Fatherhood can scare any man, especially when Dad's bringing home his first baby.
But Valley hospitals have come to the rescue with "boot camps" for new dads. St. Joseph's and Chandler Regional hospitals and Scottsdale Healthcare Osborn each offer the courses.
"The class is totally hands-on," said Jim Preble, who has his a kid of his own, knows the drill. "The dads learn how to hold the baby, feed them and change diapers." Preble, an elementary school teacher, is the head instructor of the class at Chandler Regional.
Boot Camp for Dads covers topics such as baby care, relating to the new mom, safety and bringing mother and baby home. Class enrollment averages between 10 to 15 dads, with usually about 5 of those being under the age of 24-years old.
The class is a guy thing, so it's filled with sports analogies. The lead instructor is the coach. Other instructors, who have already taken the class, are called veterans and the fathers-to-be are rookies. The veterans often bring their children to class to help the rookies get used to being around babies.
Some moms-to-be have asked to sit it on the class. "We generally discourage women from attending because there is no subject that is off-limits, like sex after the birth, and we don't want anyone to be offended," Preble said. "It's like a support group for men."
Ron Sofka, a semiconductor production specialist in Chandler, signed up for the class at Chandler Regional a month before his daughter, Jessica, was born.
"I took the class because it was something new and intriguing," he said, "and I had never held a child before."
Sofka says the class taught him how to behave around kids, so he won't scare or intimidate his daughter. But most importantly he found he won't "lose any of my masculinity when I change a diaper."
"I learned that there a lot of ways to help take pressure of my wife once we brought Jessica home," Sofka said. He learned to make sure she wasn't overwhelmed with "baby chores."
Mike Cuellar took a similar course before the arrival of his first child at Scottsdale Healthcare Osborn. Daddy Boot Camp addresses the change in the relationship between mothers and fathers, labor, postpartum and breastfeeding. New dads also learn the basics of fathering and how to bond with their new infant.
Dr. Dean Rohwer, a first time father in March, actually decided not to take a class for dads because "I didn't think it would be that different than all the other parenting courses we enrolled in together." Rohwer felt that he learned all he would need to know from childbirth preparation and infant CPR classes.
Boot camp classes range from $10 to $30 and last from two to four hours.
Preble offers some final suggestions for new dads who are headed toward the hospital nursery.
"Number one, don't forget your wife. When you hit the door, don't bypass your wife on your way to the baby," he said. "And number two, stay involved in every aspect of the baby's care taking."
Reach the reporter at lars.jacoby@asu.edu.
