If you ask me, Katie and I have coped with the anticipation of our daughter’s birth pretty well. We’ve been in hurry-up-and-wait mode for two weeks, and much of our downtime has been spent double-checking preparations for Jackie. I even had a trial diaper-changing run with one of our future daughter’s stuffed bunnies. I also put together a baby playlist of the Jones family’s favorite tunes…kind of a birthing soundtrack to play in the hospital room. It consists of more than 300 songs, and features plenty of our mutual favorites:

Belle & Sebastian    Pavement    Guided by Voices    Rufus Wainwright

George Gerschwin    Loretta Lynn    Ryan Adams    Japancakes

Thelonious Monk    Velvet Underground    Wes Montgomery    Erykah Badu

Karen Carpenter    My Morning Jacket    Panda Bear    The Smiths

…you know, it’s simply the first music any father would want to grace the ears of his newborn daughter. Most of you know that I prefer to wait until Christmas to listen to Christmas music (unless it’s Karen Carpenter).

Katie’s mom Janet is here from Georgia, and has graciously volunteered to take care of our dogs tonight. I’m sure they’ll be on their best behavior. We’re very grateful that most of our family will be in around Raleigh until Jackie is born.

Here’s the plan for tonight:
REX Hospital will call us this evening when they are ready for us to be admitted. They will ripen Katie’s cervix (she gave me permission to blog about her cervix) and monitor her body’s reaction over the next 6 to 12 hours. When Katie has a favorable Bishop’s score, and if Katie isn’t entering labor, the doctor will induce labor. So, Katie will probably be in labor by tomorrow morning. That being said, I know very little about the variables of ripening and induction, so I’ll be updating this site on a regular basis over the next two days (when I’m not doing my fatherly duties with comfort measures for Katie).

Also, I’m just getting into Twitter, and I figure the next two days would be ideal to post tweets about Katie’s and Jackie’s status. You can find brief updates on my twitter page. These updates can be viewed on a computer, or on a mobile phone (if you have an account or set up an account).

It’s almost baby time!

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