Be Prepared

Especially For the Unpredictable

The first week of November is currently marked as "Estimated Tiny Human Arrival Window." If I knew the gender of the impending baby, I'd know the name and might have been slightly less silly about it.

Might but probably not.

Even the weeklong estimate has reasonable odds of being wrong, the baby is going to come out on a schedule decided by it, my wife's autonomic nervous system, and possibly medical professionals. I'm not really in the loop on that discussion.

That's the tip of the iceberg of things that I lack control of in this process. Once the baby is here, I'm going to have a tiny irrational overlord running my life for a while. I don't have a clue what my life is going to be like for the next three months, or really for years after either.

The things is, even with uncertainty my wife and I have been preparing things. Some of them are slightly obsessive contingency planning like my wife keeping copies of the medical records from the pregnancy in her car and on her phone, just in case she doesn't go to the hospital that we're planning. Others have been the much more pragmatic options like stocking a freezer with easy to reheat meals so that on a truly draining day, nobody has to cook.

Most of these things have been lots of small steps rather than anything dramatic, but it's impressive how much having any sort of plans in place helps.