Dear Pre-Baby Me:

Hi, it’s me. You. I mean, it’s not you, but it is you, because it’s me and I’m you. Anyway, um, hi.

I’m writing to you from the future.

Neat, right?

Pre-Baby Me, right now you’ve got it pretty good. You have a great job, a cool apartment, a bitchin’ cat, and a damn near perfect specimen of a husband. There’s just one thing left to do — and let me tell you, it’s going to throw you for a loop.

Soon, you will be pregnant.

Don’t worry — this will happen on purpose, so you’ll be happy about it (phew!). But throughout this pregnancy, and after the little darling arrives, you’ll find yourself wishing for an instruction manual to get you through the rest of your life. Which is the rest of my life. Oh, lordy, how you will wish there were a manual.

Remember that time you got a new job and you were so excited to start, but then when you showed up on your first day expecting a full orientation someone just handed you a training binder to read and told you to get to work? And even though you read every damn word three times over, and managed to muddle through on what little information you had, you still felt utterly lost and found yourself wondering “why didn’t anyone tell me about this?!” several times a day?

Welcome to parenthood.

Luckily, Pre-Baby Me, you have me. You. Me. Whatever.

Since you’re reading this, I’m assuming time travel has been invented (yippee!), so I’m about to spare you years of frustration by sharing the good, the bad, and the just plain weird stuff you’re going to wish someone had told you about before you hopped on this crazy train. Because, my dear, you sure as heck aren’t going to find it in that training binder. That thing was just thrown together by the last person to have the job — and since she already had one foot out the door when she wrote it (I heard she was promoted to grandma or something?), she totally glossed over the important bits.

Stay tuned, Pre-Baby Me: there are more letters to come, and I have so much to tell you.

Your friend,

Future You.

Follow this writer on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and her blog.