We’re spending our Saturday night in a hospital room, giving everybody time to recover. Kate’s about to get some sleep, to the extent the baby will let her, and I’m planning to stay up and take care of everything else. If all goes well, I might actually finally eat something.

We’ve already missed one big Saturday night party because of our baby, and ironically it was a family affair. After a night in the waiting room, my family spent the evening at a restaurant down the block, celebrating my mother’s birthday. As it happens, my mother and daughter ended up being born on the same date, many years apart.

Big thanks to everyone who’s shared their congratulations and good wishes. It means a lot to have heard from so many people today, and I hope no one minds if it takes us a while to thank everyone. I’m sure it won’t be long before I post a thousand identical videos of my kid sucking her hand, so stay tuned for that.

What we do have is a rough deadline. If Kate doesn’t have this baby by the weekend, we’ll induce. We’re not exactly sure when, because we’re waiting for the hospital to confirm the appointment, but we know it’ll only be about three or four days.

I’m sure this is a dumb thing to say, but the schedule makes it all the more real. It’s plenty real as it is, of course, but even after the due date’s come and gone, it’s easy to forget that this baby’s actually coming. Spending a week at home, with no responsibilities and nothing to do, probably hasn’t helped either.

But guess what? Here comes a baby, probably by Monday at the latest. I think I might celebrate by ordering something from Amazon and seeing what arrives first.

Researchers at Brock University found that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes in adulthood. These adults tend to subscribe to socially conservative ideologies, which in turn reinforce prejudice by encouraging hierarchy and resistance to change. If you hold a prejudicial belief, in other words, you’re less likely to be comfortable with that belief being challenged.

Prejudiced conservative Rick Santorum agreed, in a roundabout way, when he suggested that the reason Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college is to brainwash them into becoming liberals. “The indoctrination that occurs at American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America,” he told a crowd of Florida voters last week.

“As you know,” Santorum added, “62 percent of children who enter college with a faith conviction leave without it.”

Does Rick Santorum truly believe that higher education is a liberal plot to undermine the values and faith of “real” Americans? Or is the GOP candidate simply aware that the fewer ignorant, bigoted conservative voters there are, the smaller his already negligible base will be?

I’m betting the answer is “a little of both, and the only way to stop it is to make sure gay dudes aren’t allowed to marry each other.”

But Kate’s not the only one who’s been inspired by her pregnancy. I’ve typically done what I can to stay healthy, both for my wife and for myself, but during the past few months I’ve taken it up a notch.

My wife deserves a lot of the credit for motivating me to exercise more. Watching her stick to her routine, and seeing the results, has definitely been inspiring. But to tell you the truth, it’s also helped to know that whatever physical challenges I might choose to tackle are nothing compared to the challenge she’s about to conquer.

Roll your eyes all you like at the sensitive man, but it’s true. Whenever I don’t feel like exercising, I can remind myself that Kate doesn’t get to decide she doesn’t feel like having a baby. Whenever I don’t feel like seeing it through to the end, I can remind myself that Kate doesn’t get to cheat. Hell, even when I break new ground, I do it with the knowledge that a few extra reps or another five minutes on a machine is a pretty pathetic achievement compared to giving birth.

The other day, Kate sent me a couple of clips from a Channel 4 program called One Born Every Minute, which is all about “providing helpful insights into the realities of giving birth.” In this clip, which you absolutely shouldn’t watch unless you want to see what a Caesarean section looks like, one of the mothers tells herself it’s time to “man up.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, because a) I hadn’t seen the C-section yet, and b) it struck me as a really weird choice of words. I use the phrase often enough myself, despite its casual sexism. Saying you’ve got to “man up” to get through labour, though, is like saying “I’d better make the like the gender that talks a big game but never actually has to do this sort of thing.”

I’m not saying one gender’s any better than the other. All I’m saying is I live with a woman who’s about to do something I could never do, and something I doubt I could do “like a man” if the tables were turned on me. And it really puts all the other little things I feel like I can’t do into perspective.

Due dates are a vague business. The date itself is typically calculated based on the date of the mother’s last cycle, but we all know how much the length of an actual labour can vary. Supposedly, only about 5% of babies are born on their actual due date.

We knew all of this in advance. In fact, we figured she’d be a little overdue, because the first children of white women usually are. Today was our first official day on leave, and instead of freaking out because our kid’s a little late, Kate went to the movies and I goofed off around the house.

We’ve both had a good day, and I know we’re about to say goodbye to this sort of leisure time forever. The last thing I’d want to do is rush my kid. Tomorrow wouldn’t be terrible, is all I’m saying.

A lot of you have been in this situation before, I’m sure. How did you fill the time? How did you keep the waiting from driving you mad? Did all you dads out there remind yourselves that your wife was probably going through a lot more than you were at the time? Because I’ve been thinking of giving that a shot.

“Oh my God, Dad!” I could already picture her saying. “You are so whatever word kids use instead of ‘lame’ in 2025!”

“They’ll probably still say ‘lame,’” my wife interjected. “It’s pretty classic.”

“No,” I replied, “I’ll bet they’ll have moved on from ‘lame’ by then. It’s too insensitive and too politically incorrect.”

