Your journey from the Dude Zone to the Dad Zone may have started off slow and steady, but it really starts to ramp up in speed and trajectory as you get through the 2nd Trimester and head deeper into the 3rd Trimester. Of course, everything will completely blow up once Baby arrives, but we’ll hold off on that for now and just focus on trying to clearly explain what we mean by “ramping up” and how you can easily adjust to your actions to handle it all with ease.

Let’s start by mentioning some common things that you and Mama should be doing here together in the 2nd and 3rd Trimesters to get better connected to each other and better prepared for Baby. Things most couples start working on include getting a nursery set up and decorated, attending a Birth Class (Dad Tip #6), hiring a Doula (Dad Tip #7), figuring out items to go on the Gift Registry (Dad Tip #9), visiting potential Birthing Destinations (Dad Tip #11), and lots of pre-natal visits with your Birth Team sprinkled in all throughout. These are just some of the more frequently mentioned ones. There are countless others, such as reading Baby books like Welcome To Fatherhood, listening to Baby-related podcasts like Baby Talk w/Katie & David, and researching Baby names, birth plan options, and countless other things.

*FYI, for a sneak preview of my upcoming video course version of WTF, check out the video for Dad Tip #7: Dude, Hire a Doula here.

And sure, Mama is probably leading the charge on these things, and that’s 100% to be expected since she is in fact already a Mom right now. She’s also probably devoting a ton of her own time, money, and energy (TME) into all of this, and certainly way more than you have been doing! However, you should definitely be participating in all of these activities to some degree, and if you’re like most of the guys I work with (and like me in my first pregnancy journey!), you should probably be participating A LOT more in all of them than you have been. Which brings us right to the heart of the Dude Zone struggle – balancing your Sacred Individuality (the real you) with your growing list of Family Responsibilities (the role you).

Let’s look back to the chart that I asked you to make a few weeks back in the Dude Zone: Core Items & Options list. We started with a pretty comprehensive list of your Core Items, Social Connections, and Self Care activities, but then I asked you to quantify your “usual” Dude Zone TME invested in each of them. For example, “Golf” might have been a core activity, in which case the TME investment might look like 2x/week = 10 hrs/week = $120 week. Or “Hiking in the Woods” might look like 1x/week = 4hrs/week = $20/week.

I then asked you to make 2 separate columns to the right of the first TME column and then label them “Down Shift” and “Bare Minimum.” You were then asked to make some simple guesses as to what your TME investment in each activity might look like if you had to Down Shift it, and then again if you had to cut it back to Bare Minimum. Golf might have gone down from 2x/week to 1x/week to 1x/month, for example.

Here comes the fun part. Look at all those NEW things I mentioned above that Mama is probably leading the charge on. They all have very real TME costs, and some of them are quite substantial!

For instance, and from a Time standpoint, many Birth Classes run for a few hours a week over the course of 6, 8, or even 12 weeks. That’s a lot of hours! And all that registry stuff can often involve multiple trips out to various stores, sometimes going back to the same store almost a dozen times to add/subtract/revise the registry. Most importantly for this conversation, that’s also a lot of hours of your Time. And all those hours have got to come from somewhere!

From a Money and budgetary standpoint, the costs of “getting ready for Baby” will vary but they will almost always end up adding up to a lot more than you hoped for. New furniture, new paint, new devices and decor, strollers, baby seats, etc. This list can feel never-ending at times, and the costs will mount up quickly. Real money is involved here, and it also has to come from somewhere in the family budget, right?

From an Energy standpoint, just thinking about all this stuff can be exhausting, especially if you’re like most guys and don’t know anything about baby teething rings and don’t really care which kind you get. Same with strollers and car seats and everything else! This energy demand is harder to quantify, but is still very real and has to come from somewhere. 

In short, all those new things happening are going to put increasing demands on your personal TME budget, and will absolutely curtail your ability to maintain anything like your usual relationship to all your Dude Zone items. Where SO MANY guys struggle is they don’t quite grasp the concept that their previous Dude Zone lives are over, and that their best chance of thriving in the Dad Zone is recognize this reality and start making adjustments NOW. They are stuck in thinking that each “event” of Baby-related activity is just a one-time occurrence, and after its over they can “return” to their regular Dude Zone life. NOPE.

Afterall, you simply can’t continue your “usual” habits of golf with your buddies on Sat afternoon, dinner and drinks with wife and friends Sat night, brunch with wife and friends Sun morning, and then football Sun afternoon if you ALSO need to be working on the nursery, tidying up the registry, interviewing some doulas, and visiting a local Birth Center, right? Where is all that extra TME required for the Baby stuff supposed to come from?

Satisfying the growing Family Obligations demands will require your “Role you” self to really step up here, and stepping up also means stepping out of the Dude Zone. The question for you here is how to step out of the Dude Zone while also remaining connected to all those things that combine to support the “real you” as well?

This is why we built out the Dude Zone chart of priorities in Post 4 of this series. You can refer back to it time and time again to see where you want to focus your remaining TME so as to maintain a meaningful connection to the things that support your Sacred Individuality, the “real you.”

I’ll save the work of making a 3rd chart with all of these things here, because I’m sure Mama already has all of these, and many more, all written down somewhere. The point here is to simply be aware that this chart exists someplace over in her Mom Zone, and your only real job at this point is to simply be aware of that fact.

Next week we’ll discuss the common struggle areas known as the Dud Zones, how get out of them when you’re in there, and more importantly, how to avoid them in the first place.

*Pro Tip Addendum, Dad Tip #5* - Get ahead of much of this drama by being the one to first make Baby-oriented activity suggestions for the upcoming weekend as recommended in Dad Tip #5. You get double “Dad Card” credits for making these suggestions, and also have the opportunity to build in some protected time to devote to some of the items on your Dude Zone Chart.

For example, say you check your Dude Zone chart and decide that still want to play golf Sat afternoon with your buddies this coming weekend, but are willing to give up football on Sunday. You then approach Mama with something like this: “Hey Babe, I know we have a lot of things to check at the Baby Store this weekend, and we should probably finalize our paint choices for the nursery too. I’m playing golf with the guys on Sat, so why don’t we plan on jumping on the Baby list after brunch on Sunday. We’ll have all afternoon to take our time and get some things accomplished.”

She might reply with something like “Ok, honey, but don’t you usually watch football on Sundays? I know last week you were getting pretty frustrated at the idea of spending the afternoon out?”

And then you bring it all home with: “Sure, I like football, but not as much as I like teaming up with you to get things ready for our Baby!”  

*A key point to mention here is that you aren’t so much asking as you are suggesting. That difference is key. No credits for you if you are “asking” your partner if you can play with your friends. Sure, you want to coordinate, but def not ask!

Your Dude Zone Chart will help you keep track of what’s real for you, it will help you appreciate the how the new demands on your TME will certainly cost you the ability to keep all of those activities running at their usual speed, and will help you really show up as the “helpful and supportive” Dad-to-be that is working his way to the Dad Zone.