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I just recently wrote about this issue on my blog: http://calioc.blogspot.com/2008/12/knot-nest-egg.html
It is a very personal decision, and I think that if you wait until all your fears go away, then you will never make the leap.
One thought: if you're going to start trying soon, make sure to get off of bcp's a year or so before you want to start trying! It can take some time for your body to adjust...
We've been married almost 4 years, and we started trying at the two year mark. Two miscarriages and a year off from trying later, I still feel like if I were younger, I'd have no problem waiting a couple more years. But I just turned 30 last October, and feel the clock starting to tick tick tick.
That 4 years of marriage really flew by.
I guess the answer is there is no right time. You'll always be too busy or not have enough money or want more time with each other. When it happens, you'll be happy and you'll make it work. 
Mrs. Bee and Rosy, you've got plenty of time! I'm looking at starting my family around the age of 38 (yikes!). At this point for me, time is starting to trump fear, but I don't think I'll ever really feel "ready". These are tough issues, made tougher by all of the unpredictability and stress involved.
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I will be 39 by the time I get married in June - so to me you are a spring chicken! Release the anxiety and just know that if kids are a priority, you just do it. I personally think you can wait at least a year - all of my friends had babies after 35. In my case we have no time, it is now or never for us, and personally I am ok with whatever our future holds.
It's true, you may never have enough money or time, but at some point you just have to take a leap. Maybe it'll hit both of you one day like, hey, I think I wanna make some babies with ya! We want to wait a few years (I'm almost 25 & he's almost 26) so we are pretty young still, but I also want babies before 30. We both agree that right now it's not what we want because we want to enjoy married life with just the two of us. I guess when it's the time we'll just have that feeling, but for now I'm not sure because we haven't been there yet.
We got married in Sept '08. I'll be 30 soon (my husband is 28) and my closest friends all have babies, but I don't feel ready yet...so we think we'll start at our 2 year anniversary. I definitely worry that we'll have trouble if we wait too long, but for now I'm focusing on taking better care of myself (exercise, vitamins, etc) and just enjoying being a newlywed.
My husband and I are 22 and 25, been together 8 years. I've got baby fever something terrible, but we are waiting to begin trying until May. I'm a teacher, so it would be best if I got pregnant in July or August, but I guess if I have to take some time off from work, I have to! I have been taking vitamins and exercising, eating better, so that hopefully all systems are go!
Uh, *timidly speaks up* I feel very young here. I'm 20 and my husband is 27 and we were married October 13th, 2007. But I just gave birth to our son 11 days ago and I'm really glad we didn't wait. Yes, we could be more financially secure, etc., but when are you ever going to have enough money? While we weren't really trying to get pregnant, we definitely weren't keeping it from happening. We both want at least 5 children and we'd like to be done, or near done by the time hubby is 40- which only gives us 13 years. So I guess we're working with that timetable rather than my biological clock. That puts me at around 33 by the time we want to be done- I like the sound of that. I would rather be younger and be able to keep up with my children, growing up with them, in a sense. The same with my husband- he wants to be able to get out and play and teach his sons before he needs to go get his knees replaced. Ok, just joking there, but that's our thinking behind having children so soon. And then? We will, or at least I will be, a young empty-nester. I have never had any desire for a career, other than that of a wife and mother, so that does not come into play here, but we figure, if I ever want to go to college or something, I can do that after the children are old enough to take care of themselves. But, hey, this is what's working for us. I'm sure it's not right for everyone. Please don't beat up on me now. lol!
you'll probably start feeling the baby pressure after a year or two. we got married before most of our friends, and now most of them have a baby, and some have two!
FI and I decided that it is best to wait a few years. I'm only 25 so I figured I'd still have time; although like lillindy i'd like to have my first before 30. We figured it's best to have some quality hubby and wife time first seeing as how we're not living together yet and only get to see each other on the weekends for now.
The short version-- you know how you knew about Mr. rosychicklet being the one? I think you'll know in a similar way when you're ready to have kids.
Our approach-- I love the idea of having kids, but it's still a "when I grow up" feeling instead of being more immediate. There's a lot we want to do in terms of career, travel, etc. before having kids. I just started my first real job a couple years ago and it's really nice to have the disposable income and the time to take off on short notice if we feel like it.
We'd also like a year to enjoy just being married, before having a kid. Since I'm 27 (he's 32) and will be almost 29 when we're married, we'll probably start trying soon after the wedding, and see what happens. Then there's the issue of how many, and how far apart-- we're thinking 2, about 3-4 years apart. Hopefully I'll have both before I'm 35.
