5 Signs You Are Ready for a Baby
“You’re never truly ready to have a baby.” You’ll hear that a thousand different ways from parents giving unwarranted advice. While there is some truth to the statement, by no means does it remove the fact that you should at least prepare as much as possible. In fact, those who have had children entirely unprepared are more likely to be the ones who will support your efforts. I have compiled a list of what I believe to be 5 important qualities to have when you decide to bring a baby into your family.
1. Financially Secure
“Financially secure,” what does that even mean? I remember once, pre-baby, I composed a spreadsheet with another pre-baby friend. We tried our best to list all the expenses, including things like formula or the cost of breastfeeding (yes, there are costs with breastfeeding). We explored the expense of daycare versus the pay cut that would come with staying home.
Our objective was to come up with some magic number to save up to before considering having a baby. Instead, we ended up scaring ourselves into believing we would never be able to afford babies. While that friend is still contemplating her baby timeline, mine was expedited when baby fever got the better of me.
The truth is, there is no magic number to have in your bank account. Everyone’s financial situation is different. While it is important to have stability, you will drive yourself crazy, running through all these numbers. I advise against doing what my friend and I tried to do, but that does not mean money is not a factor. I would love to tell you finances have a way to work itself out, but I cannot endorse that kind of thinking in good conscience.
As I’ve said before in my guide to parenthood, a baby will take whatever situation you have in your marriage at the time, and bow it up. Finances are no exception. If you and your husband are comfortable with your finances, there should be no worry. If you have your bills covered with some leftover for savings and extracurricular activities, the “money will work itself out” mentality is more likely to be true. However, if you are struggling to make ends meet, maybe it’s not a good time to bring another life into the mix.
2. Strong Marriage
When creating a family, you have to establish your roles in the household. Even if its currently just you and your husband. I’m not talking anything gender stereotyping, although it may tend to end up that way. I’m talking about finding what each of you does best around the house, and dividing the housework accordingly. It may work out that the wife is better at cooking and has never cut a lawn in her life. Or, maybe the husband is home at a time more reasonable to start dinner, so he takes on those responsibilities. These roles tend just to form naturally. The trouble is when one of the family members end up with more of the roles than the other. This uneven divide can be entirely subjective, causing strain when trying to approach it. If your spouse feels the roles are divided evenly, and you start trying to put more on them, there is an argument. Navigating through all of this mess is something for another blog post someday, but the point remains. Bringing a baby home means bringing in more household tasks. More laundry, more dishes, more feedings, bathing, changing, the list goes on for miles. When considering having a baby, you want to discuss your balance in the household.
The more additions you make to your family, the more critical it becomes to make time for each other. Also, in my guide to parenthood, I stress the importance of making time for each other. I give a more detailed list of ways my husband and I have accomplished this over time, but the general idea is this: Schedule and plan your date nights, keep them between just the two of you, and never underestimate the simple things. While scheduling and planning the nights out keep you committed, keeping them sacred and sometimes simple between the two of you fosters intimacy. Intimacy is a special bond vital in a loving relationship. This closeness is something that becomes increasingly difficult when a baby comes along. I highly recommend having a routine date night schedule established and stick to it! You’re becoming parents, but don’t forget to be married.
If nothing else, please make sure you have an open line of communication in your marriage. I have no artsy way of saying this; it’s very to the point. Communicate! Nothing drives me crazier than a married person saying something like, “Oh, I just won’t tell him. He’ll never know” with a shrug and an arrogance like they’ve said this a thousand times before. It’s cringe-worthy to me. Lying, even a lie by omission is like cancer to relationships. Always be open in your marriage about everything. Even if the truth will lead to a fight, fight it out! There are efficient ways to argue. I have a method my husband and I use for really tricky topics, but whatever way you’ve found works between the two of you, use it. Remember that husbands are poor mind readers. Most, if not all the struggles that come with being new parents, can be worked through together if you are open with your spouse about what is going on in your head.
