'I'm not a glorified sperm donor!'

That's what I feel like saying to most NHS employees I've come into contact with since my wife and I learnt we were pregnant with our first child last September. Once we found out, we went to see a GP. 'What can I do for you?' he asked. 'We're pregnant,' I announced, my cheekbones aching from a weekend's ecstatic grinning. 'Well, at least one of you is,' he replied, sarcastically. For the rest of the appointment he directed all questions to my wife, not once making eye contact with me.

We left the surgery feeling that the NHS now considered me obsolete, the sum total of my usefulness spent at conception. When we later turned up at the hospital for the 12-week scan ready to be welcomed as parents-to-be, a couple sharing a major life experience, the sonographer flashed me a 'What are you doing here?' look. During the scan, my wife's questions were answered with a smile; mine casually dismissed. On the bus home, I vented my frustration that I'd been made to feel unwanted, again. My wife was angry too. She said the GP and the sonographer made her feel 'like I've got to do this on my own. Like I can't depend on you, because fathers - or men - can't be counted on.'

For Sheila Kitzinger - one of the world's most respected experts on pregnancy and birth, co-founder of the National Childbirth Trust teacher training scheme, and the first person in the UK to run antenatal classes for mothers and their partners - both are common complaints: 'Some NHS hospitals still treat the pregnant woman as a patient who must be screened and made to fit into the system, rather than as a human being who has significant relationships. I can only think that staff find it easier to handle women alone and get them to submit to authority than if partners are involved, too. It's easier to boss vulnerable women about.'

Jack O'Sullivan, co-founder of Fathers Direct, a charity geared to helping fathers make the journey into parenthood, agrees: 'Maternity services focus entirely on the safety and wellbeing of the mother and baby, which of course is important, but there are fathers right across the country sitting in maternity wards, dying to know more.'

The next appointments weren't much better. The first midwife we saw actually cracked several 'Men are useless' jokes and told my wife to get used to the idea of getting up every night to tend to the baby, because men 'can't be bothered'.

At the 20-week scan, after being completely ignored by a different sonographer, I knew once and for all that I was simply not welcome.

My experiences are fairly atypical, according to Mary Newburn, head of policy research at the National Childbirth Trust: 'I think this bad practice happens for two reasons. First, because maternity care is exclusively provided by the health service, rather than social or education services; and secondly, because the health services tend to follow a "medicalised" model of care [primarily screening for pathologies and treating them], rather than a social model of care [seeing pregnancy and birth as part of a social continuum of entry into parenthood, where the mother is usually well, but she and her partner need information and support as well as clinical care].'

O'Sullivan sees another problem in the system: 'There is a shortage of midwives in the NHS, and they don't have the time or resources to prepare the mother and partner for the transition into parenthood.'

At 22 weeks, we saw a new midwife, who told us about the only NHS antenatal classes that she was able to offer. They were held during the day - no good for my wife, who works full-time - and were not open to partners. When we told her that we had already booked National Childbirth Trust couples' classes (eight for £180), she tried to persuade us that the NHS classes would be better, failing to understand that we were not happy with classes that excluded partners.

Claire Hallam, a spokesperson for the Royal College of Midwives, told me that this was highly unusual, that partners are encouraged to attend classes wherever possible. O'Sullivan backs her up, advising me to change hospitals. Newburn is less surprised: 'Some [only one or two] NHS trusts have axed antenatal classes completely. I suspect your local trust has been cut back.

It is good practice for there to be women-only classes for those who want them, but this should be an option, not the only thing on offer.'

It's clear that the NHS system isn't going to change overnight. So, alongside booking the NCT classes, my wife and I now swear by Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa's alternative pregnancy bible, Bountiful, Beautiful, Blissful: Experience the Natural Power of Pregnancy and Birth with Kundalini Yoga and Meditation and find time once a week to do her video The Method: Baby & Mom Pre-Natal Yoga together. Although the hip-widening, pelvis-expanding, birth-training exercises are testing the limits of my male body, the video creates an important space for us to bond with each other and our baby. We've also bought a heap of books by Kitzinger, and her campaigning for individual choice has given us both the information and courage to start planning the kind of birth we want - ideally a water or home birth - rather than be steered into a convenient birth that suits the NHS but not necessarily us.

Just as folklore has it that no two births are the same, no two parents have the same experience of pregnancy. Everybody understands that NHS budgets necessitate a generalised way of doing things, but room must be left for individual needs and requirements.

· For information, go to www.nct-online.org; www.fathersdirect.com; www.sheilakitzinger.com and www.parentlineplus.org.uk