is there a strict deadline here if we want this for Python 3.7?

The deadline for the new features is the date of the first beta currently scheduled for 2018-01-29, but if you can get this in before the last alpha (2018-01-08) it will be best.

See PEP 537 (https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0537) for details and updates.