It’s a journey that starts before the + appears on the test…lets discuss the beginnings.
Anyone who wants to share/discuss/ask welcome! Costs/savings plans? Housing? Career? Health insurance? What does “ready” mean to you? What are you worried about?
Anyone with experience also welcome! What do you wish someone had told you/warned you about before you had kids? What did you spend too much time/energy/worry on? Unsolicited advice (worth what we’re paying for it)?
Here for this thread. I spent a loooong time “pregnant-ish” (trying, but not pregnant), and will be back there again… eventually.
Eta also I’m a lot of peoples worst case scenario I guess? (Minus I have ended up with a living child, so not worst worst but not best either). So I can hopefully speak to peoples concerns or questions there.
Tips/tricks:
Books-
Taking charge of your fertility
The impatient woman’s guide to getting pregnant (or something like that).
Reddit-
Tryingforababy
AVOID-
What to expect, baby center websites
Resources-
Fertility friend app
Cheapo amazon tests for hcg (pregnancy tests) or LH (ovulation prediction). The little foil pack ones. Waaaaya cheaper.
Misc:
Putting your legs up after sex is bullshit, don’t worry about it. You’ll just risk a UTI lol.
Obviously, this came up because I realized my plans for the next 2-3 years need to influence my health insurance choices, and it’s currently open enrollment. Open Enrollment Questions @LadyDuck suggested I ask here, but I wanted to broaden it to be similar to the pregnancy and post-partum threads.
For me, my prep to this point was: finish grad school, stable job/income, 2 bedroom apt, get married.
Worried about fertility at 32 with PCOS, Covid, eventually childcare.
@Greyweld, I was going to page you but you’re way ahead of me!
@Bracken_Joy, welcome, glad to have your experience and company 
Oh yeah prep point! Let’s see. We started TTC when I was 27. Our prep points were: married, house, me done with schooling. Jobs. (Husband was slated to finish 6 months after we started trying. Took us a few years instead lol, but he would have been out of school even if we succeeded right away). I ended up having my student loans paid off, but that hadn’t been a planned prerequisite.
I think I’m going to be coming here with a lot of fears about sharing our space with another human.
We’ve gotten really comfortable with just the two of us. All of our rooms are currently totally full with our shit. We got a 3 bedroom with thoughts of a future family. Over the 5 (?) years of living here, we have acquired shit and started working from home and a bunch of stuff. Now each of the spare bedrooms is an office. The downstairs is a game room/workout room combo. The garage is a workshop. And the basement is a guest bedroom/laundry room/storage overflow. Nothing is even close to baby proof, and we have no idea how we’re going to manage to give another human their own space. Probably some hardcore purging and no longer having a guest room I would guess.
We’re also so worried about the sleep sacrifices. It’s a huge factor in planning to only have one spouse working and possibly having that spouse try to bring in enough money to also support my in-laws moving out here and helping with childcare.
Also TTC30 if you’re over 30 (I’ll be joining that sub once I hit 30)
waiting_to_try is a good one for some empathy in the “planning on trying and not quite there yet” stage.
Other pre-trying plans:
You underestimate the percentage of my time that is spent refreshing the forum to see if there are new posts/threads.
Good news about that: it’s going to be six months to a year before they are getting into things and before they need their own space! Maybe longer for needing their own space, depending on what the sleeping arrangements end up being. You have time.
I know, but it still seems SO OVERWHELMING. Less overwhelming than moving to a place with more bedrooms though…
And we have basically 2-3 years on the current plan with instant pregnancy before we’ll need to clear out a bedroom.
Yep, we were in a two bedroom apartment until Latte was 7 months old. And one was my husbands full time office- we could only use it for some storage, a second adult night sleep space (highly recommend) and naps on weekends. That apartment only became a problem once she was crawling since it was open concept and we had, say, our kitchen on wire racks open to bub.
Even now (almost 1 year old) we don’t have cabinet locks on. I have to follow her around full time anyway (I’ve heard this age described as “suicide prevention”), so it’s easy enough to redirect her.
So yeah. Prep is nice. But it’s definitely not a requirement in a true sense. I know plenty of people who had preemies who had NOTHING at home yet. Amazon prime took care of that 
Really babies just need something to poop/pee in, a way to eat, and somewhere safe to sleep to start out. (Well, and a car seat I suppose). It’s a fairly low bar, thankfully 
beyond that it’s for your own ease and convenience really!
Pregnancy and Babies are the epitome of “hurry up and wait”.
