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Dad-to-be's Hospital Bag
Packing for Dad's Time During the Labor and Delivery
By Jacqueline Bodnar
When Allison Duff of South Daytona, Fla., and her husband, Garrett, went to the hospital to deliver their daughter, they did something most couples do – packed a bag for Mom, but they didn't give much thought to what Dad would need. While she arrived ready and prepared, he didn't have much to help him get through his two-day hospital stay.
"Honestly, we thought of more than we needed for me, but we didn't think about packing for him," she says. "He ended up sleeping in the chair next to me for two nights and had to drive back home to get his toiletries and other items that he wanted or needed."
Garrett learned quickly that they not only forgot to pack him some basic supplies, like toiletries and a change of clothing, but that there were other things he could have used to make the stay more comfortable. Being a contact lens wearer, he would have benefited from taking his case and solution to the hospital.
"He was so exhausted that he couldn't wear his contact lenses," Duff says. When her husband was asked what he wished he had remembered to take, one word came to the top of his list: soap. The hospital offered only liquid soap, and he had to leave to buy some bar soap to take a shower.
"Most birth planners don't include what a dad should bring," says Dr. Bruce Linton, a licensed marriage and family therapist, author of Finding Time for Fatherhood: Men's Concerns as Parents (Berkeley Hills Books, 2000) and founder of the Fathers' Forum programs, offering classes and groups for expectant and new dads. "We, as expectant dads, are often so focused on our wives and what they need that we just don't consider a few basic creature comforts for ourselves, like a clean shirt or an energy bar that might help us during our stay in the hospital."
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