Prepping for the Baby

Its been awhile since I wrote. It's been a little hectic. In under a week, the due date for our little dude went from December 27th to December 14th... a shock... to December 7th. Whoa. Its not terribly bad. He's a little small and they are concerned about his fluid intake, so they are going to take him to term, then deliver him into the world. His vitals all look good. Its more precautionary if anything. But... still... he is coming VERY soon.

The main question I am asked daily is, "Are you ready?" They answer is no. I am not. Its certainly not for lack of excitement and a healthy amount of nervous and scared in there, but the "no" is because it feels like I have too much to do to be physically ready. I don't even know how to change a diaper.

I've been working on my basement and fast as I can, but in two weekends of drywalling with friends on Saturday and working alone on Sunday for pretty much the whole day, I still have some work to do. What does drywalling have to do with the baby? Well, we can back up.

The room that serves as the office will become the baby's room. In order to move the office out and into the basement we need to "finish" the basement. Then I can repaint and redo the baby's room. My wife would like me to also scrape the ceiling in the baby room and retexture it. Then I need to assemble furniture and prep the room. All in all, this sounds fairly reasonable. In reality it is a ton of work, especially after losing the extra three weeks I had to do it.

My wife and I do this all the time. She sees a project like its something on HGTV. Its a big project, but all you see is one guy working on it in perfectly clean clothes, then an hour later its done and looks amazing. She doesn't see the details. I see ALL of them. I see every tiny step I am going to have to take to accomplish the job. Its not that I am mad at her about it, but its where our stress is coming from right now. I will work all day on something that takes much longer than either of us thought it would and then she will come check out the work go into all the things we still need to do. It kills me.

On top of the massive contraction job that is the house, we are also having an issue with my wife's car. The engine needs replacing, as well as the brakes and tires. The car is only 3 years old! Without going in to that whole thing, the main gist of it is that my wife doesn't want to drive this car anymore. She feels it is cursed and is a lemon. After a discussion and several days of stress and tears for my wife, we have decided the get the car fixed (the engine is under warranty), and look into training it in at a later date. Right now it is just way too much.

So, I'm not sure if this is what male nesting looks like or if this is a unique set of circumstances. I really would like to be preparing by reading through parenting books or discussing values and how we are going to split up some of the work at home, or even financial planning. Instead, though, I will be in the basement, screwing in drywall. I will be in the garage, building furniture. I will be doing a lot of stereotypical man-jobs.

I think my main frustration with this is not that it all needs doing. I don't mind doing most of this stuff, especially if I'm NOT on a deadline (which I very much am right now.) I think I am frustrated because it all feels superficial and unimportant compared to little human on the way. I feel like I should be preparing emotionally or perusing some parenting books to decide how I want to parent, etc. There are people and cultures out there with much less than us able to raise amazing people without all this. They don't have a finished basement with a play area. They don't have a car. They have each other. I wish we were concentrating more on each other and having positive vibes for the baby as opposed to talking about getting a new car or drywalling and texturing the basement. It was a real struggle for us to even conceive this little guy and there are now some minor complication with his birth. I just want to get past this superficial stuff and onto that stuff that life is really made of.

Sometimes I get perspective checks or thoughts that make me either appreciate what I'm doing or the exact opposite. I ask myself things like, "What if I was in a car accident and died right now? What would I have spent my last days or hours doing?" If I died right now, I would be upset with myself for being in that basement instead of with my wife, dog, and little un-born boy on the couch watching movies and making jokes and creating a loving, positive environment.