Nine months?!! We’re so used to instant gratification that it can be surprisingly hard to cope with the blindingly obvious reality that there’s nothing you can do to make your baby come any earlier.
Whatever your feelings about the impending event, the wait makes them worse. If you’re impatient to meet your offspring and get down to the job of raising them, the wait is a pain. If you’re anxious about the responsibility and the upheaval, the wait is just more time to worry. If you’re determined to make the most of the time before it all happens, the wait can add a panicky air to it all as you constantly find yourself thinking ‘This could be our LAST CHANCE to…’
In fact, you’ll probably have a mixture of all these feelings in varying quantities, so try to balance them against each other. It is worth trying to grab some time for yourselves though, as it the amount of time you have available bites especially hard in the early months of looking after a newborn.