Doper parents, how did you decide when to have children?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Assuming, of course, that your children were planned, how did you decide when to have a baby?

My husband and I are trying to figure it out, and, predictably, one of us is much more ready for it than the other. Both of us really want children – that’s not the issue – and I am feeling like the time is approaching. He’s not sure that he’s quite ready for it yet, but he also doesn’t know if he’ll ever feel ready before it happens. He’s trying to figure out if his hesitation means “not yet” or if it means that I will just have to take the lead and he will be on board when it becomes a reality.

How did you decide that it was time to expand your family?

2

Hi stargazer, we met at Swampfest a little over a year ago, now.

At any rate, I’ll try to answer your question. For the record, my daughter (first pregnancy was not planned), but my son (second pregnancy) was.

There’s no “I’m absolutely ready” moment, in my personal experience.

Finding out we were going to be parents was absolutely the most terrifying, exhilerating, and giddy experience. We were absolutely not ready for my daughter, and frankly, felt very ambivalent about even having kids. Once we discovered I was pregnant, all those feelings just disappeared. YMMV.

When I finally became pregnant with my son (although planned, it took some time), we experienced all the above feelings all over again.

There are all the usual fears; “Will I be a good parent?” “Can we afford this?” etc.

Your lives will change forever. I don’t regret one minute of it.

3

Oh, there is an absolutely ready moment. Its after you’ve ambiguously decided to move forward and after about month six of not being able to concieve and lasts until you concieve, adopt, or decide to remain childless.

Then, the moment the child actually becomes a more or less certainty, it completely disappears - poof! And you are no longer ready for it.

We decided when because we weren’t getting younger and felt we were getting close to “now or never.” Do an exercise - take the oldest you want to be when your youngest graduates from college. Subtract 22-35 years (depending on number of children you desire and spacing). That is how much longer you have before you get started or you’ll miss the end date. You may still miss - took us three years for the first one to arrive. A lot of people are quite surprised.

If you are still ten years away from that date, continue to enjoy your childfree life. If you are five years away, it might be time to find out how much daycare costs and what the inside of Babies R Us looks like.

(My youngest is in first grade, I’m forty, I’ll be fifty-two or so when she finishes high school and fifty six or so when she gets out of college - I would have liked to have timed that to have been about a year younger or so).

4

It was pretty simple, really – we decided that we both had wanted to have a baby for a few years, but were waiting for “the perfect time”. Once we realized that no time was the perfect time, then off came the jimmy hat.

Of course, if we had realized that it would take a couple years of trying, we’d probably have started earlier.

5

The rabbit died.

6

My wife told me.

7

I’m scared to death of having kids. I think that means now is not a good time. . .

8

Much the same as Mr Briston, waiting for the perfect time is going to be a long wait.
We decided we wanted kids, financially and stability wise every thing was as peachy as could be reasonably expected. I just had this niggling ‘I am not ready’ type feeling. My wife asked if I could try and be a little more specific, as niggling umming and harring were not good reasons. As ever she wa right, now 3 down in 5 years, it is time to go and see a man with an elastic band and a couple of bricks.
cheers

9

The religious group we were a part of recommended 3 years of marriage before having children. “You need to learn to be a husband and wife before you become a dad and mom.” #1 son born 3 yrs, 3 mos after wedding. Had 2 miscarriages then #2 son arrived 3 yrs and 3 weeks after #1 son.

I agree that you never fully know what you are getting yourself into until after the kid is born. Some people love being parents, and some do not. You may feel one way before the baby comes and find yourself feeling the opposite way when the child is finally part of the family.

10

Another vote for “there is no moment”. That’s not to say things can’t be planned - my daughter’s conception was planned down to the day (and we were luckier than most, it worked the first time), but there was still that moment when we DIDN’T reach for the condom when it was scary as hell, and we just looked into each other eyes and said, “Are we going to do this? Really?” and finally just did it in a state somewhere between panic and elation.

Have some money saved, have your careers in order, talk about parenting styles (watching shows like Supernanny together is a good way to get those conversations started - gives you specifics to talk over, not abstract principles), decide who’ll stay home when and who’ll be the primary babysitter…
…and then be prepared to throw all your careful planning out the window when nothing works out the way you thought it would and someone looses their job in the 23rd week of your pregnancy and the stay-at-home parent finds out she can’t stand it because her brains are leaking out her ears in a pile of dirty diapers and baby talk and no matter how many times one of you tells the other that the baby can’t eat chocolate pudding yet, once again the kid has a chocolate smeared face and will be up all night with diarrhea and gas and your boss tells you flextime isn’t working out like he thought it would and he really needs you to fly to Tokyo on Thursday and your mother won’t babysit any more…
…and you’ll still love being a parent anyway. Funny how that happens.

