A general understanding that, although the baby is currently inside of another human body, the baby is supposed to end up outside of that human body when this whole thing is said and done.
A pretty solid memory of that Boy Meets World episode where Cory’s mom gives birth to his younger brother. I think his name was Joshua, right? He was only in a few episodes.
Most of the lyrics to “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin, along with the fact that you should try not to sing this song to your child until they are old enough to understand that you’re being ironic.
The War of 1812 ended in February of 1815, and, yes, I know it was a huge long shot that this would come up, but I stressed out so much about trying to remember it when studying for a seventh-grade history exam, and then my teacher ended up not even including it on the test, and I have been maniacally committed to coming up with at least one reason why it was worth memorizing anyway ever since.
A series of clever jokes about how my graduate school degree is technically a Master’s of Science even though it was in journalism, so if any of you doctors or nurses need help, keep in mind that I have “mastered science” and can thus obviously be counted on to help with the scientific process of delivering a baby, haha. Do you get it? You get it, right? Hey, come on, stop focusing so much on the delivery and laugh.
Hmm, you know, I think the Boy Meets World episode I’m remembering was the one where Shawn’s dad died. There was definitely some type of medical thing going on in it.
Three AA batteries. Yes, I agree that an even number would have been better, but three is the number we had in our junk drawer, so here we are.
Knowledge that I actually went through this process myself about 34 years ago, so I should have at least some firsthand information about how it works even though I don’t remember the event itself despite my best efforts.
A few books on parenting. I mean, I haven’t read any of them, but they’re here, so that counts for something, right?
OK, so I was thinking of the episode where Shawn’s dad died. But I kind of remember the one where Cory’s mom gives birth to his younger brother as well. Anyway, the point is, none of this was helpful.
Enough self-awareness to comprehend that this is one of those situations where staying out of the way really is the best thing I can do combined with enough insecurity about my extremely limited role in this process so far to want to at least do something combined with an existential fear that something might go wrong during the delivery process and I will be completely unqualified to do anything to help, and what does that say about me being qualified to be a parent in the first place, and didn’t a lot of really successful people basically not even have dads growing up, but maybe I should just stop worrying before all of this anxiety inevitably gets transferred onto my child, who will have enough things to worry about soon enough, and, wait, what were we talking about again? Oh, right, I know a decent amount of stuff about the 2015 Pittsburgh Pirates, if that matters.
The ability to go into and leave rooms per the instructions of medical professionals. Oh, wait, this one did come in handy, actually.