The Baby Countdown

Since I am humming Final Countdown as I write this, feel free to hum along as you read it.

We are week 37 now so the baby is full term!  Which means it could arrive anytime between now and the next three weeks.  It seems inconsiderate for it not to narrow down the time frame a bit but I will have to wait to have that discussion after it arrives.  In all seriousness though I have mixed emotions.  I have become used to my wife's  protruding belly and feeling the baby push against the palm of my hand through her.  I am accustom to the pregnancy in way that it has integrated into my life.

The experience feels more real now that the due date is so much closer.  Many people comment when they ask me how far along my wife is that I am unusually calm about the situation.  I always found the comment strange, was I supposed to be a nervous wreck?  Am I supposed to be afraid, excited?  How should one feel at this time?  Am I broken or did I fail to realize something?  Perhaps my ADHD is a hidden blessing as I tend not to dwell on any one thing at length.

I do have some anxieties, its just they center on different things.  When we want something we can and usually do imagine it.  If you want a car, you can see yourself driving it and you can imagine the experience.  I have always wanted very much to be a parent, but now that it is happening I find I am unable to visualize the experience.  We have taken child birth classes, watched movies, and read books on birth.  I am filled with the facts of the experience, and yet when I place myself there in my minds eye I am blind.  In those brief moments when I feel anxious I think it is mostly a fear born out of that inability to imagine.

At first I wondered if my ability to "see it" was a sign that for reason it would fall short of actually happening.  More recently I have begun to come to understanding that perhaps the birth of my child is not something to be imagined, but instead something to be experienced.  It has often been said of me that I am emotionally very strong ( as both an insult and a compliment ).  I have a sense that this experience in all its wonder will not just "move me" but permeate through me in a way I have yet to grasp.  Maybe underneath it all that's what I'm really anxious about.