From the moment you learn of your partner's pregnancy, you're thrust into a strange new world and strongly encouraged to participate in the pregnancy and birth process.

Yet you may feel awkward about sharing your fears and insecurities. You may even be actively discouraged from doing anything that could potentially upset your pregnant partner. That's both natural and frustrating. Here are seven fears fathers-to-be commonly face:

Security fears

The biggest fear many men face is the one most deeply hardwired into our culture: Will I be able to protect and provide for my family?

In most families, when the first child arrives, there's a sudden (if temporary) shift from two incomes for two people to one income for three. And that's a tough burden to carry in today's world.

The father has to be strong in ways he hadn't counted on before. He has to provide both financial and emotional support: His partner will need his help because she'll be undergoing dramatic physical and emotional shifts, and he has to be ready for her to lean on him.

Many expectant parents, both men and women, worry about the loss of independence that comes with having a child. After the baby arrives, new parents become more focused on caring for and providing for their family than on personal freedom. Most men report that some friendships fade and that they don't have as much time out with the guys.

But there is good news here too: Nothing can prepare you for the love you'll feel for your child and the sense that everything in your life has far more meaning as a dad. As your child grows older, it will be important to re-establish more of your freedom (with a new sense of responsibility).

Performance fears

More than 80 percent of the fathers I meet in my practice and come across in research surveys say they were worried they wouldn't be able to handle it when their partner was in labor. They were afraid of passing out, throwing up, or getting queasy in the presence of all those bodily fluids.

Such fears may be based on cartoons and sitcoms and our culture's way of making fun of men, but two things became clear: The men all expected it, but it almost never happens. In follow-up interviews, it turned out only one out of 600 men fainted – and that was in a Fresno, California hospital in August after the air-conditioning had gone out. (Two nurses had to leave the room, too.)

If you really can't tolerate blood, step out of the delivery room. Don't ignore your fears – try working through them by talking to other fathers who've been there.

Typically, the first thing fathers say when they come out of the delivery room is, "The baby and my wife are fine. It's a girl." And the second thing they say is, "I didn't get queasy at all. I came through it okay."

A related concern for most new dads is how well they'll be able to care for a newborn. It is a rare man who has even thought about baby care, let alone had any hands-on training before the baby arrives.

Many men reported a "terror" that their children might "break" with male handling. It's useful to keep in mind that no one is born with a gene for automatically knowing how to care for an infant! Learning any new endeavor, including holding, bathing, or comforting a new baby, is mostly about practice.

New dads can learn from moms and even more from other new dads. I was recently at a birthday party in which the moms were busy in the kitchen celebrating with the 1-year-old, while the dads were all caring for their infants.

Paternity fears

About half of the new and expectant dads I interviewed eventually came around to admitting they had fleeting thoughts that they weren't really the baby's father. But when asked whether they suspect that their partner had an affair, they were insulted and hurt.

On a logical level, it's a disconnect, but on an emotional level something else is going on. New dads-to-be dwell on their own inadequacies: "It's too monumental, too godlike, being part of the creation of life. Someone bigger than me must have done it."

One father I encountered was an interesting guy with bright red hair, freckles, and a crooked smile. His baby had bright red hair, freckles, and a crooked smile. And he said with a straight face, "I wonder if my wife was unfaithful." But he went on: "It just seemed, I don't know, that this was too good, too miraculous to happen to me."

Mortality fears

When you're a part of the beginning of a life, you can't avoid thinking about the end of life. Thoughts about your own mortality can loom large: You're not the youngest generation anymore. Your replacement has arrived, and if everything works out right, you'll die before your child dies.

For a lot of young men who go around thinking they're immortal or invincible, that's a big change. One of my clients was a world-class racecar driver, and he gave it up. He told me, "I don't have the right to die anymore."

Fear for your partner's or child's health

Childbirth is such a nerve-racking experience. Scary things can happen to the person you love most in the whole world. You might lose the baby, or you might lose your partner and have to bring the baby up alone.

It really wasn't long ago that giving birth was fraught with danger: When my grandparents had children in the early 1920s, childbirth was the main cause of death for women age 50 and younger. These days, even if the birth goes well and the baby's fine, you'll still find that most parents waited with bated breath for that first cry and secretly counted the newborn's fingers and toes.

Relationship fears

Men often fear that their partner will love the baby more than anyone on earth – and exclude them from that intimate relationship. It's a very real fear of being replaced. But that fear often occurs before a new father meets his baby and falls in love himself.

It's true that having a baby can put a real strain on your relationship with your partner. It's also true that dads can feel left out of the powerful mom-baby bond, especially in the newborn weeks. But each parent brings different strengths to the partnership.

The child usually relies on the mother for security, comfort, and warmth. The child looks to the father for his sense of freedom and separation and sense of the world. Of course, those qualities can come from either parent, but when all these strengths work hand in hand, it's fabulous.

My advice to dads is to make it clear that this is his child too, and that he's a partner in raising him. He needs to kick Mom out of the house some days and spend time alone with his baby.

A majority of the men I've interviewed worried about when (and if) the couple's sex life would resume and how it would be. They also questioned whether they and their partners would ever have time, privacy, or energy.

They didn't feel they could talk to the new mom about this. Talking to other new fathers helps normalize the average three- to six-month lag before the couple's customary sex life resumes.

Fears of "women's medicine"

Most men are not used to the ob-gyn establishment: It can seem cold and foreign, and it's something we don't understand well. Even as observers, many men feel embarrassed and inhibited around stirrups and gynecological exams. Hospital examining rooms and delivery rooms are often not made comfortable for a father.

Being prepared – that is, making decisions together about the kind of care you want for your partner and baby – helps tremendously. Having a birth plan, with a set role for you, also helps to make clear what's ahead in the process.

Jerrold Lee Shapiro, Ph.D., is a professor at Santa Clara University and a licensed clinical psychologist. He is the author of When She’s Pregnant: The Essential Guide for Expectant Fathers, an update to When Men Are Pregnant. He also wrote The Measure of a Man: Becoming the Father You Wish Your Father Had Been, and co-edited Becoming a Father. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife. They have two grown children and two grandchildren.