A "Bug out" bag

This post contains affiliate links that do earn me a small percentage in commission if you purchase the items from the link. Anything I make goes directly towards Tulla's medical-related expenses.

Have you ever been in a situation where you've had to grab a bag and run? I like to think about myself as a fairly prepared person, but I certainly hadn't ever imagined I'd need to. That's the way it goes though, right? You don't think about these things until you're in that situation where you wished you had.

Let me take you back to last winter. I was somewhere between Tulla not being able to nurse and exclusively nursing with the nipple shield. It was a feeding on-demand and getting very little sleep situation, sometime before Christmas.

We were actually asleep for once when the smoke alarms started going off. At first, we were groggy and annoyed. They were older, probably needed replacing, and malfunctioning.

How dare they choose the middle of our limited sleep to go off? My husband woke up, even with his dad ears. Did we smell anything? No.

But then there was something. It smelled electrical to me. Well, that woke us up fully. We quickly surveyed the house. Nothing upstairs. Nothing downstairs. No obvious flames or smoke. But there was a definite smell.

So my husband, armed with the fire extinguisher, kept looking. In the laundry room we found smoke, but still no flame. We were faced with the decision of calling the fire department or not. There was no fire that we could see, and none of the walls felt warm. I decided we needed to call it in.

The operator told us to clear the house and load up into our vehicle just to be safe. We loaded up the kids, which was a painfully long process (we would have been in trouble if there was a fast-moving fire), the dog, and moved the van in front of the house while we waited for the fire department to show up.

This whole process took several hours. As I was sitting in the van holding my baby girl and keeping the boys calm I realized something. I didn't have my shield. If she woke up hungry I had no way to feed her. I hadn't grabbed the diaper bag. There were no diapers if my two-year-old or Tulla needed to be changed.

I was wholly unprepared. So I sat there, playing calming music, talking to my boys, and praying that Tulla slept. My husband talked with the fire chief and brought us updates. The hours passed as they searched high and low for the source of the smoke. We are so thankful for the diligence of those first responders.

I am also so thankful that Tulla didn't wake up until we were cleared to go back into the house. It turned out our old refrigerator's compressor was the source, and thankfully there was no active fire. Unplugging it was all we needed to do, and after one early morning snack, we all went back to bed safe and sound.

This experience made us realize a few things:

1. We needed to prioritize replacing our smoke alarms

2. We needed a better plan for moving our kids out of the house in the middle of the night

3. We needed to be better prepared to meet our kids' needs in an emergency

The anxiety of sitting and waiting, realizing how woefully unprepared I was, changed the way I thought about emergency situations. I had always taken for granted that I could piece together whatever I needed and that my kids were low maintenance. I now have a baby reliant on a device for her sustenance. She couldn't eat without that shield, and I didn't have it with me.

Thus, the Bug Out bag was created. I tell you this so that you don't have to find yourself in a similar situation. Especially with young kids, I think it's a good idea to always have a bag ready if you have to "bug out" quickly.

Here are the important things to have:

Bug Out Bag checklist

• A strong bag that's easy to carry. I like a backpack. This one has a ton of space and storage cubes for added organization, which I need with my large family. A duffel is also a good choice. This weekender duffel comes with a packing cube and toiletry bag. The handles and over the shoulder straps give you flexibility in how you carry it. You want your bag of choice to be big enough to fit your essentials without being cumbersome.

• Any medical devices/equipment/medication/inhaler. For us, this is an oxygen tank, feed bag and pump, syringes and tubing, bottled water, pulse-oxygen monitor and sensor, her medications and inhalers.

• Any feeding equipment. Bottles, pumps (and a manual backup), or shields.

• Snacks for older kids. There's nothing a package of fruit snacks won't make better.

• A change of clothes for each family member.

• Diapers and wipes.

• An extra pacifier (or two).

• A backup battery charger for a phone or the pumps. This one has different cable types attached, so you can use it for multiple device types.
  

These are all the things I wish I had when we cleared out of the house in a hurry. Since then, these are the things I keep together in case there's an emergency like another fire or a tornado. I hope you never need a Bug Out bag. If you do, you'll be glad to have one packed and ready to go!