I’m really no good at this…

As Monday lunchtime arrives, we’re down to the last 24 hours. My nerves are completely shot, and the stress is now manifesting itself physically (those of you who know me know exactly what form that manifestation is taking). Colleen’s got the anticpation twitterpation as well; and while I won’t even attempt to portray what she’s going through as anything but orders-of-magnitude greater than my worries, though I can only speak for me, so will say that I’m pretty close to a quivering puddle of something unpleasant at this point.

Don’t worry, I’ll manage to pull myself together enough to function and perhaps lend some level of morale support while we make our way through the actual event (or at least provide my wife with some form of distraction while the medical team is doing their thing). When confronted by actual events, I can rise to the occasion; when confronted with the anticipation of these kind of events, however, the emotional stress gremlins can usually get a foothold.

While knowing the exact day and hour makes for much easier planning and organizing leading up to things, it also provides a specific focus for anxiety. You win some, you lose some, I guess.

The upside of this is that we’ll be all done with the waiting by this time tomorrow, and will have something (and someone) else entirely to focus on, and we can put this whole waiting game behind us.

That’ll be a nice feeling.

Anyway, once we get past the actual delivery, get stabilized, and settled, and get the kids introduced to their new sibling, expect to see the standard weights and measures that everybody asks about, and probably a photo or two (unless the tabloids care to pay us for the priviledge of publishing the first baby photos – any interested publishers can send their financial proposals here) late Tuesday evening.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. All I’ve left to do at work is put the last few bits of work behind me, set up my out-of-office email rules and update my voicemail. And, of course, the last-minute baby-shower/cake thing.

After that, it’s back to waiting out the last 18 hours.

See you all on the back end.