The plan was to seriously begin thinking about starting a family once I turned 30. We would wait about six months after I turned 30 in May to start trying, because by November, we would have been married for three years and we would have moved into a house with way more space for, you know, a baby.
That was the plan. But now, I’m not so sure that plan is going to happen anymore.
I got my first paycheck from my new job last Friday. While I knew I was taking a paycut by accepting this full-time job and quitting my two part-time jobs, I guess I didn’t actually realize that this paycut is bigger than I thought it would be. In fact, this paycut is so substantial that I don’t know if buying a house by this November is possible anymore. And if we don’t move into a house by November, getting pregnant by this fall probably isn’t going to happen either.
Unless we can figure out a way to make moving into a house this November work, my timeline for getting pregnant is pretty much ruined. I know we shouldn’t “plan out our lives too much because things change” and when things change we shouldn’t “freak out and just accept the changes blah blah blah.” BUT I’M FREAKING OUT. You know why? Because my biological clock is ticking. I’m 30 years old, which means I have exactly five years to pop out two kids before trying to get pregnant gets hard and complicated. Yes, I know there are women who are able to get pregnant and have healthy babies after the age of 35, but Chris and I agreed we don’t want to be old parents, which means we need to at least start trying soon.
Even if we’re somehow able to move into a house by November, I don’t really feel like I can afford to have a baby with how little money I’m making now. To make matters worse, I recently found out that my job doesn’t offer paid maternity leave, which means I better have a lot of money saved by the time I’m pregnant and ready to pop. So now I am frantically researching ways to make extra money on the side and revising my budget so I can pay off as much debt as possible and save as much as possible as soon as possible.
In the last few years, many people have told me that you will never be truly ready to start a family and there will never be a perfect time– you just have to do it and make it work. I’m learning that this is so true. The Type A in me wants to plan ahead as much as possible and be financially prepared for pregnancy, child birth, maternity leave, and pretty much my future child’s entire life. But I’ve realized that if we keep waiting for that perfect time, we’ll never have kids! So as of now, I’m not sure what we’re going to do come November: we might start trying or we might wait a little longer. All I know is that there are families who live in apartments. There are parents who make less money than me and Chris. There are women who wait until their late 30’s to have children. And if they all can make it work, then maybe we can, too.