. The way she described the dream it had clearly been very vivid to her. The was absolutely no way she was going to get back to sleep until she knew nothing had happened to her family. So at 1am in the morning we got dressed, went down to the car, and drove the 10 minutes to her Sister's house just to check on them. The whole thing took 25 minutes before we were back in bed again. Okay so it might have seemed crazy at the time but I'm so glad I did it because she slept fine the rest of the night and that was the most important thing.

There is probably more I could say but I'm not at the end of the pregnancy yet. Maybe once I've got through the birth and the first few weeks I'll write an update to this but for now I thought I'd share what's happened to me so far.

Learn more about this author, Christopher Davies.
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