(no subject)

[geminigirl]

Cayne and I had a quiet weekend at home, beneficial, I think to his recovery. Now let's just all hope that I don't get sick.

I'm scheduling a bunch of pre-wedding stuff...things like make up and hair trial, engagement photos with the photographer...more counseling with the rabbi. Seventeen weeks.

Cayne slept and played video games and watched some stuff he needed to for work, and I think he fixed the cable box on the upstairs TV, too, so that it actually has the channels it's supposed to.

We had some serious conversations too, this weekend...



Conversations about starting a family. About our timeline for that, about when I should think about going off of my birth control pills. I had all the pre-conception testing stuff done last year, at my annual gyn appointment, because I mentioned that we were thinking about family in two years, and had asked about getting an MMR booster since I couldn't remember if I'd had one at 18 or not. The NP suggested not getting one, and just drawing the titer, and while we're at it, doing all the other stuff that is suggested, like finding out if you're a carrier for Cystic Fibrosis, or Tay-Sachs and so on.

But we were talking about it, and I realized that we're talking about sixteen months. It was sixteen months from our engagement until the wedding, and that seemed like forever and has mostly gone by in a flash. And I'm wondering if the next sixteen months will do the same.

And I'm sort of wondering if it will be the right time, if we'll be ready. For some reason, getting married doesn't seem to feel as overwhelming as the thought of a baby. Maybe it did at first; I still have in my phone a text message from aquariumgirl telling me it was perfectly normal to freak out. It will happen when it's meant to, like other things, but it's still a scary and overwhelming thing.

And I'm wondering how much of this was spurred by seeing my best friend with her son this weekend. .

Comments

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

And I'm sort of wondering if it will be the right time, if we'll be ready.

What's "ready"? Are there specific obstacles in the way, or is it a matter of being emotionally ready? Because I don't think that ever really happens, even for people who think they're 100% ready.

For some reason, getting married doesn't seem to feel as overwhelming as the thought of a baby.

Having a baby was much more of a life change to me than getting married. Of course, getting married for us was formalizing a situation that had already existed for a few years, and not any real change or big event. But having a baby was a way bigger life change than moving in together.

[geminigirl]

Ready is a combination of two things...one is being emotionally prepared for a baby, and it also means asking if I've accomplished the things I want to before making the kind of life comittment that raising a child means. And the answer to the second part is probably "yes"-it's the first that I wonder about.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Will you be "ready?"

No.

We felt emotionally ready to be parents for years, and were only waiting for my degree. And then it took us a while to conceive, and we were so so ready. But when I got pregnant, we were stunned and apprehensive anyway. And now that the baby is due soon, we're both having episodes of "whoever said we could do this?" panic. But I'm also pretty confident that we'll work it out and do all right.

It's a huge life-changing thing. You can't really know what it will be like, and so you can't really prepare. You've got to trust yourself and Cayne. If it looks objectively like you'll probably be able to manage parenthood, go by that - don't go by whether you feel perfectly confident and serene about it. If we waited for that, we'd never be parents.

(I don't know whether I need to say this or not, but my advice about timelines? Is that you should work into your timeline the expectation that it will take a year or more to conceive. I don't mean "start a year before you're ready," just "don't have it in your head that it will work right away.")

[katishna.livejournal.com]

Is that you should work into your timeline the expectation that it will take a year or more to conceive.

That's really good advice. But you should also keep it in your head that you might be expecting it to take a while, and have it happen the first month (for us it was the first time after that month's period that we even had sex!). We had been having sex for years living on the edge, not using condoms (we're married and monogamous so it wasn't an issue) and just going with that whole withdrawl thing, and one day we said "well, let's see what happens if we stop doing that" and WHAM! Baby. You can't really tell what your body's going to do, so expect the unexpected. And good luck! You'll never be truly ready, especially when you see the little pink line, so when your other ducks are in a row, just dive on in.

[geminigirl]

I under no circumstances believe that it will happen right away-even though it does for some people; I'd be delusional if I thought that. If nothing else, because I've been on the pill for just so long that I fully expect it to take a while for my body to sort all that out. But no, it will happen when it's time, not just because I want it to, or we want it to. I think that's why we've got a "time to start trying" and nothing beyond that.