How much planning went into you having children?

Lucyxx

With our first barely any planning in regard to the length of time we spoke about it. We'd just bought our first house, my job wasn't going anywhere and as I wanted roughly a 6/7 year age gap (plus OH was already 6 years older than me) we thought it was a good time. I told OH I'd heard it takes around 6 months to be successful but it worked on the very first try so it still was almost a bit of a shock even though she was planned!

My first was looked after by my parents in the town I worked in, but she was due to start pre school and I wanted her to go in the town we lived in and I wanted to be the one to take her/pick her up and it woud not have worked with my job hours/location. We decided to scrap the idea of a 6 year age gap and try and get pregnant with our second so I could go on maternity leave, leave my job and be a stay at home mum. The first month it didn't work but was a half hearted try, but the second month was successful and our son was born when our first child was 2 years 9 months old.

I feel extremely lucky it all worked out with timings and as planned. That's about the only thing I've ever done well with no hitches!

tara747

mumcoll wrote: »

First baby I planned by adjusting when I took the pill so my fertile period would fall within the two weeks my then boyfriend was on leave from HM Forces. Baby born 9 months later.

Did your boyfriend get a say?

Alias_Omega

All babies are planned....You don't accidentally have sex without protection.


No 1 - Mrs AO was GF AO back then. She already had 1 child, i had 0. She was told by a doctor she could not have any more children (ovary problem). We stopped wearing protection, at the initial period it felt a bit "risky" and "naughty" but it faded and became the Norm. Fast forward 8 months... GF AO now pregnant. I cried a little.... #shock.

No 2 - GF AO now Mrs AO. GF became Mrs before baby No 1 was born. No 2 was planned and discussed. Tied in with promotion and an extended work contract (+10 yr contract) gave financial confidence to support. Mrs AO pregnant and baby born.

No 3 - Still in discussion. Mrs AO is at Uni, looking to start her first employment at +30yrs old. Another child would set her back 2-3 years, and the age gap between youngest & baby would be 7-8 years which wont be the best bond in the world.

DigForVictory

SingleSue wrote: »

No plans with eldest, had been told it was a million to one chance of me getting pregnant without intervention due to fertility issues

Likewise! So we went off on honeymoon & came back with baggage on board.
(We had already agreed we wanted a family, fortunately.)
Second child delayed as medics wanted to have a rummage, but within 3 months of the nod, back at antenatal clinic. The second baby did Not Get the Sleeping Through idea at all, thus third baby arrived just a year later. (Midwife vehemently unimpressed, but still brilliantly supportive - she retired when youngest was 3 months old & we 'took the hint'.)

Three under five were a Lot of work - so my husband (in a lower paid job) took career break & then was the least distressed person on the team to be made redundant by office closures.

He's still stay at home parent to the three hulking great teens but they have a very special relationship.

Spendless

Lunar_Eclipse wrote: »

Hmm, no 'planning' but one rule for me personally: kids before 30. All to do with energy levels and statistically hopefully parenting offspring well into their adulthood.

DH & I have been together since our late teens. We graduated and moved in together, bought a house, got married, had a baby and then another.

We know loads of couples who have had issues conceiving, including those for whom children were not to be, and more who have suffered multiple miscarriages. It's not something one can plan or take for granted. I was incredibly aware and driven by this fact; age is a significant factor.

Which is fine for people like yourself who have met their partners before the 'cut off age' they've decided on. I didn't start dating my husband till I was 30.

I have a similar story to an earlier poster. First pregnancy terminated as child was not going to survive due to abnormalities. Got married and shortly afterwards discovered I was pregnant, had son, then 3 years later had daughter.

We had jobs and somewhere to live and enough room for the child/ren. The slightly larger age gap between kids than most people do is because I had some health issues which need sorting first before embarking on another pregnancy plus financing a larger place than we had for another child affected it.

The one thing I wished I'd looked in to more was childcare costs and the flexibility of my employer. I discovered that the company I worked for only employed full-time workers and the childcare cost was equivalent of my net pay. If I'd known and we'd had time to save for this time, we'd have done that.

AndrewRyan - Your OH may be entitled to MA instead.

https://www.gov.uk/maternity-allowance/overview

Kynthia

Alias_Omega wrote: »

All babies are planned....You don't accidentally have sex without protection.

Not an accurate comment as not all babies are due to unprotected sex. No contraception is 100% effective when used correctly plus what about all the people who don't use it 'correctly' or it fails such as an incorrectly fitted coil/implant or not realising an upset stomach or a supplement you've taken has affected your pill?

Bouncybubbles

Together for 10 years, married for a year, lived together for 8 years now. Somehow fell pregnant on the wedding night/honeymoon despite being told I had PCOS and without being too gruesome thought I was not ovulating at that particular time of the month. Anyway as I was starting in my third year of my degree it was a case of :eek: but I thought we will get through it everyone does. What I hadn't planned for was my having hyperemesis and after several hospital admissions with dehydration and malnutrition I miscarried at 9 weeks. However looking back I think we would have struggled financially and I was only going to take 6 weeks out from my course so I would still qualify with the same cohort. Fast forward to now I have a first class degree, a higher paid NHS job ready to go and I am part way through my debt management plan hoping to be debt free (except mortgage) by mid-end 2018. We discussed trying again asap but we are going to wait (we are expecting a niece in January now too) until august time next year as if we conceive then or after then the Debt plan will finish in time or before I go on matt leave thereby freeing up over £340/ month to financially cope with matt leave although I believe NHS matt pay is pretty good.

thorsoak

Planning ...hmmm......bit more "hit and miss" in the early 60s, when a woman would not be prescribed the pill if she was (a) unmarried or (b) not already had a child! Nevertheless, we married in 1963 and somehow - god only knows how - managed to stay child-free until we decided, at the end of 1965 after 2 years after our wedding - to "try" - and No 1 son was born in September 1966. Daughter followed on in February 1969, then No 2 son in October 1972 - just as inflation suddenly took off - and our dreams of 2 boys and 2 girls wafted away in the light of 3 day weeks, etc - and I replanned my career - and we re-thought contraception. I went off to college at the beginning of 1976, we moved house and started a masssive rebuild/conversion of 2 cottages into a family home!

However, this is when plans started to go awry - and at the end of August, I suddenly discovered that I was "at least" 16 weeks pregnant (you'd have thought that after three pregnancies, I would recognise the symptoms) ...and No 3 son (note - not even the "planned" No 2 daughter) was born mid December - the Sunday after I received my Diploma on the preceding Friday!

Despite all contraception and precautions, I was pregnant - and as you can see, we carried on with the pregnancy - I'm not saying that things weren't a bit tough then, but we did survive - and thee was no such thing as maternity leave/pay then - and child benefit was then 45p per child (excluding 1st child) !

.....but that was a bygone era! :-D

mumcoll

tara747 wrote: »

Did your boyfriend get a say?

No he didn't.

melanzana

No kids here. That was the plan. Love children but not my own lol!

Anyway OP Andrew, are you really sure you want to get married? Lots of threads opened by you AFAIS about related subjects.

Am I reading your hesitancy correctly or am I just a nosey old bat? Probably the latter.