Men’s Health During a Pregnancy: Do We Care?

Men's health matters to Choices Pregnancy Center.Does a pregnancy center have anything to do with men’s health? Isn’t pregnancy a women’s issue?

Those questions are exactly why we address men’s health related to a pregnancy. To begin with, if there’s a pregnancy, a man has been involved. When he wants to stay involved, supporting his health will promote better outcomes for the pregnancy.

But men’s health involves more than getting medical checkups and making healthy lifestyle choices. (Other medical professionals take care of that.) Men aren’t just bodies, so their mental and spiritual health is also important.

And nothing makes that fact clearer than when a man is involved with a pregnancy. Especially an unexpected pregnancy. That’s where we come in.

Promoting Men’s Healthy Self-Esteem

Often men feel marginalized during a pregnancy. On one hand, some men don’t want anything to do with the child they helped create. On the other hand, men may be denied their right to influence the future of their own child. Neither denial nor powerlessness promotes a man’s mental health.

For this reason, Choices Pregnancy Center invites men to participate in pregnancy options counseling sessions along with their wives or girlfriends. With the coaching of our client advocate, many men seize this opportunity to grow as leaders and partners in decision-making. Rising to meet this new challenge, they grow in confidence and self-esteem.

Eradicating Men’s Pregnancy Worries

Pregnancy can seem like a huge, overwhelming Unknown. And the unknown gets men worried.

So we step in to take the mystery out of this big Unknown through our free Earn While You Learn program. Combining video lessons with discussion on topics that address their needs and concerns, the program gradually erases men’s worries.

  • Worried about feeling clueless? Men can get their questions answered through customized lessons they’re interested in.
  • Worried about providing for a child? Participating fathers earn Baby Bucks to spend on the supplies they want for their families. They become good providers.
  • Worried about failing as a dad? Men can get targeted training in fatherhood skills. Even men who did not have good fathers as role models can learn to be successful, caring fathers.

Building Men’s Relational Health

Men, like women, long for lasting, healthy relationships. But our culture encourages casual sex without commitment. When this lifestyle leaves them hurting and sometimes physically ill, they seek something better. Something healthier.

We reach out to them starting in their high school classroom. Our staff is regularly invited to teach on wise dating practices and relationship-building skills. For some young men, it’s the first time they’ve heard there is a better way to do relationships.

Other men come to our center with their partners for tailor-made relationship training through Positive Partnerships classes or for classes in co-parenting (whether they are fathers/mothers or stepfathers/stepmothers.)

Either way, men develop new skills in communicating, respecting partners, prioritizing trust, and keeping sex in its proper place. They find out better relationship skills make life run a whole lot smoother.

A healthy man, in a healthy relationship, empowers a healthy pregnancy.

Men’s Healing after Abortion

Women are not the only ones who suffer after an abortion. Research by Arthur Shostak, author of Men and Abortion: Lessons, Losses, and Love, indicates that at least 8% of men were “deeply traumatized” by an abortion. Other men were impacted to differing degrees.

Yet men are often unable to express, let alone deal with, the grief they experience. For years, this root cause of their issues with anger, addiction, depression, and risky behavior goes untreated. Maybe even unrecognized.

When men finally connect these symptoms with the grief that caused them, Choices Pregnancy Center is ready to assist them with abortion recovery, either through one-on-one or group sessions. For these men, old wounds can finally be healed.

Exploring Spiritual Health

Facing fatherhood drives some men to re-evaluate their beliefs. Because Choices Pregnancy Center is a faith-based organization, we aren’t afraid to help men explore their questions on faith and how it can impact their lives going forward.

Though it’s often an overlooked and undervalued facet of a man’s health, spiritual health will give him a firm foundation on which to build his life and the life of his family.

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Men’s health involves the whole man.
And when men’s whole health is promoted,
the pregnancies these men are involved in will benefit.

If our services can help you or a man you know,
call or text us today to get started.

 

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