About three years ago—and six months after I became a PhD candidate—I learned that I was going to become a father. The baby shock was not part of my well-crafted plan for writing my dissertation, and I needed to deal with it. As soon as I heard the news, I emailed my funding agency and rescheduled my fieldwork in Canada. I finished most of my archival work for the dissertation research within that semester. I then wrote a chapter, based on the data I had collected, while waiting for the baby to arrive.