How to Decide When to Have a Baby

One of the hardest questions many of us have in life is knowing when to have a baby. So here’s how we got here…

When we started telling friends and family about our little one on the way, we got one question that always surprised me. Were you trying to get pregnant? It caught me off guard because I/we successfully didn’t get pregnant for so long. So, of course, we were ready to make this big step.

While we successfully didn’t have a baby for all those years, I am not incredibly aware of the struggles others have in getting pregnant. So here is just our conversation and process for figuring out when we were ready to have a baby. To a large extent, the when is out of your hands.

I think it also caught me off guard because my husband and I are planners. Though we’re flexible, huge life changes are not willy-nilly in any manner of speaking. So, here’s our story on how we decided when to have a baby…

CONTENTS

When to Have a Baby?

It took a while. We’ve been together for ten years and married for three. Us being ready to expand our family had nothing to do with how long we’ve been together, however.

Did we Both Want Kids?

I think it’s important to note that both of us want kids (of course we’ll just stick with one at the moment). The debate for us was not IF we were going to have kids but WHEN the time felt right.

Maternity Shirt Dress Outfit - Isabella Oliver

Planning Our Future

So, why did it all the sudden feel right? Well, it all started in the summer of 2017 from a conversation that had NOTHING TO DO WITH KIDS! My husband asked me a question about plans for my professional future. While nothing was decided on that front at the time, it got our wheels turning.

Part of the conversation of our professional futures included moving out of our apartment in LA to a home in northern California. Over the course of a few weeks, we made a plan for ourselves and our future (past the next six months).

So then what?

Over the last few years I’d occasionally think about having kids. The thought usually lasted a few minutes and would honestly happen every few months. Sometime after our “future” conversations, however, the thought started happening more and more – every month, every two weeks, and then a little more than that.

I’m not one to keep secrets from my husband – especially big things on my mind like kids. So I told him one night (verbatim), “I think getting pregnant and having kids might not be the dumbest idea. I just wanted to loop you into my thoughts.”

Yep! That was it folks. I didn’t really wait for his response nor did we have a conversation that night.

And then about a week later, it came up again. He told me he’d been excited since I told him about my “not-so-dumb” idea. So, I guess that’s how we decided it was time to have a baby.

How to Decide When to Have a Baby

Since we’re planners, we planned. At the time I had my second IUD inserted. As an aside, I’ve had only wonderful experiences with IUDs – I know that isn’t always the case, but I hear so much negativity and not enough positivity about them.

So anyway. We picked a time to take out my IUD – late July 2018 – I told you we were planners.

Just after we decided on a date to start “trying,” I remember distinctly telling my husband two things.

I told him first that it might not happen right away. I’ve heard so many stories one way or another about how long it takes. I just wanted to warn him that things weren’t always definite.

The second thing I told him was that I was going to need emotional support just before and after removing the IUD.

After trying for YEARS to not get pregnant, all the sudden I was switching my mentality. And I’d be preparing for some major physical and life changes.

I needed him to know that I wasn’t going to be as cool and collected as normal.

How did I feel when we started trying?

Is “weird” an acceptable answer? From the day the IUD came out, my mentality shifted. I immediately started thinking about my cycle and what everything for us meant and it was a lot.

As it turns out, we didn’t have to wait long to get pregnant. Even just that short time gave me a TINY glimpse into what it’s like for others who struggle to get pregnant. I can’t even begin to imagine the emotional and mental turmoil.

A quick aside here, I’m now a firm believer that if people want kids, if they’re trying, and everything down to even details of breastfeeding are all VERY PERSONAL conversations. People treat them lightly an fail to understand the emotion that exists behind these conversations. So please, just treat these conversations with care.

So. That’s our story on how to decide when to have a baby. Basically, it started to feel like the right thing to do once we had a longer term plan in mind about so much of our life together. Then having a kid didn’t seem so dumb, rather it seemed as though we were working to create a specific livelihood into which a child would fit well!

See more pregnancy tips, first trimester nausea relief, a go to look in my Birkenstock Mayari outfit, and my and what to put in a hospital bag for dad.