Family Matters
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Re: I want to have baby. He wants to wait.
Not if you want to stay married, it isn't.
If your spouse is not on board with having a child at this particular time, going ahead and deliberately trying to get pregnant without his knowledge or consent (whether it's quitting your BCP on the sly or poking holes in the condom or having lots of sex during your fertile period instead of abstaining) is a HUGE breach of trust. Huge.
Having a baby is an enormous life change and it should be a mutual decision in a marriage. If one spouse is not ready, then it's a no-go, no matter how ready the other spouse is.
Maybe you could bring it up to him, that if he thinks having a baby is going to be expensive then imagine if you have to go thru invitro or fertility drugs (if you wait long). Those costs alone and on top of having a baby will be expensive. And the longer a woman waits the more complications you and the baby could have. Then there's more medical bills.
And then i'd straight up tell him -- whether you have the baby now or have it in years from now -- it's going to be pricey either way. The only way you'll be able to know exactly how much is by having it. My hubby and I have tried to come up with a budget for a baby, but it's impossible. It's just something that you make a priority of sacrifices for. It's all worth it in the end.
PS- not to be a B**** about it, but he needs to understand your feelings and concerns and stop being so selfish.
I'd suggest making a list of financial things you need to look into/discuss. Before we started trying, we knew what my DH's salary would be, what our health benefits were, had a certain amount of $ in savings for an e-fund, plus a certain amount in savings for a house (we're currently city-dwellers waiting to buy until we move to the burbs), savings for the cost of delivery (we have good insurance and it's still $$$$), knew that I would be staying home and how that would impact our finances and made a specific budget of where we might need to cutback (going out to dinner and buying clothes for example) in order to be sure we have all the money to be able to afford the baby. Talk about all these things with your DH - see where you guys are good to go and where you might need to save more/cutback.
As a double income household for the last 4 years, we've traveled a lot, eaten out when we felt like it, etc. Now that we are expecting in a few months, we've moved into a bigger place (=more money), will be cutting back our travel and dining out and expecting a big lifestyle change. We spent the first four years of our marriage doing these things and enjoying ourselves, so now it doesn't seem as much like we're "losing out" by having to cut back. I'm not saying you have to wait 4 years, but maybe your DH would like a year or so to just be the two of you and do some of these things.
Sit down, discuss these issues and make a plan. I understand baby fever, I really do. I wanted babies long before we started trying, but I knew there were some things we needed to accomplish in order to have the lifestyle we were expecting with kids. Waiting was hard - but now I feel 100% confident that we're in the place we personally need to be in order to be prepared for babies.
The vast majority of the population raises families on much, much less and those children turn out just fine. If I were in this situation, unless I was contributing 90k of that 100 I would be a stay at home mother starting right now.
So, when you say, "Okay, honey. You don't feel like now is the right time to have kids. When do you think that will be?" what does he say?
It's hard to give advice without knowing if he just wants to settle into married life for a year or he wants to wait until you're in your 40s.
It would also make a difference if you were, say, 33 compared to 38 as well as the total number of kids you want to have.
I understand your concerns as we are in such similar circumstances. I was married the day after you and was in an 8 year relationship with my hubby before we married. Like you we discussed it before marriage but I just mentioned it the other day for the first time since the wedding. We are financially sound but my hubby goes back and forth about wanting kids at all. When he is ?off-kids? the reason is that they will disrupt our comfortable lifestyle. (I.e. traveling, sleeping in, general carefree-ness) My mother began showing signs of early menopause in her 30s and I?m in my 30s now, so like you, I worry about running out of time.
My approach is not to let it become a fight. I mentioned that I?d like to start next year and his initial reaction was to taut the benefits of never having kids. Then after mulling it over he considered the possibility of letting things happen naturally next year. Not TRY to get pregnant but rather not try to not get pregnant. (I know this sounds funny). At that point I knew I made a baby-step in the subject (no pun intended) and let the topic rest. With some men you have to be very gentile how you discuss things that are scary to them. Maybe in 4-6 months I?ll mention it again if he seems open to discuss it.
I guess my advice (right or wrong) is pick your moments carefully to discuss it and to not let your urges freak him out. Men can be a little skittish about these things.
Wait, so you think having a budget or spreadsheet or timeline isn't "life"? It is life for many of us. Having a budget or spreadsheet really isn't some unattainable goal.
To the OP: your H may not want kids at all. He may want to wait 6 goddamn months to start trying. He may want to have 6 months of salary in the bank. You need to sit down and have an honest conversation about this with him.
And a huge side-eye to the suggestion that if you want a baby, have a baby, implying that he doesnt' need to know. Yeah, that's a GREAT idea.
To those of you that care...
We did have "the talk". It went a lot better than I expected. We have come to a compromise, and decided to go birth control free starting on October 9th 2011 (our 1st anniversary) and so on until we conceive. We're both happy with that decision and there's a little romance involved, which just sweetens the deal! Thank you all for your advice! I hope our compromise helps some of you with similar dilemmas. Happy holidays!
To those of you that care...
We did have "the talk". It went a lot better than I expected. We have come to a compromise, and decided to go birth control free starting on October 9th 2011 (our 1st anniversary) and so on until we conceive. We're both happy with that decision and there's a little romance involved, which just sweetens the deal! Thank you all for your advice! I hope our compromise helps some of you with similar dilemmas. Happy holidays!