Sometimes you're kind of just pushed aside, like just sit there and watch or, you know, I think back in the day, they actually had to hang out in the waiting room, which is fascinating.

Hey, guys, welcome to the five-minute fatherhood podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Bethke, along with my friend and mentor, Jeremy Pryor.

Join us Monday through Friday as we chat about quick tips, skills, and ways to help equip you on your

journey as a father to build your multi-generational family team on mission. Stay tuned.

What's up, guys? Welcome to another five-minute fatherhood. So a lot of you guys have a

maybe a delivery. Your wife might be pregnant, about to get pregnant.

You might actually know around the date you might end up in the hospital trying to support your

wife. And the question is, what do you do? How do you support your wife really well through a

delivery process, whether that be in the hospital or in a birthing center or at home and at home delivery? What are some of the best ways to do that? And I have a friend, Kyle Ranssen, who wrote this amazing article. It has like 10 points. I'll put it in the Facebook group so you guys can read all the points. But three of them really stood out to me as like, oh my gosh, this is so important. Okay, the first thing he says is learn. Okay, know the

basic nuts and bolts of labor. Terms like dilation and effacing. Like, this is true. It's important that you know what's going on, figure out what's going on. There are a lot of things that need to happen, that decisions that might need to be made in a moment, this happened in a couple of our deliveries where suddenly, like, I found myself having to make the sort of deciding vote. And because I had learned a lot of these things, it was possible. It was actually one case in which I went against what the doctor wanted, and it turned out, you know, not that it was, it was a monitoring situation that could have really created some problems for us later. And so I just

said, hey, is there a way we can do it differently? And I just, I knew enough about it that I was

able to help redirect in that situation. Another one is be an advocate. Be the chief advocate

for your wife. Don't rely on doctors and nurses to take care of her. You do it. Consider that

the nurses and doctors are just there to help you take care of her.

I love this point. So it's your job to be the primary advocate for your wife. A lot of things

are happening in the hospital. Nobody is directly thinking about your wife and your baby as much

as you are. Right. Nurses might have five different people there they're caring for. Doctors might be

running around between

10 different patients. Like, you need to be the advocate. That's another reason why you want to be

educated. And the last one, he said, is direct traffic. Once labor starts, your wife will be

busy. So it's up to you to manage the traffic. This also applies to family and friends coming to

visit all of you in the hospital after the baby is born.

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