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David Port and John Ralston
By Jenn Director Knudsen
Each month, iParenting.com spotlights a father who inspires and moves us, who embodies the qualities that we all admire in a person, a man and a father. Above all, the Dad of the Month is dedicated to his children. Rich or poor, famous or not, he shines as an example of what fathering is all about.
Colorado dads David Port and John Ralston are best friends. They have been since attending Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., in the late 1980s and then living together in Washington, D.C., before moving west. (They both were members of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, too.)
Some say living together tests a friendship's mettle. And others caution never to have a business relationship with a close friend. Port, 38, and Ralston, 39, have tested both of these theories and remain extremely close, if not closer than ever before.
Today, these two fathers, each with two young children, are co-authors of the newly released soft-cover The Caveman's Pregnancy Companion: A Survival Guide for Expectant Fathers (Sterling Publishing Co., 2006) and – based on their very positive collaborative experience – plan to write a series of Caveman books.
Port sings Ralston's praises as a self-styled and very talented chef. Ralston heaps credit for their book's strong suits onto Port, whom he affectionately calls "Porty."
"I'd have to give a great amount of credit to Dave for the majority of the writing," Ralston says. "It was a lot of fun, actually," he says of completing the book in a sometimes-harried five months, during which both authors were expecting their second child. "We're best friends; it was a very fun project," Ralston adds.
About the Authors: David PortPort says he comes from a family with "lots of divorce" and wanted to ensure his relationship with Emily was as stable and solid as possible "to have a better chance of having a lasting marriage." In August 2006, David and Emily, 38, will celebrate their ninth anniversary.
A freelance writer, Port provides copy to a variety of media in a variety of industries. He contributes to, as he puts it, "dry, old, financial-trade publications" and advanced-transportation magazines, and he pens marketing collateral, too.
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For nearly 10 years, Port also has been editing the New Parent Guide, distributed to animal shelters and given to first-time pet owners. Reaching about one million people, Port says "it's sort of a pet-parenting guide 101 [for] folks who are new to this [pet ownership]."
Once he became an expectant parent – to a human child – his writing career took off in a new direction. Within the last four years, the Ports have welcomed Jane, now a 3-year-old preschooler, and Lila, a 5-month-old baby who gurgles happily in her bouncy seat. (Port works in an office on the second floor of the family's home and can hear his baby through the floorboards during his workday – he can tell what she's doing and whether or not she's happy doing it.)
During Emily's first pregnancy, he says he was a little intimidated by the changes his wife – and therefore, he – was going through and so sought out books about pregnancy and birth. He took classes alongside his wife, too. Yet he found very little that caught his fancy or kept his interest. "I didn't really find the book that spoke to me in the language that I could best understand and that would best resonate with me," he says.
About the Authors: John RalstonBefore making his way past the Mississippi River, he spent five years in the nation's capital as a legislative assistant to Rep. Don Young, R-Ala., that state's only Congressperson. Eventually finding the government's environmental policies untenable, he left D.C. and went into the food business. He opened a few restaurants and soon mastered cooking.
"I've become adequate at the culinary arts," Ralston admits, only after being reminded of his co-author's lavish praise of his cooking skills. Today, he is the manager of culinary services at Gunnison Valley Hospital in Gunnison, about 20 miles south of his 9,000-foot-elevation town.
A lover of the outdoors, Ralston often squeezes in a stop on his way home from the hospital at a stream to fly fish for a half-hour, sometimes longer, he confesses. "It's a nice little buffer" between work- and home-life, he says.
Diana, 35, also loves an active, outdoor lifestyle and spent much of her first pregnancy taking advantage of the couple's environs. "I couldn't take enough pictures of her being pregnant," Ralston says. And many were shot while on hikes.
The couple also began "nesting," he says, spending more evenings on their own, at home instead of out with friends, and "growing together, more with the family in mind," he says. "We had such good times; it brought us closer together."
