The Time Draws Nearer

As each day passes, we get nearer and nearer to the point where Emily stops expanding Martha's belly and expands our family. In some ways I am still nervous, and in some ways I just want this baby to be born. The leading promoter of the latter has become my co-workers.

Now that she is out of work, they ask me daily how she is and how the baby is. I never quite know what to tell them. There have been minor changes in the swelling both up and down. The same with her blood pressure. She has begun to have contractions more frequently. I test my brain to the limits to come up with useful information while inside my head there is a little screaming voice that says, "If there were any major changes that were any of your business, you would have heard by now!"

So now I sit around at home once more, waiting on the arrival of two people whose time to join us is as of yet unknown to me. One is my daughter, whom only a higher power knows what date she will choose. The other of mine is a friend who is getting out of the service right around now, the precise date of which is unknown to me only because my memory is bad and I can't get ahold of him. I am guessing he will show up first though. I also worry that I might be wrong. My boss made it a point to take me aside today and tell me that they obviously needed me to work on schedules tomorrow, but if my wife went into labor she obviously understood. A little unnerving given the fact that she pegged my niece's birth down to the day and she had only met her once.

So there we have the obvious contradiction of me saying I want her to just be here and saying I am worried she might do just that. I am not sure which is more unnerving in my boss's comment though. The fact that she was laying out the supposition that my wife might go into labor tomorrow, and has been right in the past, or that she felt the need to convince me that if my wife went into labor I really didn't need to come into work.

At first I was slightly offended by the imagined insinuation that I would miss my own daughter's birth to fill a shift, but I have given some examples in the past to such a thought process, including but not limited to re-scheduling an anniversary dinner with my wife so the two of us could bail the company out of a hectic situation. This is slightly different though. I can't exactly say, "Hold on Emily, I will be back in about six hours and we can pick up where we left off." Nevermind the fact that if I could my wife would surely not be thrilled by the delay.

Of course, as we get closer I have a whole new set of worries. Those that have to do with the whole delivery process. My wife is pretty calm about it thus far, but then, what does she have to work herself up about? (Ducking various flying books.)

I watched the end of this comedy about the miracle of childbirth the other day, coming in just shortly before Emily (coincedentally enough) was born into the world. There were many humorous points to the scene, but only one registers in my mind. The woman laying on the bed screaming, "Where have you been? You've been running around the hospital like a girl scout while I have been trying to push a watermelon out of my...."

Oh yeah, as if that whole delivery process isn't going to be bad enough without having to deal with Martha turning into Attilla the Hun. :)

Truthfully I do have one major concern about the birth of my child and we have already discussed remedying it by acquiring a video recorder. While some question whether or not this is the right thing to do, my one underlying fear is that of being afflicted by the Cosmic Trickster at the most inopportune moment. I can envision Martha getting down to the final stretch and finding myself stricken at that precise moment by one of my (thankfully less frequent) episodes and being unconscious through it. (Wait, I missed it, push her back in.)

Anyway there are just a few things I have been stewing over the last couple of days. Still, I will try to take it one day at a time and look for the lessons to be learned along this road that we call life, or something close to it.