3. Wild Oats Sowed
There’s a unique excitement to getting ready for a night out. A simple invitation text on a night open and full of potential spurs a process necessary to stand out for the night. It starts with trying on outfits. Then the heavily applied makeup that takes twice as long as normal. Top it off with the finishing sprits of perfume. All the while, you’re already jamming to your favorite songs to get pumped up for what lies ahead. What if I told you the next morning you were going to be awoken by a screaming baby demanding, well, everything. Cue the sound of a record scratch.
This point is something many pre-baby couples never consider. I certainly didn’t. It wasn’t until our first night out that someone brought this point to me. It was only weeks after having our son. We were at a ceremony event for my husband. Our son was at home with my parents. Not for the night, I was not ready for that, but it was a chance to get dressed up and have conversations with other adults. As a breastfeeding mother, I was thoroughly enjoying my first postpartum glass of wine and carefully calculating how many more I could have from the open bar. That is until the topic of a night out without the baby came up at our table. Another “more seasoned” couple with kids told their story of a wild night out as parents. The wife finished with, “you’re still expected to be a parent the next day.” Those words stuck in my head like a bad earworm anytime I considered leaving our son for a night out. Even with this warning, I still had to learn the hard way. I will never forget the first night that got away from me. My son was about nine months old, and I had two friends over for a girl’s night. My husband had to work the next day, so he went to bed. We didn’t even have our son at a babysitter that is how “low key” this night was supposed to be. However, two bottles of wine on a breastfeeding body left me stumbling up the stairs at 1 am. I sat down to pump (fully aware the milk was to be dumped, no worries). The next thing I remember is waking up to the sound of my son crying at 5 am. I was lying across the couch, the pump still running, but with the cord was disconnected. I was quite a sight. The day that followed was nothing short of hangover hell. “You’re still expected to be a parent the next day,” kept replaying in my pounding head as I try my hardest to pull it together for the sake of my son.
I recount this hangover hell for your benefit. When you become a parent, your social life changes. Friends you only see when you go out to bars, you may not see as much. That is just a sad truth that comes with the territory of becoming parents. Maybe you already aren’t the bar scene people. That doesn’t mean you don’t have any wild oats to sow. I like to call it the “baby bucket list.” Traveling, going to concerts, even certain hobbies, all become more complicated when you become parents. It’s not that these extracurricular activities are impossible, they just take a lot more planning and therefore become rare. You want to get all of this lifestyle out of your system before becoming a parent so that when that day comes, you can look back on that life with a nostalgic fondness as you look forward to your new life.
4. Limited Distractions
I had just plunged into a career change when I found out I was pregnant. After deciding my Child Development and Family Studies degree was not going to pay the bills, I left my beloved job at the daycare and joined a physical therapy clinic. A job I soon grew to love as well. Being accepted into the Physical Therapist Assistant program at my community college seemed like a fast track to my new career. In just two years, I planned to be settled into a new job, a better job, and ready to start a family. However, as I said before, baby fever got the better of me. I thought I had it all meticulously planned out: One year off birth control would lead me to just the right month to become pregnant so that I would have the baby right after graduation.
But plans rarely go as we see them, and that is even truer when it comes to getting pregnant. I knew this, and I had planned for that too. I went off birth control in August, knowing full well I had until November to get my cycle in order. In the event I “accidentally” became pregnant during that time, I would have the baby during the summer break of school. As it turns out, I didn’t need get a year off birth control. A month was all it took. Fortunately, my back-up plan had worked and I was able to deliver my son in early June then return to school in the fall. This worked, but I do not recommend it.
You do not understand the strong pull of nesting until you have papers to write and exams approaching. Somehow, my webpage where I was to be researching material would end up on my baby registry. At my clinical rotation, I was exhausted by just a half-day and counted the minutes until I could be off my feet. As the spring semester rounded the corner and finals were fast approaching, so was my baby shower. I longed for the day this school work would be behind me, and I could dive, guilt-free, into motherhood. For the record, that was exactly what I did. However, it took tremendous effort to get through the exams.
