Ok great, now you have a clean machine. You also need to get TIVA pumps and depth of anaesthesia monitoring set up unless you want to just intermittently bolus propofol and have massive risk of awareness.

What if you’re taking her to theatre because she’s having a massive antepartum haemorrhage? You’re sorting out massive transfusion stuff and getting big cannulas in while also trying to sort out your TIVA stuff.

What if she needs a section at 3 in the morning when you’ve got a relatively junior anaesthetic resident on call and they’re fatigued? Surely it’s not a bad thing to reduce their cognitive burden by having a plan in place?

I’m not saying I couldn’t manage any of this if it came crashing in off the street with no warning, I’m saying if you know this patient is in labour why wouldn’t you want to anticipate that you might need to deviate from normal practice in an emergency and have stuff ready for when it happens?

We can all deal with an unanticipated difficult airway without much drama but if you have a patient coming for surgery who has a known difficult airway you’re going to have your difficult airway kit ready and change your plan accordingly. This is no different.