11

We were very scared to take the plunge, but when I was 36 I figured the only way to squeeze in 2 kids before I was 40 was to just go for it. As it turns out, #2 will be born about 3 weeks after my 40th birthday, but I figure that is close enough. :slight_smile:

I would have liked to have 3, but I waited a little too long for that…so my advice is to pre-plan a little better than I did!

12

We waited about 5 years. This included time to buy our first house, get our careers well started and have no debt except the mortgage.
We were 31 and 34 respectively and felt we were emotionally ready. Sometimes I wish we had started earlier, but all in all the timing worked out well.
Our second child, my son, was a wishy-washy decision, it was 3 years later and we decided if we were going to have a second child, we better go ahead and do so. It is nice having them 3 years apart. However, it did mean 6 years of changing diapers.

Kids are high demand/high reward.

I always try to remind parents of only 1 child that 2 kids is not twice as hard as 1 child, it is 4 times as hard. I think any parent of 2 or more kids knows what I am talking about. :wink:

Jim

13

A: I got married. It’s a little cynical perhaps but kids are (generally) a direct result of marriage. Sure we can control timing and spacing of children like they could have never thought of before 1900 but this is a fairly recent conundrum we are discussing. In the spectrum of ‘no birth control!’ to ‘we use two at once to be sure!’ my wife and I fall in the middle. We used non-chemical birth-control (went camping with a soon to be married friend whose body didn’t dig the drugs, she had full on detox with hallucinations and everything. We helped her pull the purple blobs off her face…) for the sake of my wife’s health and everything has been great. Once we hit the window of time that met our rough desire for spacing (we didn’t want to plan so much all the kids were born in June for instance) we came off the BC. We’ve never had any trouble getting pregnant, thank the Lord, and we are now expecting #'s 3&4 (I want 4, my wife wants 5, but I think this will end it for us) and we couldn’t be happier.

Your hubby will have reservations, I had classic ones ‘will I be a good one… etc.’ and once I saw that wee little face I knew their wasn’t anything short of death that could keep me from providing the love, care, and $ he would need. I am sure your hub will feel the same.

As anecdotal evidence, I now believe the ‘can we afford it?’ argument is bogus because I have a SIL and BIL who want lots of kids. They just had number 8. They will have more I’m sure. She doesn’t work; he makes ~30k a year in a town with a $1mil median house price. So they moved 45 min to where the houses were only ~300k and they do just fine. They do trips with the kids. They live normal lives, they have satellite. Sometimes I don’t know how they do it but they get by all right. (Incidentally, she hasn’t used any BC for ~15 yrs and the kids are all +/- 5 mo. from being two years apart.) If most of the world has 3+ kids per fam and makes less than 10k (or less than 1k?) a year certainly we Westerners can have 2 kids on 50k, even adjusting the prices country to country.

Now, I wouldn’t choose to have 8+ kids, and I think you won’t either, but I suspect you will have ~2 kids and look back on it as wonderful. Both of you will do well, if you love your kids and earnestly try doing the right thing it usually adds up to a good kid. In my experience just knowing that the parents love them is enough to get a kid through the toughest life.

14

Thanks for all of your replies. I know there will never be a “perfect time” in terms of money, career, etc., but it’s still tricky, trying to determine if now is as good a time as any, or if we should wait a couple more years.

Actually, the trick is more my husband – I think that part of it is that he doesn’t have a lot of experience with babies, while I do; I have an idea of what we’re getting ourselves into, and he has less of one. So for him, it’s probably largely a fear of the unknown – this big, life-changing, scary thing – and for me it’s a baby. The big-scary-life-changing stuff is quieted somewhat for me by the idea of a baby, but for him, the baby idea is just as scary. (He’s great with little kids, but doesn’t really know what to do with a baby.)

But will he ever feel ready beforehand (this is rhetorical, of course; I don’t expect you all to be able to tell me this!)? Should I push him a little, or wait until he’s ready? What if he never feels ready? (Again, he knows he wants kids… he just doesn’t know if he wants them now versus some vague day in the future sometime.) He doesn’t even know the answer, which is why I’m curious about how other people answered this question. I guess a corollary question is how you sorted this out if one partner was ready earlier than the other partner.

It’s so interesting to me, all the different ways we create families these days. I can’t wait to see what we do! :slight_smile:

15

Hmmm, to me it sounds as if your hubby’s fears are based on the unknown. Of course, you know him and I don’t.

Babies do not stay babies forever. You know this. In fact, the first year is a total blur. The period between 1 and 4 was my favorite with my kids. They were walking, talking, and were just so much fun. Of course, there’s a lot of hard work involved, but you don’t really think of it as work while it’s happening. They grow so quickly and it is an awesome thing to wach the changes occur. The facial expressions, their cute little belly laughs, their little personality quirks. It’s an amazing thing to watch a baby develop into a real person with personality.