Yeah, I think we have a general plan of “clean up/purge unnecessaries from the basement and make that a joint office/gaming space” (probably much easier if only one of us is working, especially if post-pandemic and the worker doesn’t actually need to be at home). Just everytime I go down there to try and plan out moving my office I’m like but it’s so full already.
Might just give the guest bed as a gift to friend who for some reason is almost 30 and still doesn’t own a bed.
Here! We won’t be trying again for at least another year because of lots of reasons. With my DOR we may or may not get a child. I’m pretty firmly falling on the side of not doing any interventions if it doesn’t happen naturally but we’ll see if that changes. H and I both keep talking about “the next baby” and I definitely want to give Bobbin a sibling to have all the special sibling things with but we’ll see what’s in store.
Great thread! As far as prep, we were really unsure if we wanted kids. We got married, and discussed it every year or so and the answer was always, “yeah maybe but not yet.” Finally at 10 years married and me approaching 37, RLG said, “We’ll never be ready. Let’s just try and see what happens.”
So not the best approach maybe, but we were pretty financially stable. No house, both done with masters’, no debt.
I spent most of my time worrying about giving up myself. My mom was a young mom who completely martyred herself to her children because she didn’t really know any other way, and was a single mom. I worried so much about not having me time, not having an identity outside of mom, and not being talked to about anything besides mom stuff. The truth is the only person who sees me as ‘only a mom,’ is my MIL, and that’s totally about her, not me. I thought there would be a lot of angst and worry and instead it’s just been this pretty awesome journey of getting to know this wonderful little person. As cliche as it sounds (and makes me want to puke to say), I’m really not exactly who I was before. It has changed me, but not into some stepford mom…just into someone who lives more in the present and enjoys more simple pleasures and seeing the world through my kid’s eyes.
I’m so glad someone told me not to buy a bunch of new expensive stuff. I did not have a shower, and I bought very little new. This time around I’m buying even less. If you’re not too remote, almost everything you want can be found on the marketplace or in consignment stores for less than half the price.
When I walked into the hospital and they asked me what my birth plan was I said, “I want to live, I want my baby to live, and if possible, I’d rather get the kid out through the vagina, but if not that’s ok.” The nurse was horrified, and kept reassuring me that I would not die. I guess…don’t say that exactly, but if you can approach labor with that attitude, I think you will have an overall easier time mentally than if you have a really specific vision of how you want it to go and it doesn’t come out that way. My expectations were very low, so I felt like the birth was a good experience in the end. YMMV
DOR?
Diminished ovarian reserve. I have the egg reserve of someone 40+ at 28.
Oh my bad. Either you or @Bracken_Joy had used the term but I didn’t connect it to the acronym.
No worries, we both have it so I’m sure we’ve thrown it around here before
When I got married 7 years ago both of us were undecided about kids and definitely not in a hurry. Over time (especially spending time with nephew) we started feeling like we probably wanted a kid. But first I wanted to get settled in a new job, then I wanted to have one more sport season & masters national champs under my belt. Eventually I felt like I’d gotten those experiences under my belt and spouse started actively wanting a kid, partly spurred by his dad’s prostate cancer. We started a few months of not-not trying, then some months realizing one of us was constantly travelling during ovulation, then a chemical positive, then a few more months of nothing. At this point I was 36 and we’d been trying for a year, so we went to an reproductive endocrinologist [truncated for brevity, happy to share later] and eventually did IVF and now have a newborn.
Anyway, advice for my past self is that it can take a while, and have many unknowns along the way. It helped to not fixate on a specific timeframe or outcome.
I was born into a 1BR apartment and my parents got around by motorbike, so… other than 2 parents who have figured out how to solve hard problems together, some financial stability, and (especially in the US) health insurance, I view a lot of other prep as nice-to-haves. I have friends who had kids around 20 and around 40. You can either grow up first and then have kids, or grow up because of your kids. We ended up doing all the life/career/hobby/savings/travel stuff first (and took the trade-off of decreased fertility with age) but fantastic families grow either way.
In retrospect being part of some great local friendships & communities here has also been part of “getting ready”. It’s made the past few months & weeks far less isolating.
Turns out 9+ months is a long ass time so I felt like I had enough time to get ready after we got the positive test… even when I was shortchanged 1.5 months by my early baby 
.
They technically took away the DOR diagnosis for me? After I responded well to the IVF meds. But still, normal reserve for a 42 year old when I was 28. Sighhh.