Just to provide a sample since I can’t contribute myself, my parents were married for about two years before I was born. To be more exact I think when I was conceived just before their first anniversary.
I’m 34 and have been married for almost 5 years, but we’ve been waiting until we were financially ready. The daycare expense has been the only thing holding us back. But as many people say, “If you wait until you’re ready,…”
About a month or so ago, I told my husband that a friend of mine was pregnant and we had the following conversation:
Hubby: When are you going to get pregnant?
Me: When are you going to GET me pregnant?
Hubby: When are you going to let me?
Me: I’ll be ovulating in a week (that’s not to say that we don’t have sex for fun, but I was implying that in a week it would be the most opportune time for baby-making sex) 
And that’s how we decided to start trying. Romantic, huh? Now, whenever we see a baby on TV or go shopping and see baby clothes, he gets excited. When we were in the mall, he even wanted to go into the toy store to look at baby toys! :eek: But I love that he’s so excited.
I was unmarried and 20. I’ve never regretted it.
The only thing I would say, which you’ve already addressed, is that if you know you want kids “sometime,” check with your doctor about any downsides to waiting. My wife and I knew we wanted kids, and even though the time wasn’t great financially, we knew we had a narrow time window thanks to her ob-gyn’s input.
So we had kids right away and live in a smaller house than we envisioned and are borrowed to the hilt - but it was worth it.
My wife and I had been enjoying each other’s company for maybe six or seven years before we went on our baby-having quest - always with an eye toward having kids. We were there. We now have twin girls that are as crazy as we are. By no means am I advocating that you wait as long as we did.
One thing I would caution against is getting too financially strung out with your living arrangements. Maybe if this house doesn’t come through you should wait until you have your baby then decide where you want to live (I’m assuming your current residence is less expensive than the house you’re considering). I say this because a lot can happen expense and other-wise between now and when you bring home your little bundle of joy.
You’ll get a ton of stuff for your newborn but after a few months you’re on your own and it can get expensive real fast just for the basics - I’m not even including day care or money you’ll want to sock away for their education. Maybe you’ll want to be a SAHM. If having two incomes is the only way you can afford this house, or if you’re financially reeling from your pregnancy and/or pregnancy related activities, then you’ll have no choice but to keep working. If for some reason you have to be a SAHM then you and your husband are in for a big struggle (that’s a big if, though). Then again, like you said, maybe being a SAHM isn’t for you. It’s just nice to have a choice in the matter. Hopefully you’ll be in a place where if you’re out one income for a while it won’t be a disaster.
Ditto, only I was 22. I am excited to find out how this whole ‘husband and baby’ thing works out when I pop in a week or so.
My oldest just turned 17. If we’d waited until we were really ready (financially, emotionally, career-wise, etc.), we’d STILL be waiting.
Go for it.
I had intended to be funny. Instead, my post disgusted and possibly frightened people. I am geuninely sorry. I have posted a full apology in this Pit thread
You show a lot of class, DocCathode. Good for you.
Regards,
Shodan
Hey Doc,
I think one of the best measure of a person’s character is the extent they are willing to admint their mistakes, and how well they apologise. You are being very considerate of other people’s feelings, while you could have just brushed it off with a “it’s just a joke, fercryingoutloud” comment.
I would also like to remind everyone else that whenver you read something funny, whenever you hear a good joke, a talented comic, it’s because someone took a chance, and risked making an ass of themselves, to entertain us. The only thing more frightening than singing in front of a group of people that I can think of, while remaining clothed, is trying to make them laugh.
So Doc, thanks for taking the risk. While we may not all agree on what is funny, we all appreciate those who risk embarasment to entertain us.
Don’t let this stop you next time the urge strikes. 
PS. As an over-protective father of a two year old, I wasn’t hurt by your post. Maybe startled a bit, but not offended.
We do have a fairly decent amount in savings right now - a good 10K. So we’re at least set up for any backups. We’d rather not touch that money if we don’t have to, but it’s there. My main concern is paying off my debt - if we can attach it to the mortgage, we’ll do it that way and it won’t be an issue. Otherwise, baby-making will just have to wait awhile longer 'till we get that under control (I should specifiy this is my debt from prior to marriage - we don’t want to use savings for it because we’d rather get it paid off without touching savings - that nest egg needs to stay there).
We’re planning to buy a house that’s comparable in mortgage payments to our monthly rent payments. We like older houses, which helps, since most people want brand new McMansions these days - we’re looking for houses with updates done to them in the last few years so that it eliminates the need for massive renovations. The plan is to survive on one person’s income and use the other for incidentals, so if we were to lose a job or if I did want to stay home, we’d know the bills were covered.
This is a huge decision, but I sometimes get the feeling that we’re overthinking it. Should it happen now, we can handle it, but it wouldn’t be ideal. But waiting too long may bring my medical issues into play, and we may lose the chance to conceive naturally altogether (which means we turn to adoption, which has been discussed at-length and in-depth - we know it may be necessary, and to be honest, I would love to adopt…but adoption is so expensive that we want to try to have a biological child first - then we’ll find a way to pay for adoption).
