Bootee Camp Prepares, Reassures Fathers-to-Be : Parenting: Expectant dads mingle with ‘veterans’ in classes that make participants feel more at ease with infants.

Not so many years ago, childbirth was a shrouded rite of womanhood. The husband paced the waiting room floor while his wife labored away in some secret, distant room--then, magically, their baby appeared in the hospital nursery.

Dad’s main parental responsibility was to bring home a paycheck. While Mom sought advice about child-rearing from her mother, her friends and Dr. Spock, Dad sought advice about his golf swing from business clients.

They’ve come a long way, baby.

Everyone knows that it’s simply de rigueur for a modern father to cut the umbilical cord in the delivery room. And his stepped-up participation doesn’t end there. So involved are dads these days that they’re even attending the sort of baby classes traditionally confined to “Mommy and Me” powwows.

The Irvine Medical Center began such a class--Bootee Camp, a monthly session for the neglected other-half of parenthood--four months ago. At the two-hour encounters, first-time fathers and fathers-to-be trade war stories.

“Veterans” who were on the other side of the changing table just weeks before return to show off their sweet rewards.

“When the guys come back with their babies, it gives them a sense of, ‘I’m teaching the younger guys how to do it.’ It’s an ego booster,” confided Greg Bishop, who counts his four young children among his credentials to be the class mediator.

Bootee Camp, he said, provides a setting where dads, too, can share with same-sex peers their concerns about parenting.

“The top question on their minds is, ‘Will I be a good father?’ ” he said. “I tell the guys: ‘The good news is, you’re going to be a great dad. The bad news is, you’re always going to question how good a parent you are.’ ”

St. Jude Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Fullerton also offers a course for fathers-to-be. “Generally, men don’t sit around and talk about feeling issues,” said instructor Mark Jablonski. “They talk about football and politics--certainly not about being a father.

“The group gives them permission to talk about the emotions they’re dealing with--they’re excited, but they’re also scared. They walk away from the class with the sense that they’re not alone in having those feelings.”

On a recent Saturday morning, a handful of Bootee Camp enlistees exchanged babies and baby talk while waiting for the class to get under way.

“So this is what they are,” marveled recruit Scott Mayshaw, as veteran Robert Budd handed him 6-week-old Chloe for practice.

The almost-father handled Chloe with extreme caution--”as if the baby were a bomb,” one new father described his own dad’s approach to infant-holding. “Don’t worry--she’s not as fragile as she looks,” Budd comforted.

“What brought you here?” Mayshaw asked Mike Thurston, who was accompanied by his 8-week-old daughter Paige.

“My wife told me to come,” Thurston answered, to a chorus of laughter and “mine too’s.”

It would be the first but not the last discovery of common experience.

Over the next two hours, the men would learn that they all aimed to be more involved parents than their fathers were, they all felt less equal than their mates in the joint job of parenthood, and they all debated whether their wives should go back to work or stay home with the baby.

“My father was a salesman, and I saw very little of him when I was growing up,” said one of the participants. “That got me to thinking about what I can do to provide the closeness we lacked.

“He’s sort of the macho type. As a matter of fact, when I told him I was coming to this class, he said, ‘Why are you going to do that? Bootee Camp? Sounds silly.’ He doesn’t understand what this is all about. His mind-set is back in the ‘50s.”

Bishop said: “It goes with the territory to think about your upbringing when you have your own children. You take what you can from your childhood experience--the good and the bad--and learn from it.”

Mayshaw, 33, a sales manager in Irvine, opened a lively discussion about the infamous dilemma that two-career parents face. “We’re going through the deal: Can we afford for my wife not to work?” he said. “She’s got an excellent job, and we’ve become accustomed to a certain lifestyle. But we’re wondering, should we give that up?

“If she stayed at home, we’d have to reduce our mortgage. It would probably mean moving out of Irvine to a less expensive area. But so what? Maybe the sacrifice would be worth it.”

Steve Calhoon, 35, an Irvine architect and the father of 3-month-old Jeff, said, “My wife is already anticipating that when she goes back to work it will break her heart.”

For the short term, at least, Thurston and his wife have solved that problem. “We saved up money before she got pregnant so that she could stay home for a couple of years,” said the 29-year-old Huntington Beach salesman.

Expectant dad Scott Brake, 52, remarked that the advent of his baby would put an end to annual European vacations. “Instead of going to London this year, we went to the British Festival (in Costa Mesa),” said the real estate salesman, who lives in Irvine.

The new fathers took turns complaining that they feel a little excluded from the process of bringing up baby. “I had some jealousy at first because whenever Chloe cried, my wife was the only one who could calm her down,” said Budd, 26, a sales consultant in Irvine. “And my wife is breast-feeding, so she’s the only one who can feed the baby.”

He alleviated that frustration by taking charge of bathing Chloe every night. “That’s my special time with her,” Budd said.

“It’s important that you not get involved with the baby only under your wife’s direction,” Bishop counseled. “Sometimes Mom does all the delegating, which makes it hard for you to get to the baby.

“You have to take the initiative and do it your way. Look for excuses to get involved. If it’s a choice between doing the laundry and taking care of the baby, choose the baby every time.”

Budd seconded that recommendation: “Don’t get stuck just emptying the diaper pail, or you’ll start to resent it.”

All of the fathers, Bishop included, expressed a concern that they don’t carry their weight when it comes to household and baby chores. “There’s no way you can ever get to 50-50--I’m convinced of that,” Calhoon said. “I feel like I never do enough to help my wife.”

Mayshaw joked, “That starts the day you get married.”

Still, regardless of the increased workload, Bishop advised against a round-the-clock nanny. “With a live-in, you’re always going to be third string,” he told the men. “The more your baby needs you, the better off you’ll feel.”

As Bootee Camp broke up and the troops prepared to go home (no quick task for those transporting baby equipment), father-to-be Mayshaw noted that he thought the two-hour class had done him a world of good.

“We get bombarded with advice from books and Lamaze classes,” he said. “It all seems to be geared toward one universal baby, and one set of parents. But what I’m hearing here today is: this guy gets up with the baby during the night, that guy doesn’t even hear the baby; one baby sleeps five hours at a time, another only three.

“These guys are saying, ‘Take all those tools you’ve learned and just see what happens. Everything will work out.’ ”

Newport Beach psychologist and family therapist Gloria Sklansky pronounced father-to-be classes “a wonderful idea.”

“It gives men a sense of involvement right from the start so they don’t feel that child-rearing is a skill unique to women,” she said. “These men didn’t grow up with the idea of shared parenthood. (Classes) prepare them for what they can expect to happen and what they can expect to feel.”

One inherent problem with a class for new fathers could be that it won’t attract some of the men who need it the most, Sklansky observed. “It may have a self-selected audience of men who are unusually open to discussing their feelings and who already have given a lot of thought to their roles as parents,” she said.

“But even so, it’s worthwhile. None of us can be too good of a parent.”