Getting Ready For Baby

The two of us are becoming ever more excited about the arrival of our son, which is now only a few months away. Preparations are well underway for his grand entrance, but we do have an added level of stress on top of the pregnancy. We need a new home. We're currently in a professional apartment block which doesn't take kindly to babies, and thus we are in the midst of searching for a new home, which will see us make the move into relative suburbia.

This is rather unnerving to me, as I've always wanted to live in the city and have been having a wonderful time doing so. The sudden shift to a place of less convenience is going to be a big change for me, but it is one that I await with a mixture of pleasure and excitement as well as trepidation.

Last night it really hit home how urgent our search is right now, when my lady was showing me just how visible our son's kicks now are. Her tummy now clearly pulses when he kicks, like a metronome ticking down the minutes until he's in our arms. I have been feeling galvanised into action, and we have been throwing junk out and looking for houses and viewing houses and making plans galore.

While I am very much aware that I will get no sleep once he's here (thanks to dozens upon dozens of people telling me so. I GET THE PICTURE, OKAY?), I really could do with a lie down. Getting ready for baby is more than just making sure there are nappies and talcum powder in massive quantities – it's also a case of mentally preparing yourself to take care of a small creature who has no experience of anything whatsoever in the world.

It won't have heard your jokes before, it won't have seen every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation before, it won't have heard you sing karaoke or have suffered your cooking. Yet. Getting ready to look after a small person who is essentially a blank canvas is one of the biggest challenges I'm facing right now. I'm looking forward to it all, but I'm scared too. See, kids? Grown-ups get scared too.