When my son was born, I had to quit the new therapy job I had grown to love in order to rejoin my old daycare. The daycare was closer to home, closer to school, and offered a discounted place for my baby to go when the time came. It felt like a step backward in my career, but it just made sense. I wouldn’t have wanted to send him anywhere else.
The struggle wasn’t any easier when the new semester started in the fall. I had summer work I was to be doing while home with a newborn (yeah, right). Classes were longer and even more grueling than the semester before. Clinical hours suddenly expected more out of me. After a long day of mental exhaustion, I had to maintain hours at the daycare to be able to afford to send my son there. And weekends were reserved, not for family time, but for studying. By the end of the day, all I wanted was to hold my son in my arms. I had arranged it with my husband that I would always put our son to bed. Bedtime was my special time with him. I can remember standing up from rocking him and walking him over to his crib, kissing his head the entire way. Before laying him down, I would get one last snuggle for the night. I remember breathing him in as if drinking from a cold glass of water on a hot day yet not able to quench my thirst. I never knew I could miss something so much. This was just a typical week, not even mentioning the tireless nights when he would be sick, and I was expected to still take him to daycare and show up in class the next day. Only another mother can understand the heartache of your baby being somewhere you are not. And how that heartache is amplified when you know he doesn’t feel well.
I sometimes wonder if I would recall more from that semester and the semester before if my mind wasn’t elsewhere. I wonder how my career would be different had I been able to stay at the therapy clinic. These thoughts were all the further I allowed myself to go because the truth was, I did not regret having my son. I feel that motherhood was more my calling anyway. Perhaps that is why I didn’t mind going off birth control before it logically made sense. I knew what I was getting into, and I didn’t care because I wanted a baby more than I wanted a career. I am outlining all of this very carefully for anyone else tempted by the call of her maternal clock while still making their climb to a better career. Yes, it is possible. I did it, and I am proud of my accomplishments. But it wasn’t the way I envisioned my first steps into motherhood. You are going to want to be able to put your all into this experience. You want to make sure you choose a time in your life when no other distractions are competing for your attention so that you never have to question if you should have waited. Starting in school was my distraction. There are others you may not consider. You may be trying to climb the ladder at work or handling family issues. Anything that will take your time away from holding him a little longer before laying him down at night, you don’t want that around when you make the beautiful transition to motherhood.
5. Selflessness
The moment you find out you are sharing your body with a little bean, your life is less yours. You have to change the way you eat, socialize, and even dress. As if all that is said above doesn’t say this already, I find it worth pointing out anyway. The time before becoming pregnant is your time to be selfish. Although, it’s not as if you mind the change when it happens. You naturally become less into yourself and your needs because you’re too busy doting on your baby.
Still, this is something you want to thoroughly enjoy before even becoming pregnant. The next time you want to treat yourself with something luxurious, you can do so without wondering if that money would be better spent on something for your kids. If you enjoy the peace of sitting on your front porch drinking a glass of wine after dinner, you can enjoy those moments without having to wait until your kids are in bed, followed by whatever housework needs catching up. “Me time” is something you don’t come across often after becoming a parent. Watching Netflix in the middle of the day, sleeping in on a Saturday, skipping dinner out of pure laziness, throwing on your shoes to go for a run on a whim. While these are little things, they are to be cherished as they become increasingly difficult if not a distant memory once you have a baby. If you want to be sure, and I mean really sure you are ready to be a parent, you have to be prepared to let go of some of those simple pleasures. A small price, if you ask me.
Maybe it is true you are never truly ready for a baby, but I believe it doesn’t hurt to be prepared. This experience is something so extraordinary, and you only transition to parenthood once. By taking the time to think through all that becoming a parent involves, you can be fully prepared to take in every second of it.