LIMBO !

By fair means or foul, whether we wanted to or not, we are back in the Central Month of Party Season! So dust off your glad rags, iron your dancing shoes and get ready to groove and boogie til your stockings are filled by Santa.

Yes – my Christmas spirit has kick-started itself. Walking around yesterday with the knowledge its Advent made my innards get a little twinge of excitement, which I must confess built nicely all day. I knew it would turn up eventually, I just wasn’t confident it would be this side of Boxing Day.

So – on the one hand, I am very excited!

On the other hand, I am absolutely terrified, and I feel this is something I must own up to, as it’s happening despite my best efforts, and it’s probably affecting what I write about and how I write it.

I’m scared.

Sometime in December I will become a father for the first time and I feel woefully underprepared and shamefully inadequately skilled. I am full of anxiety, not sleeping, and not able to be a support to my wife at the very point she needs it most – when she is on the cusp of giving birth. I never understood the term ‘frozen by fear’ as I’ve always coped quite well with stressful situations and been able to think my way out of them clearly, but at times now I am literally going rigid with terror; immobilised by the sudden scary thoughts being generated by the darkest side of my mind.

I am scared that Junior will be damaged in childbirth, that Philippa will die while releasing him, that I’ll drop him on his head the first time I hold him, that one of the nurses will swap him for a lab rat, that I’ll throw up on the bed, or pass out, or have a breakdown, or run out screaming, that I won’t work out how to fit his car seat properly, that I’ll crash on the way home from the hospital, that our house isn’t fit for a baby, that I’ll drop him the first time I feed him, that he’ll grow up to hate me, that I’m too old now to be a first-time father, that Philippa won’t need me anymore when she’s got a child to look after, that I won’t get any sleep when he’s struggling to get through the night and end up too knackered to work and then I’ll get fired and then Philippa will kick me out coz I can’t afford to support them, that a meteor might crash in our garden and irradiate him before he hits puberty, that his teeth might grow crooked and he’ll have to wear painful braces, that his first girl-or-boyfriend will break his heart so badly that he never trusts someone else enough to love them, that I’ll die of a brain tumour before I even get to know him, that if it’s a girl she’ll love her mum more than me, or wrap me round her finger and grow up spoilt and unbearable, or be the girl that all the other girls pick on, or be allergic to make-up and end up burning her mouth the first time she uses lipstick, or go out wearing a tiny outfit and end up hypothermic, or have a horrible older boyfriend that I end up punching and then get sent to prison.

I admit a couple of those may be a little unlikely, but I’m finding it hard not to worry about them anyway.

RC 2-12-18