The way I think about it is, we're doing the nesting part first (buying a house, building up college funds, paying off my massive med school debt, etc.) and then getting married/having kids. I want to have as few distractions as possible, and I think we've got it figured out in a way that works well for us. Everyone's different, though!
Good luck with your baby planning!
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I'd like to start trying around 30 (when we get married I'll be 24, he 26). The women in my family have a history of infertility and, according to my doctor, gets worse each time it's passed down (illustration: my mother had to have two surgeries to have my brother and I, and never used birth control methods afterwards). So I'm not anticipating an easy road to getting pregnant anyways. It'll be very deliberate and not "if it happens, it happens."
I agree there is never a perfect time, just like getting married for a lot of us isn't ideal at this time in life (grad school and where we live suddenly become major issues because of the other's job, family etc). And I fully expect parenting will put a major strain on our intimacy/relationship, not to mention completely alter the way we live. These are harsh sacrifices that we can never be totally prepared for.
I guess my point is, we can never rationalize these decisions because they will never make sense. They're totally emotional choices.
We just knew we wanted to start our family. You can't wait until everything is perfect and ready - because that will NEVER happen - but you should both have that feeling of "I'm ready." I'm actually PG right now, and of course I have moments where I think about how hard it will be to have my life change. I know DH does too. But we're both so ready to have kids, that we're ready to give those things up. In other words, we're ready for that life change.
Each time I enter a new phase in my life or new "age range" I feel I'm ready for kids. Then a couple of years go by and I look back and think, what the heck was I thinking?! We wanted alone time, quiet tv time, travel, carefree partying. Then some reality set in, what about child care, cost of health insurance, life insurance, and what impact would it have on my job?
Suddenly, one day it hit me just like I knew I'd marry Mr. Snow Pea. I want a baby! I want to be a mom! I think we can handle it! For Mr. SP, it hit him when he held my GF's twin girls. He had this look of scared "I need to get my act together if we want kids"! It was the sweetest moment. We're still scared, but we figured it will be happen and we'll be scared, but happy for it. In the mean time, we're working on getting our ducks all in a row first.
I wouldn't want you to put unnecessary pressure on yourself just because you're turning 30. It's still very young especially these days. If you're not ready, then you'll be panicked and maybe resentful for starting before you were ready.
Goodluck on baby planning! Excited for you both!
As others have mentioned, I wouldn't worry too much about turning 30. I know the pressures of worrying that you'll wait till it's too late, but in reality there are TONS of over-35 women out there getting pregnant without trouble and having perfectly healthy pregnancies.
Once you decide to give it a shot, the best advice I can offer is to view conception as a process ... and one with a LOT of room for fate to step in and make decisions for you. (We're so used to being able to control our life's decisions that this can be rough!) As Mr Bee mentioned, sometimes even after you go off birth control nothing happens right away. Our own case is the opposite example -- we wanted to wait a year or two for some "together time" as newlyweds, and even though I went off birth control shortly after the honeymoon (for medical reasons), we were going to time things to avoid conception, and (because of age and past chemo) we didn't expect I was very fertile anyway. 6 weeks later, we were expecting! Some people never conceive. Some try for years, adopt a baby, and then conceive on their own immediately after. Some conceive even when ON birth control. It happens when it happens.
I hope the "baby pressure" doesn't hit us immediately after getting married.. I'll still be in graduate school for 4 years, so we're going to be primarily dependent on my fiance's salary for awhile. After I get settled into a permanent job after graduate school, though, I'm sure we'll look into starting our family soon after.
My fiance (24) and I (22) will be married in June. We both want time to just be a married couple. Most people I talk to say to celebrate your first anniversary free of babies! So right now I believe we will start trying a year or so from our wedding. I want to be a young mom. We bought a house over a year ago, both finished school, and are financially stable. So I think we will be ready by then. We'll see!
We were married in June, I am 31, he is 34. We agreed to spend one year being married and then decide when to have kids. Well two nights ago, we starting talking about trying soon.....and then last night, we started talking about my husband's job search (he was laid off in november) and how a lot of the jobs available in his field (finance & real estate) might involve a lot of travel. It turned into a stressful discussion because the last thing I want it to get pregnant and have a baby with him gone 4-5 days a week!! The tough thing is, this economy is so horrible, that it means fewer options - and I know my husband needs to find a job soon, its killing him to feel like his career has stalled.....so part of me feels like I really don't want him gone so much and the other part wants him to find a fulfilling job. ARgh.
Does anyone else have a spouse who is travelling a lot? How does that impact your decision on when to have kids??
