Congratulations! Godspeed! You’re going to be a new father and you have no clue what’s going on.

Join the club, try the veal, tip your waiter. It occurred to me that I should probably try to organise my life now that I’ll be responsible for little munchkins — my wife and I are expecting twins!

Here’s a list of very important things I thought needed to be done before my life changed in June.

New daddy, who dis?

• Panic. Now, hug your wife. OK, now let her go. No, seriously, it’s OK. Take a deep breath. Go for a run. Binge watch True Detective season one, and every season of The Wire . There is a new human on the way and you are 100 per cent responsible for him or her. Freak out. It’s fine, maybe.

• Go out to the store and buy diapers. Buy all of them, the economy being what it is, you never know. Then remember that pregnancy takes nine months and you don’t have any space.

Talk yourself out of personally using them. Try to get a refund. You can exhale now.

• Buy all the books. You have no idea what you’re doing. All you know is that babies are cute and they poop a lot. That might not be enough information to set her on the right foot to MIT though. Maybe borrow the books instead.

• Make a plan — even though you should already have one. Don’t have one? See point one above.

• Be happy for the mother of your child! This should actually be point one. Let’s pretend this is point one. Don’t show my wife this list!

• Talk to other dads. They know stuff. They’ll probably scare you more. They’ll probably talk about fatherhood like Brad Pitt talks about war in Fury .

Return to point one if necessary. I mean the panic point, I guess that’s point two now? But hopefully, after they scare the life out of you and tell you you’ll never sleep again, you’ll actually get some good advice — maybe.

• Eat vegetables. Sources tell me they taste good and are healthy, though I need to verify that. Babies need healthy parents.

Be supportive. Be compassionate. Don’t be Greg Popovich, be Phil Jackson. Zen. It’s all right if she eats that mac and cheese every once in a while at 3am.

• Take your special woman out on a date. Celebrate this new phase of your life together.

Be happy, maybe book a spa date, treat her. Her feet will be sore and her back will hurt sooner than you expect. So think of it as an investment. If she’s happy, then the baby(ies) will be happy.

• The writer accepts all responsibility for positive familial relations resulting from this article and rejects all negative outcomes as the result of typical male buffoonery