Almost time

It seems ages ago I found out I was pregnant, and yet I wonder how it is December already. The day after tomorrow is the big day. It hasn't really quite sunk in yet.

There is a bassinet in my dining room, a pile of newborn diapers in the bathroom. I'm sorting through slings and swaddles and tiny sleepers, making room for a swing. My freezer is stocked with meals. I have piles of things ready to go in they suitcase in my room. My parents will arrive tomorrow night to take care of Kathleen. I'm prepared.

Still somehow it seems surreal, hard to believe that in a few days there will be four of us living in this house. It isn't that I can't open myself to the possibility that everything will be okay, that the baby will be alive and healthy and come home in a normal course of time. No, it's simply that the change hasn't quite sunk in. I keep talking about Kathleen and how she doesn't know what's about to hit, how things are about to change. Maybe she isn't the only one.

It seems so long ago that I watched the light turn from gray to pink to yellow with her during early morning feeds. I remember—almost—the sleepless haze of those days. With just her, it was hard, but easy. I simply fell into her rhythm. Now she has a different rhythm, and falling into the baby rhythm of wake and sleep won't work. I wonder how it will, and I remind myself that people do this all the time.

I've spent nine months knowing I was going to have a baby, waiting, waiting, waiting, but here, two days before the birth is supposed to happen, I find myself filled with wonder that this is it, the time is here.