Leave the great indoorsnotes on the journey

Dear Third Trimester,

Today you and I met for the first time.  I have to admit that I enter this relationship not liking you very much, though.  First of all, you are the only thing that stands between me and meeting my baby girl, so for that reason alone I need you to be over as soon as possible.  When we first found out Jess was pregnant, I was really happy that we had 9 months to prepare for the whole thing, because it is quite the project to get everything set up.  But now that we’re 6 months in, I don’t quite understand what’s taking so long.  I think we’re pretty much ready, so if you could just go ahead and speed things along, that would be great.

But there’s another, bigger reason why I don’t like you.  It seems that your only goal is to make my wife as uncomfortable as possible, and I’m not cool with that.  She read me this from one of her variety of pregnancy books this morning (The pregnancy countdown book):

Besides the continued growth and development of your baby, the third trimester ultimately serves one purpose: To make you so uncomfortabkle, so over it, so tired, so achy, so itchy, and so freakishly huge, that you will do anything to get the baby out of you.  This is Mother Nature’s way of inspiring you at the end of your pregnancy, even though we spent the previous eight months thinking, “Okay, how is this going to happen again?”

I don’t know about that inspiration bit, but I guess that’s the “glass half full” approach.  So I just have one request for you: please be nice to my wife.  The other trimesters have been great and you should see them as role models.  I think it’s time for you to turn the page and become just like them.  So just make her happy, and be over soon, ok?

Oh, and just one more thing.  If you see the Teenage Years around, please tell them we need to talk.  You see, when I grew up, I listened to a lot of Chris de Burgh’s music (don’t judge me, I’m sure you listen to country music or something).  Anyway, he has a song that he wrote for his daughter called For Rosanna.  I played it for Jess the other night, because she hadn’t heard it before, and she had a little trouble when we got to this part:

And when you are older you will go away,
You’ll see injustice and you’ll see pain,
But never forget that I’m always there,
Like a shadow by your side,
With the love that I have.

It appears that the mere thought of our unborn daughter ever leaving home is proving too much for her to handle (and probably for me too).  So if you could just tell the Teenage Years that we’re going to have to talk about this whole “going away to college” thing, that would be great.

Thank you,
A concerned dad-to-be