The third-trimester prep list

The third trimester is when the abstract becomes a date on a calendar. You stop saying "soon" and start saying "in six weeks". Your partner cannot tie her own shoes. The room you keep calling the "spare room" has a cot in it that you assembled with the wrong allen key.

I made this list after the fact, which is the worst time to make a list. Use mine. Skip the part where you panic-buy a wipe warmer at 2am.

What goes in the hospital bag (yours)

Pack your own bag. Not hers. Pack it two weeks before the due date, and put it by the door / in the boot / wherever you will leave from. Labour can be twelve hours or thirty. You will need:

• A change of clothes (two, honestly)
• Phone charger with a long cable, plus a power bank
• Snacks that do not crunch loudly (muesli bars, bananas)
• A water bottle, refilled every time you walk past a tap
• Slip-on shoes (you will be off your feet less than you think, but on them awkwardly)
• Toothbrush, deodorant, a hoodie that you do not mind getting fluids on
• Cash, twenty bucks in coins, for the carpark
• Headphones, in case she wants the room quiet and you want a distraction
• The hospital paperwork, the Medicare card, the private health card if you have one

The carpark thing is real. Hospital parking machines do not take Apple Pay at 3am. I learnt this with a screaming wife in the passenger seat.

The car seat

Install it. Then have a fitter check it. In Australia, an accredited child restraint fitter will go over it for around eighty dollars and tell you the strap is twisted. The strap is always twisted. You will not be allowed to take the baby home if the seat is wrong, so do this at thirty-six weeks, not thirty-nine.

The seat goes in the back, rear-facing, behind the front passenger so your partner can see the baby's face from her seat. Practise getting the buckle in and out with your eyes closed. You will, eventually, do it in the dark.

The first month of stuff (and what you do not need)

You need less than the registry says. The registry is a long document written by people who sell cot mobiles. What a newborn actually uses in the first month:

• Eight to ten plain cotton onesies, sizes 0000 and 000
• Muslin wraps (six, minimum, you will use them as burp cloths, sun shades, breastfeeding covers)
• A bassinet or cot with a firm flat mattress, no bumpers, no pillows
• Nappies (one box of newborn, do not stockpile, they grow fast)
• Wipes, sensitive, the unscented kind
• A baby bath or a bath insert (the kitchen sink works for week one if you are stuck)
• Nappy cream
• A pram you can fold one-handed (you will be holding the baby with the other)

You do not need a wipe warmer. You do not need shoes. You do not need a special baby laundry detergent unless someone has eczema. You do not need three swaddles in different prints.

The house

Walk through every room with the lights off, at the height a person carrying a baby walks. Move the things you trip on. The corner of the coffee table that has bruised your shin twice is going to bruise it ten more times when you are exhausted.

Stock the freezer. Cook double batches now / accept lasagnes from your mother / learn the local Thai delivery menu by heart. You will not feel like cooking. You will not feel like eating. You will eat anyway.

Set up a "station" wherever you will change nappies most often. Wipes, nappies, a clean onesie, a muslin, a bag for the dirty one. The body of a newborn produces a fluid output you will respect.

Pay every bill that is due in the next month. Set up direct debits. Cancel the gym you do not go to (the irony is not lost on me). Tell the people at work who matter. Hand over what needs handing over. The first two weeks of leave should not have a Slack notification in them.

The conversation

Sit down with your partner one evening, no phone, and talk through:

• Who calls the midwife / hospital, and at which contraction interval
• The route to the hospital, including a detour for roadworks
• Who is allowed at the birth, and who is allowed to visit after, and when
• What you both want for the first 24 hours at home (visitors / no visitors / food)
• Code words. A code word for "I am not coping", a code word for "please get them to leave"

The visitor question is bigger than you think. Aunts mean well. They also mean germs. You are allowed to say no to your own mother for a fortnight. Decide together, and then you say it, not her.

What you cannot prepare for

You cannot prepare for the silence after the noise. You cannot prepare for how small a person can be. You cannot prepare for the moment your partner becomes a mother in front of you and the floor of who you are shifts.

But you can have the bag packed. You can have the seat installed. You can have a clean shirt in the boot.

That part is on you. Do that part.