In fact, run a quick Google search for “politically correct lame,” and you’ll find that plenty of people are already calling on society to drop the word and treat the disabled with respect. You’ll also find a bunch of people arguing that political correctness itself is lame, but I guess that’s no surprise. If that sort of thing gets you down, don’t Google “politically correct retarded.”

Either way, I’m pretty sure I was right. The clock’s ticking on “lame,” and that’s probably no bad thing. Get it out of your system now, while you still can. Times change, kids grow up fast, and pretty soon you’ll end up saying “lame” in front of your daughter and she’ll glare at you like you actually said “The Holocaust never happened.”

Harper said this morning that he was “not aware of the details” of the legal decision. “This I gather is a case before the courts where Canadian lawyers have taken a particular position based on the law and I will be asking officials to provide me more details.”

Regardless of its origins, the decision calls the rights and equality of thousands of foreign same-sex couples into question. Non-Canadians who were married under our system don’t enjoy full legal rights in their home countries, but many of them do enjoy hard-won rights that depend on our legislation – and which they could lose if our legislation changes.

It’s true, for example, that same-sex couples can’t get married in the UK. However, the UK does recognize legal same-sex marriages performed in other countries. Two good friends of ours living in London – one a Canadian citizen, the other British – were married in Toronto this past summer, and they now enjoy full rights in UK because of it. In other words, you can’t get married in the UK if you’re a same-sex couple, but you can be married in the UK if you’ve legally gotten married somewhere else.

American sex advice columnist and gay rights activist Dan Savage, who emerged as a leading voice against the decision following a post on his blog, cites his home state of Washington as another example. “Right now, if I’m not mistaken,” he writes, “Washington state recognizes same-sex marriages performed in states and countries where same-sex marriage is legal – but Washington treats these couples (me and Terry included) as domestic partners under WA state law. Washington’s DP law grants same-sex couples all the rights and responsibilities of marriage that the state controls.” Unfortunately, if marriages like Savage’s are no longer valid in Canada, then their status and rights as domestic partners could be in jeopardy.

It’s an interesting legal issue, to say the least. By recognizing same-sex marriages performed in Canada, and by giving their citizens corresponding rights and benefits, jurisdictions like the UK and Washington state have also given a foreign government the ability to strip those rights away. Savage and his husband can lose status and equal rights granted to them by their own government because of a change in Canada’s laws, and without their own state’s law having to change one iota.

Critics of the policy reversal – and there are many – ask what sort of regressive slippery slope we may have set in motion today. I’ve spoken to people today who wonder why we’re all so worried about the rights of foreigners, but I’ve spoken to many others who are rightly concerned about what the invalidation of one type of Canadian same-sex marriage could mean for the whole enterprise.

“I’d like to know,” Savage writes, “if a Jewish man was to marry a Saudi woman, which is illegal in Saudi Arabia, in Canada would it be a legally recognized marriage? Or is this a special right that we enjoy, this right to be discriminated that way?”

Harper says the decision caught him off guard, but plenty of people aren’t buying it. Former Toronto Mayor David Miller has said he’s certain that “this kind of decision would not happen without the Prime Minister being briefed.” Liberal leader Bob Rae agreed, claiming that it’s tough to believe Harper didn’t know about the case, “because my sense of that government is that he controls everything.”

Closer to home, my brother rightly noted that “if I was PM and changed the name of the government to the Jon Blair Government, I’d try and keep up with what it was up to.”

But Rae put it best when he said he has to “take the Prime Minister at his word when he says what he says.” It’s entirely possible that Harper was taken by surprise by the details of this case, and the question of how much he knew should take a back seat to the question of what he’s going to do next.

It’s too late to promise Canadians that the government won’t reopen the issue of same-sex marriage; this morning’s announcement threw the issue wide open. Maintaining Canada’s position on same-sex marriage now means taking action to clarify and reinforce our legislation, and it’s up to our government to make that commitment. They’ve started to dance around it by addressing the legality of same-sex divorce, but the question of same-sex marriage itself remains up in the air.

What do you think the government should do? How likely do you think they are to do it? Have I missed anything or made any mistakes above? Do feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

First of all, I’ve been working on rebuilding a site called democracy101.ca. I launched the site back in April, but I let it lapse during the tail end of 2011. So I drew up a list of new year’s resolutions for the blog in the hope of getting it back on its feet, and so far things are going well.

Second of all, if you’ve been following me on Twitter, then you may have noticed a few recent links to a site called What’s Matt Been Drinking?, which I launched on the first of January. Reaching deep into my big sack of eloquent turns of phrase, I described it as a “daily look at the local and global culture of alcohol – and through the quality and quantity of one man’s humble role in that culture.” It’ll be a fun little side project, and I do hope you’ll check it out.

I did my first appearance at Beats and Brunch in December, and I’m really looking forward to the next one. It’s a mellow afternoon in a great space with plenty of decent food and drink, and for me it’s a chance to do something a little bit different.

Hope to see you there! It’s a terrific new series, and it deserves all the support it can get. Stay tuned for details throughout the week, and join us on Saturday for an awesome afternoon!

Stay tuned to this site for updates and details throughout the week. In the meantime, happy new year!