Waiting for your baby to come is the hardest part. That and turning away friends.

Random thoughts while sitting waiting for my daughter to be born and expecting it in the next few hours.

Waiting for your baby sucks.

Waiting is not the hardest part of the thing, it’s actually that someone you love is in pain and there’s not a thing that you can do to help her. There’s a level of measured uselessness that labor-day brings to the daddy-to-be that is kind of impossible to express, where you feel you’ve been a team up until now and now you’re sitting on the sidelines unable to do anything except to say “I’m here if you need anything”.

One of the things that’s kept me from freaking out is the ability to just jump on and talk to anyone I know, look up all the medicines they’re pumping into my wife, and the ability to take some notes on various electronic doohickies I brought along thinking they might be useful.

We’re prepared for a technology breakdown of unprecedented proportions, there’re e-readers loaded with info, cell phones, Skype, this laptop I’m typing on, a million things to keep us in touch with the outside world but sometimes you just have to tell the outside world to be quiet, it’s time for her to do her thing and, well, you can sit and write about it in your baby blog.

That’s what I’m doing. 12 hours since we got up to go to the checkup. 9 hours since we were admitted to the hospital. A day of waiting for something to happen and everyone out there wanting to be with us. It’s nice. I hate having to turn people away, but this isn’t my show.

So after being mostly useless for the day, I sit down and wait and watch some horrible TV that the hospital has, and basically get out of her way while there’s nothing useful or helpful I can do.

I can now operate most of the machinery here, I know how to override the hospital TV and I’ve got TOR browsing capabilities. But I guess the lesson I’ve learned is accept that you’re going to be somewhat useless. There are only so many times you can see if she needs anything before you become part of the problem.

As a note, the tech bag includes an HTC EVO 4G LTE, an EVO 3D, an Accell Travel Charger, Some Jabra headphones, my Munitio Nines, a Sony Tablet S, a rooted Barnes & Nobel Nook, 128 gig stick of TV shows, movies, comics, etc. It’s surprising how little of this stuff is being used. But it’s here for later when she’s feeling better. And that’s what a tech dad does… techs and waits…

Now I need to find an app to make me useful in this situation. Waiting for your baby to come sucks.