All the planning in the world, all the preparations and careful creation of strategies will not stand against the dirty diaper. It has to be dealt with and if its a number two, for everyone’s sake, there is no putting it off. It is the immediate and unavoidable disruption to a well-laid plan, a scheduled work session, or even just a moment of peace and quiet.

Babies teach the art of adaptability, though teach is a soft word for “force upon you.” There is no changing a diaper early or feeding a baby extra so that they won’t be hungry later. For awhile, especially in the beginning, you basically have to adapt to their needs whenever they happen. However, there is an art to this – manage the cycle.

First, deal with it. You will find that it is so much easier to be interrupted by your screaming baby than pretty much anything else. That screaming baby becomes a smiling, happy, content baby and screaming or not, they are your magnificent children. That first swing of the legs out of bed or looking up from your work may be the hardest but it will be near automatic from the start.

Second, do what you can to guide their schedules. Aaron was born early and spent seven weeks in the NICU at two fantastic hospitals. In order to manage the babies, NICU nurses check on them on a regular schedule, crying or not, every three hours, Aaron was changed, fed, and check on. This taught his body to follow this cycle. It is certainly not perfect but it took until he was about 3-4 months old before he began deviating too much from this schedule. If you have a decent sense of when your babies will need care then you can get back to planning.

Third, once the baby (babies in our case) are fed, changed, and happy – probably asleep – you have to immediately start using that time for whatever you want or need to do. This is where we get back to drawing the flamingo. If you have a clear goal for each of your projects and simple steps broken out to knock out one by one then you can adapt back into whatever it was that you were doing much faster. If you’re at a loss, simple start the next task. Creativity begets more creativity, momentum begets more momentum.

While dirty diapers are certain kind of unavoidable, the same processes work for other such interruptions. You have to simply expect that there will be interruptions, emergencies, and the unexpected and plan around it. There is no silver bullet to adaptability. However, knowing your priorities, next steps, and end goals helps a great deal.