Doing this was so good for his emotional preparation for becoming a dad, he says, a process that can be scary 
and daunting. Both Port and Ralston agree that, for many guys, embracing their inability to control something as huge as pending fatherhood is a very big challenge. This is especially true for those types who take too seriously their peers' warnings that welcoming Baby means saying bye-bye to "manly" pursuits like beer guzzling, late movies, guys' weekends and 36 holes of golf on any given day.
So the duo set out to write a book they said they'd have benefited from during their wives' first pregnancies. They wanted their comprehensive book to speak to the proverbial caveman: the uncivilized, knuckledragging unibrow too fearful of pregnancy and daddyhood to enjoy and embrace the nine months it takes his woman to grow a baby.
And they did – in a vernacular and style appealing to many guys. The authors include humor, lots of funny cartoons by illustrator Gideon Kendall and sidebars and tip-filled charts for shorter attention spans. The book is written in an omniscient-narrator style and follows the first pregnancy of Gronk and his woman.
"If you are anything like Gronk, you want to believe you are self-sufficient enough not to need handholding to cope with and embrace the demands, expectations, responsibilities, milestones and amazing moments that come during pregnancy and childbirth," the authors write in Chapter 1. "Don't be deceived."
"Gronk," they go on to write, "will serve as your mentor, walking beside you on the sometimes tortuous pregnancy path detailed in the pages that follow."
And those pages are filled not only with that slightly irreverent, brass tacks kind of prose, but also nutrition information (courtesy of a dietician whom the authors consulted), recipes (thanks to Ralston himself), myriad suggestions how to pamper the mother of your child and medical facts and figures.
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Some of the funniest are in a portion of Chapter 5, whose subhead is, "The Cava Sutra: Sex and the Expectant Couple."
"At about the fourth month ... the weight of the baby begins exerting more pressure on the expectant mom's aorta," the authors write. "This can decrease blood flow to her uterine artery, the main source of oxygen to the placenta, which nourishes the gestating caveling. ... With the missionary position thus no longer an option, now is your opportunity for adventure."
Brian Ralston, 42, the author's older brother and a Chicago-based family doctor, consulted with the authors on the vast medical portions of the book. Those included insights into what to expect at regular doctor's visits and in the delivery room, such as in this passage in the book's final chapter:
"The placenta is a blood-rich organ, so consider yourself warned: seeing it delivered is not a sight for a caveman with a weak constitution."
Brian Ralston says he had a terrific time with Port and his brother during the consulting, writing and editing processes. He says when the trio was together for weekend-long work sessions spent in a rural cabin, they laughed, fly fished and drank bourbon (just like good, cultivated cavemen).
He also holds his brother in high regard: "One interesting thing about John is, he's sort of an introvert, generally not trying to call attention to himself, yet he has great friends all over the place," he says. "He's an immensely talented, unassuming, people-person, who has a lot of fun. His kids are lucky."
As are Port's, according to neighbor and friend, Brian Henning, 34. "Dave's greatest strength is the amount of time and devotion he provides to his children and family," says Henning, principal of Enterprise Solutions for Stat鱡, a management consulting company. "I always see Dave in the backyard playing with his two kids and having a great time. It's a sign that he not only is genuinely interested in being with his kids and spending quality time with them, but also sharing the responsibility of raising them with his wife, Emily."
Henning also is a booster for the book. Expecting his first child in October, he's read The Caveman's Pregnancy Companion and found it invaluable – he's handed it off to other expectant fathers. "The largest benefit the book has provided is the ability for me to put myself in my wife's shoes," he says. "I have a better understanding of what she is going through and things that I can be doing to help all of us through this exciting, but also demanding, time."
Both Port and Ralston hope all readers of their book will reap the benefits Henning articulates. But the biggest benefit of this collaboration – and their future ones – is to the authors themselves.
"We just had such a nice time; it was great doing this with such a good friend," Ralston says. "And we're still very good friends. Better, probably."