Things worth knowing before delivery day

Antenatal classes cover the medical side well. What they cover less well is the logistics and the aftermath — the decisions that are much easier made in week 34 than in the middle of a contraction. This is a list of the things people say they wish they'd sorted out earlier.

Nothing here is medical advice. Every pregnancy is different, and your midwife, obstetrician, or care team knows yours. Use this to work out what to ask them, not as a substitute for asking.

Decide the logistics while you're calm

• Know your route to the hospital, where to park, and which entrance to use out of hours. Drive it once.
• Have a backup driver if your birth partner might be unavailable or unable to drive.
• Sort care for other children and pets, including at 3am on a weeknight. Have a second option, because first options fall through.
• Fit the car seat and know how to use it. This takes longer the first time than anyone expects.
• Agree who tells whom, and when. Deciding this in advance prevents a lot of phone-checking during labour.

Questions worth asking your care team

• When exactly do you want me to call, and when should I come in?
• What are my options for pain relief here, and when does each need to be decided?
• What happens if I need an assisted birth or a caesarean — what does that look like in this unit?
• Can my birth partner stay overnight?
• What do you provide, and what should I bring?
• What support is there for feeding after the birth, and how do I reach it once I'm home?

A birth plan is a set of preferences, not a script

Writing one is genuinely worth it — it makes you think through decisions in advance and tells your team what matters to you. But births change course, and a plan that reads as a list of absolute requirements can leave people feeling like they failed when things moved. Frame it as preferences, include what you'd want in the situations you're not planning for, and keep it to one page so it actually gets read.

What nobody warns you about the days after

• Recovery takes longer than the internet implies, whatever kind of birth you have.
• Afterpains — cramping while feeding as the uterus contracts — surprise most people, and are often stronger with a second baby.
• Your milk coming in around day three can be genuinely uncomfortable.
• Day three to five is when the emotional drop most commonly hits. It's extremely common and usually passes within a fortnight. If it doesn't, or it's severe, tell your midwife or doctor — postnatal depression is common and treatable, and it is not something to wait out.
• The first outing takes about two hours of preparation. This becomes funny later.

Set up support before you need it

The most useful thing you can do in your last few weeks is make it easy for people to help. Fill the freezer. Say yes when someone offers. And be specific when they ask what you need — 'could you bring dinner Thursday' gets a yes far more reliably than 'let me know if you need anything', which puts the work of asking back on you at the exact moment you have no capacity for it.

One more: agree in advance how you'll handle visitors. Plenty of people want to meet the baby immediately, and it's much easier to point at a decision you made together in week 36 than to negotiate it while exhausted.