How do fathers cope during those first few weeks and months?

I know my stress turned to finances. When you're young, highly motivated and working at a job you love it's a lot easier to excel at your job by just putting in a huge amount of effort, and you're likely rewarded for this. Your family naturally becomes accustomed to this.

When you have a child, your priorities change (you can't focus as much on work) and you have less sleep. The amount of money you're spending goes up (children cost money, no doubt) and depending on your situation, there's less money coming in. While there's a ton of stress that falls on the mother's shoulders, the father naturally feels 100% responsible for the family finances. Plus, he usually won't have complete control over the spending and income, and that's pretty much the definition of stress: responsibility without control.

We were lucky in that dept., but even so, there was certainly more financial stress than before. I ended up spending extraordinary effort at work in the first few months after our daughter was born because I was responsible for a very tight deliverable and I was afraid of the consequence of a high profile failure. Now I regret not being home as much. But the bills got paid... I guess it was a no-win situation.

I am not a dad but I have to say my husband was fantastic during the first few weeks. The most helpful thing he did was to show me support when I needed it. When I was falling apart he'd hug me and say "you're doing a great job." That made such an incredible difference.