WARNING: upcoming complaining rant. If you don't like those, just hit your Back button and find something else to read.

So far, this whole Baby Thing has been a roller coaster ride for me, to say the least. To say that I'm nervous, scared or uncertain would all be vast understatements. I keep thinking generally good thoughts about being happy and excited to have a child with Amy (she's gonna be a great mom) but once I actually get past the initial concept, the details slap me hard.

For instance, I'm finding that I just don't really want to talk about the baby-having issue. Aside from those who were maybe a bit older on their first one or those who didn't focus their whole lives on procreation as a prime directive. I appreciate all the good vibes from those who put most of their adult lives into parenthood, but to be utterly honest, I am growing very, very weary of comments like "you'll do fine," "don't worry, everything will work out great," or anything that comes out with a blanket "everything" being "great" or "fine" in the end. Gah!

All this has tended to do is make me think things like "how the *bleep!* do you know I'll be great and everything will be fine??!?" It's just such an irritating concept to me that the only thing most people seem to want to say is just random encouragement of a generally positive nature. As long as you say "great" and "fine" then, well... I guess we're golden! Pop the champagne!!

Facts are, I've got a lot of work to do. I have to make everything fine for it to be fine. Nothing is going to turn out great unless we do a good job here. I'm pretty confident in myself figuring things out and I'm very confident that Amy will keep it together -- which I must say is the single most comforting thing during all of this. However, the fact is, I have no choice but to figure things out. It's not like many other things I've done all these years where I had some leeway of failure. If we mess up something, there's not much of a "do over" or "whoops, that's a bummer" about it. We need to do things as good as possible all around and make sure we're as "great" and "fine" as we can be.

I fully understand that "perfection" is neither required nor possible here, so that's not what I'm shooting for. I like to solve problems with reason and logic, so for me, it all just needs to come down to doing my best to cover all the angles I can and make the best choices from all the gathered information. I can't sit back and say "well, everybody said things will work out fine and not to worry... so I guess I'll stop worrying, even though things look like crap right about now."

Of course, I'm left with the simple notion that there's not much else most people have to say. They're trying to be nice and comforting and encouraging and excited. All good stuff. I appreciate all that stuff. I guess it's simply not something that I want to hear at this time. I have gravitated a bit more towards talking to those who haven't had kids yet and are my age or older. Talking to these folks are like chatting with teammates or colleagues of a sort. We're on the same level to a large degree. They're not saying "everything will be great" since they realize how huge a hit this is on our lives at this stage! They feel the same trepidations as me and it feels much more honest to chat with them about what this all means to me.

I'm sure I'll end up getting past these early months/years and I'll be saying the same schlock to other expecting parents like "yeah, I used to worry like crazy too, but it will work out okay. Seriously, it seems like a crazy-big deal now, but you'll figure it out and you'll do great."

Ack.

So I'm sure I'll be fine. After all, the motivation of having to be fine OR ELSE is helping me along. :)

Well... enough ranting. I'll go check email and read about how great I'll be for a while. Maybe I'll believe it someday. I think I'll just wait until I can have a conversation with my kid and ask him/her. That's the only real opinion that matters, I suppose.

*sigh*