37 weeks (5:00 a.m.)

It's 5:00 a.m. and I am officially freaking out. It just occurred to me exactly how unprepared I am for this baby. I've had to get up twice in the night to use the bathroom and both times, I found myself thinking about what it will be like to get up twice (or more) in the night to a baby crying and having to figure out what he needs...and how I'm supposed to provide it for him! I mean, obviously there will be middle-of-the-night feedings and diaper changes, which, up until this point, sounded easy enough. But the reality of just how tough that is going to be hit me like a ton of bricks this morning. Not only will I most likely be recovering from major abdominal surgery and will surely have pain and difficulty even getting to an upright position (I'm thinking back to my appendectomy a few years ago and assuming that it will be 4x worse!), but I'm sure I'll be completely sleep deprived, and scared, and just plain clueless.

For instance, am I supposed to document when the baby eats (and how much), and pees/poops (and how much), so that I can keep track of his growth? Ok, that's fine; I like charts and documentation - so where do I find one?

That got me thinking about the couple of books I've read (sort of) and how it touched on stuff like this, but for the life of me, I cannot remember specifically what I'm supposed to do. To be perfectly honest, I didn't even make it completely through either of the two I started and there's another one that I fully intended to read and haven't so much as picked up. I feel like I'm living that recurring dream that I often have where I show up for a college exam only to realize that I haven't attended a single class or read a single chapter and have absolutely no idea how I'm going to "wing it" through the test. I always just thought that dream was some metaphor for feeling overwhelmed about something in life, but right now, it feels extremely literal and I'm having a mild panic attack over it!

I wish that I had the past month to do over again to get myself prepared better mentally. I'm so upset with myself because I feel like I've been slacking off instead of doing the serious cramming that I really should have been doing.

Ok, I'm going to use this time right now to go read up on as much as I can and maybe start taking notes. This is one exam I do NOT want to be unprepared for! I'll try to write more later (and post the picture I took yesterday)...