8-24-10 - The Talk

Written on 8/24/10

Well, if I am posting this, it's probably because I recently announced the pending arrival of the newest Hartman.  Yay us!  Woo hoo!

But in all seriousness, I wanted to write posts about our decision to start trying and the whirlwind of emotions associated with making such a huge decision.

So here we go.....

The realization that I am almost thirty hit me like a ton of bricks this year.  I never feared 30 - I still don't - but it did change my perspective about a lot of things.  As far as I can tell, one morning I woke up and decided that I was ready to start thinking about having children.

I believe in the biological clock, I said to myself.  And mine has started ticking.

I originally broached the subject with DH back in the spring - April, maybe May.  He seemed open to the subject and yet simultaneously wildly uncomfortable.  I think in his heart he knew that it was something that he should discuss with me but was probably caught off guard by my question, "When do you think you want to have kids?"

We had never really talked about it before.  Only in vague terms.  Sure, I want to have kids someday.  Two, maybe three.  But no serious conversations.  No specifics as to when or how we would decide when would be the right time for us.  I suppose that for some it's just something that you decide and then do, but for us, we were waiting until it felt right.  For the ever allusive "right time."  But there isn't really ever a right time - I realize that now - and I think I started to gradually realized that in early 2010.  Yes, it sounds ideal to put off having kids until all of your debts are paid off, until you own your house, until you have money saved up for their future educations.  But if we decided to do that, I think we would be well into our late-thirties before we were even close to being at that point.  And when I asked myself if I was ok with waiting that long, the answer was a resounding no.

So a few months later, early August, in fact.  I brought up the topic again with DH, over dinner.  I eased into the topic, I think talking loosely about the pregnancy of one of my co-workers, who was expecting her second.   He seemed more ready this time, less afraid of the topic.  I told him my feelings - I felt ready, and although it didn't need to happen right now, I was no longer interested in talking about this in terms of  "years down the road," but instead "maybe this year? Next year?"

I am afraid of infertility, of it taking months and months and months and maybe even years or perhaps even never and then wondering "what if we had started trying when we were younger."  DH, on the other hand, was more worried about the fact that to him, the prospect of trying to have a child probably meant a baby in nine months.  It could be that fast, yes, but for most people it's not quite that quick.  Always on the computer, he started googling some conception-type questions and was surprised to learn the statistics - a woman only has about a 25% chance of getting pregnant at any given time, that the average time it took to conceive a child was six months.  And so on.

We talked for awhile and DH came around.  I wasn't looking for an immediate response, but just a simple "I am open to considering this."  But to my surprise, he was fully on board.

And so our story beings....