As they say, it's all good. Just don't ask me to explain it to you...

Didn't get a wink Sunday night for giddy exhaustion. Started to get Little Green's room in order. Mr Green did all the muscle work, of course, schlepping the double bed downstairs while I tidied and organised the baby/guest rooms. An artist friend of mine has sweetly offered to produce some canvases for the nursery. She emailed me the sketches and they are gorgeous, so original. Unfortunately I can't upload the sketches here because they are in the wrong format. I can't wait to see the finished product. It's amazing how quickly the room has transformed already. Just by throwing a few soft quilts on our old rocker and piling it with a few pillows, I could already imagine myself there in the quiet hours humming to soothe baby and self. Okay, so for someone who always claimed her maternal clock hadn't audibly ticked, both "hands" have certainly gone into overdrive.

My mother, among other mothers, always vowed motherhood would change me in ways that I couldn't begin to fathom, ways which she herself was at a loss to explain or describe. Although this sort of circular argument which seemed to lack logical foundation in my books (how can you argue or refute a notion someone can't even explain to you?), enraged me at the time, the worst possible scenario has transpired: mother was (yet again) right. Even at this early stage I feel the experience has altered me in some irrevocable way - a softening let's say, rather than an outright mushing.

Impending motherhood gives you a focus, enabling you to take a close, pointed look at what actually matters. It gives you an appreciation (for once) of all that is good within our ever decaying self-absorbed "society". By helping to see the inherent goodness in new life, parenthood also fosters a renewed ability to seek out the same and to recognise it in other human beings, treating this quality as the general rule rather than the exception - great news for the wizened modern cynic I was well on my way to becoming...