My husband and I had been married for three years when I discovered I was pregnant with my daughter. Before I became pregnant, the hubby and I really did not want kids that soon. I was told I couldn’t have children, so I really didn’t care one way or the other. Once it was confirmed I was pregnant, we were absolutely elated. Scared, to be sure, but elated. To be honest, I was really afraid of telling my husband because we had discussed waiting just shortly before I became pregnant (with birth control no less!). His reaction was amazing. I think his grin nearly split his face in half.

It’s been quite a journey for my husband and I. The kids are nearly 17 and 14, respectively. I can’t believe how the time has flown. I can’t believe what amazing people they’ve become and I can’t wait to see what they do with their lives. They’re bright, humorous kids. My daughter is very quiet, but has a rapier wit. My son is very gregarious (he’ll talk to anybody) and loves to joke around. Both do exceptionally well in school.

All the same, in so many respects, it seems like just very short time ago that I brought home my preemie daughter. Your husband may feel like he doesn’t know what to do with babies, but believe me, he’ll know the minute he has the child in his arms.

Yes, he’ll be nervous, but that first smile will melt him. The first poopy diaper will make him gag though. :wink:

16

Do you have a baby you can borrow? Seriously, anyone you know who has a kid who wants a night off - or better yet, a weekend? My husband and I baby-sat for a friend’s baby together and that really gave him a lot of confidence and lessened his fear of the unknown.

And, of course, it got us mucho grateful friend points!

17

I knew up front I wanted to wait a while after marriage before having kids. I told Suburban Plankton that up front. I told him 5 years. He was fine with it. I went off the pill after 4 yrs, 3 mos of marriage. Gave birth to our son at 5 yrs, 3 mos. It was just something I knew. Don’t know how to tell you how I knew.

I will tell you that waiting to have kids was very good for us. We were established in our careers. I was able to take plenty of time off work and so was he. We owned our own home. It worked for us.

18

Interesting thing having kids.

My 1st wife and I had a baby. We were both in our early 20’s when we found out. I wasn’t ready. I was a musician, out late almost every night, attempting to cover a day job and a bit on the wild side. She decided she was beyond her wild years and was fully ready to settle down. This of course caused some drama between us but at the end of the day a lovely baby girl was born. I settled down and got started getting my shit together. The wife did as well.

Two weeks later she vanished with the kid. I couldn’t find her but I’d hear odds and ends of how she was doing through friends who bumped into her.

Fast forward two years later and the wife decides to return to the wild life (child or not) and I continued the course of growing up and doing the things a father should do. A short time later the wife is tracked down, a few visits to court and I’ve got full custody of the child. The wife vanishes into thin air.

That was about 13 years ago.

My daughter is now 15, a bit of a handful, and outside of the trama which is budding teen love affairs, doing well.

I guess what I’m saying is sometimes you might not think you’re ready to have children until a child arrives… it makes one BE ready. If the pair of you want kids, the rest sort of falls into place when they are born. (sometimes not as smoothly as you’d hope, but it normally works out).

19

Not a parent, I’m only an auntie.

Bro liked kids since he was old enough to think of 3yo as “kids”. Lilbro was blessed with a Big Bro who never minded having the Lil One tagging along (the only exception to this was when Bro could already get into teen clubs and Lilbro wasn’t old enough). So when Bro got married we knew he wanted to have about a bazillion kids (ok, not that many since he wanted his wife to survive) and about as soon as possible… what do you mean, we’re both virgins so it can’t happen until at least 7 months after the wedding? Damn!

SiL wasn’t ready. She has a terrible need for control (logical considering her background). Things have to be A Certain Way. She was so tense about the possibility of getting pregnant that they had to combine 3 anti-babies.

Once A Certain Way was achieved, they dismissed the French Lieutenant, the Pill and the Thermometer. One of the funniest things about The Nephew is that he’s finally making his mom understand statistics: she’d been told that “on average it takes a year to get pregnant” so she was expecting to take a year (why do so many people misunderstand “average” as “the only possible value”?). They took less than 48 hours.

20

Of course, this works for a certain type of nervous potential father-to-be, but I know of at least one who firmly declined any opportunity to hold a baby (let alone diaper a baby) in the months when his wife was pregnant. Too nervous. Didn’t want to hurt the kid, or whatever, despite being assured that a six-month-old baby is hard to break.

But he took to holding his own baby, and changing her diapers, and the rest of the stuff which goes with having a baby just fine.

It can be the difference between dealing with the abstract, when there is always someone else around who can deal with the kid (and, on at least one occassion, always a half dozen people around to scrutinize your interaction with said kid) and dealing with the practical. “Daddy, here’s your little girl”