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We're both 26 and want to start trying on our first anniversary.... we want to have 2 kids and it would be great if we could be proud parents of 2 kids by the time we're 30! But as others have said, when it happens, it happens... and if it were up to me, we might have had one last year, anyway :-)
I'd like to start trying around 30. There are some studies that link a decrease in breast cancer in women who have children before 30. With a history of breast cancer in my family, this was important to me. Also, I'm 26 and DH is 25, so four years of marriage pre-kids sounds like a good amount.
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My biggest fear is that when we actually start trying it won't work. I don't have money for fertility treatment and stuff. It's through Mother Nature or not at all. Yikes!
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Mrs. Bee is so right and sounds just like my mom! There is never a right time - you will always have too little money, not enough time, a place to live that's too small, too much work stuff going on. I'm not saying the only choice is to leave it up to fate, but I do think there are some things that you cannot plan for perfectly.
When you are ready, you'll feel ready, I think.
Right now I just feel that I'm too selfish to make any sacrifices of my lifestyle and $ to have kids. I don't know if this feeling will change. I figure if my desire to have kids overwhelm my desire for personal freedom, then I'll have kids. If not, I may never will.
My husband started talking about kids like three years ago, and on the honeymoon he was like, "Let's start a family." While I think it's so sweet he can't wait to be a daddy, I am soooooo not ready. He understands that I'm not there yet, but we've compromised and said we'll start trying 3 years from now (I'll be 27, he'll be 26). I could definitely wait 5 years from now to start, but I've bended a little. I really feel like it's important to have a house, a good amount in the bank for "baby" savings, and for him to be promoted before we do it, though, and he (usually) agrees. I think the next three years will be really hard for him to wait, but I just keep reminding him that once the kids come, he won't get my 24/7 attention anymore. :)
i think both he and i are ready to start trying soon...however while we're legally married - not everyone knows this and our WEDDING is still next june...thing is - he'll be 36 next month and i'll be 30 in august...we've been together over 2.5 years and we've both talked about being ready...but don't want to have our children before the actual wedding date - and plus i finally found a way of eating that has helped me get my weight under control - and dangit, i've worked too hard to NOT wear the dress of my dreams next june! lol. :)
seriously though, we are starting to try immediately after the wedding - but we'll have been "married" for over a year by then... :)
i know, though, he doesn't want to be a first time dad at 40 years old...
It's different for everyone but for us we had an accidental pg that ended in a miscarriage so we waited until we got married. We're both young (We're both currently 25 he'll be 26 soon) but we wanted to have kids young. For me I'm very grateful we did. We had another miscarriage after getting pg 3 months after we got married then had our daughter, who turns 2 next week! We decided in October to try again, got pg in September and lost the baby in November.
We found (after this last loss) that I have a birth defect that makes my uterus a slightly different shape, increasing my chance for miscarriages, and I have a luteal phase defect. Which basically means my body doesn't produce enough hormones so the baby won't live past the 1st trimester. I will have to take medication for that as well as baby asprin for the defect. I'm so so grateful we decided to start young. For me what would have happened if I waited until I was 35? Would I have found these problems in a reasonable amount of time? I'll never know but I'm glad that I don't have to beat a ticking clock too.
I personally don't want children in my early 20s, and my FI is okay with that. He doesnt either. we both agree we DO want them, but right now is just for US. we want to travel and do all the things we cannot right off the bat with a child.
we also want to wait until my FI is finacially stable to support us both finacially on just his salary, though that will happen quite soon (in the nest couple of years) I think we are going to wait at least 5-6 years (when we will be in our late late 20s) I do not mind having a child when I am 30...I want to embrace my life with just me and my FI as selfish as that sounds.
My fiance and I have agreed on one child (preferably a girl...though we wouldn't specifically try for one with IVF or anything). We'll be getting married when we're 22/23 (bah, I wish it was sooner -- stupid university), and I want to try to have a baby by 28 at the latest. (Preferably by 25.) So we'll probably ease into marriage during the first year, and then start actively trying.
I'm 31 and my husband is 33, both sets of parents really want us to have kids like by tomorrow.
We're still not sure when we're going to start trying, because it is going to change so many things. However, we went ahead and got off the pills and did all the necessary checkups (bloodtests etc) to make sure we're healthy & whenever we want to start trying, we can do it right away.
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Hi Bees,
I'm just wondering how people make the decision of when to start a family or how long to wait.
My husband and I got married in September (I'm 29 and he's 30). I feel like for medical/biological clock type reasons we should get started sooner rather than later (ie right away since I'll be 30 in June).
However, I vacillate between being excited about becoming a mom and being afraid to completely change my/our life!
We both want kids, but I think we are both afraid to take that leap.
How are you approaching this?
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