Briefcase on the Kitchen Table

Avery and I were married for seven years, two months, and twenty days before we welcomed Samuel. I have written multiple posts about why you shouldn’t ask people when they are planning to have children (mostly because it is none of your business). Now, as a person with a baby, I can safely say I am still in the do-not-ask camp.

I last wrote at the very beginning of 2016. Avery and I knew we didn’t want to have a baby yet but had in mind when we may want to. As is always the case, timing is everything. Here’s why we waited- in case you find yourself in the same boat.

1) It was important to me to wait until I was in my thirties to have kids. I know, to some, this seems far too old to start. For me, I needed to be selfish in my twenties. I needed to travel whenever I wanted, stay out late with friends, sleep in on Saturdays, hike, climb, swim, drink alcohol, binge Netflix for whole weekends. While I have done some of all these things since having Samuel, it is unarguably more difficult. I wanted (and needed) some time for just me.

2) Babies are expensive. I know lots of folks have kiddos with less but Avery and I spent almost our entire 20s not knowing what our source of income was going to be two years out. I started law school when I was 23, graduated when I was 26, had my first legal job until I was 28, moved states and started another job knowing we would only be in our new city a couple of years and that I would have to change jobs again. I needed more stability in order to bring another human along for our crazy ride. We needed to build up some savings, have a game plan on how to pay down $150,000.00+ of student debt, know that we could afford great daycare for our kidlet since I already knew I wanted to be a working mama. We waited because it seemed prudent to wait.

3) I wanted to be happy. I know you can’t plan life but 2017, the first year Avery and I seriously considered “pulling the goalie” (thank my sister for that terminology) and seeing if nature would give us a mini, 2017 kicked my ass. In 2017 my father had a heart attack, one of my siblings was the victim of a horrific crime, my grandfather died, my family dog died, and I was struggling to find balance professionally due to a grueling work environment. That was not how I wanted to feel when I had a baby. I know- a baby takes nine months to grow so something awful could have happened while we were pregnant. You cannot control life however, in a year when I felt like I was being dealt blow after blow, I was not in the right mental space to get pregnant. For at least the first half of 2017, it just wasn’t the right time.

4) It didn’t happen right away. I am such a planner so I was convinced that the moment we took away any biological impediments to making a baby, it would happen. And it didn’t. After six years on hormone contraceptives, it took several months for my body to figure itself out again and then several months more for the freakishly-specific timing that is needed to create the miracle of life to occur. It didn’t happen right away and I sympathize with any person waiting and hoping that their period doesn’t show up that month. Our wait was short compared to many others and still, those seven months felt long.

I love my little man and I seriously cannot wait to have more. The one thing I always knew I wanted to do was be a mom and (hopefully) a mom to many. But I needed to wait- we needed to wait. And he has been so, so worth the waiting.