Who knows? I expect we’ll see our kid when we see them. I’m looking forward to it:). I’m really enjoying reading how everyone else decided to take the plunge. Right now, I love being a newlywed, and I think the reason I’m thinking so much about parenthood is because my husband has proven to be such a good husband, I can’t wait to see how he’ll be as a dad.
Hey, Doc, you’re an upright kind of guy. Good for you.
Ava
well, my first baby kinda “found me” if you know what I mean. If you don’t know what I mean, I’ll spell it out for you: we weren’t married, and, although we had been together for two years, weren’t even engaged; we were actively trying not to get pregnant. But once I found out I was pregnant, it took me about two minutes to know that I wanted to keep the baby. Didn’t know what it would do to the relationship. When I told him, he said “so, what do you want to do?” I said “I want to have my baby, and I want to keep it” and he said “good. That’s what I want to do, too”. When our first baby was almost three (we were married by then), I started thinking “gee, I wouldn’t mind having another baby when the first one is about four”; so I armed myself with all the arguments I could use to convince my husband we should have a second child. I started out simple: “Honey, I think maybe we should have another baby” to which he replied “OK” to which I replied “Wait a minute; I haven’t given you any of my arguments yet!” It took us about two weeks (during which we took frequent breaks, of course) of trying, to get pregnant again. I had my second daughter in April, and our first one turned four in June. With our third one, I didn’t have any huge desire to have another baby, but hubby really wanted to try “one more time for a boy”. We didn’t get our boy, but we did get another little girl (who is now four) that I just love to pieces.
Good luck to both of you!
Actually, in most cases you’re better off financially to pay off any existing debt before trying to build up savings. Debts generally accrue interest far more quickly than savings, so keeping your nest egg might be costing you money. Just something to keep in mind.
If you are planning on house-hunting, house-buying or moving before your pregnancy will be finished, I’d strongly recommend waiting on the pregnancy until after the move. This isn’t always possible but I’ve known women who moved while pregnant and the stress of pregnancy (and the effect of pregnancy hormones on emotions and temper) mixed with the stress of moving was not a good thing.
Can you tell my husband that? I’ve tried. It’s one of our few points of contention.
Eureka, no worries there. We’ll be done with house-hunting and moving by the time we start trying. I don’t really want to be pregnant while moving at the same time. If pregnancy happens in the next year, it’ll happen in the latter part of the year, not the early part.
Ava
Gosh, I’m not sure that I’m ready even now - and she’s 8 months old as of today. I spent a lot of time thinking that I wanted to have a kid “some day.” As I got older and “some day” was NOW, I started thinking maybe I didn’t want to have kids at all. After a year or so of this fear and indecision (my husband was always sure he wanted a baby and was just waiting for me) I realized that if I didn’t make a decision, it was going to be too late as I was getting older (I’m 36 now).
So, we decided to try. With the help of Taking Charge of Your Fertility, it took 8 weeks to get pregnant, I lost the baby at 7 weeks and then got pregnant again 6 weeks later. That was hard as I thought it would take a while to get pregnant and so I’d have more time to get used to the whole idea. As it was, I spent much of the pregnancy being terrified - terrified that I’d made the wrong decision, that I’d be a terrible mother, that I was too selfish, that I’d never have any time to myself, that it was a bad idea because I didn’t like kids, that I wouldn’t love her,etc.
She is, of course, the most Perfect Baby in existence and I love her to pieces. So far, I think I’m a good mom and motherhood itself is much easier than I thought it would be. Time management is really difficult, though. I have no time for myself anymore and that’s really tough (I didn’t become less selfish the second I gave birth). There’s no time for anything! I don’t get time to even sit down until her bedtime at 9pm and that’s only if I blow off the chores. and of course, since she wakes up early, I have to try and go to bed by 10:30 if I don’t want to be seriously sleep deprived.
I’m glad that my husband and I had had a lot of time to be together first (we started dating in '95 and married in '97) because it’s true that baby-dom puts a LOT of stress and strain on even the healthiest marriage. I can’t imagine doing this after we’d only been married a couple of years (but that’s just us - I don’t mean to imply that anyone elses experience would be similar). It’s a learning experience.
I would sorta agree and disagree with Velma. Yeah, me personally - I’m still the same person and I didn’t expect that. But life isn’t the same at all. Little things I’d always taken for granted, I can’t any more. No more lazy mornings (ever!) lying in bed, no sitting around with a book because I just feel like it, even stuff I’d always taken for granted, like taking a shower or doing my roots requires major planning because some one always has to be with the baby (who’s now crawling everywhere!). That’s a tough adjustment. When I read stuff in books or magazines about how having a baby “really didn’t change anything” I laugh. Long and hard.
On the other hand, nothing prepared me for how I’d spend all day waiting to pick her up at day care because it’s so much fun to walk in and see her reaction (BIG smile, arms waving, fast crawl to me) and give her a big hug.