When do you know it’s time to have a baby?

• Is it listening to an internal clock telling you it’s time?
• Is it when both parents are emotionally ready?
• Or when the financial aspect of having a baby is all taken care of?
• Or maybe a couple can never really be ready and just have to take the plunge?

In my situation, I am emotionally ready to have baby #2. My daughter just turned one, and I’m feeling the pull of another baby.

The pros in such short spacing are that they’ll be closer in age and therefore able to share more things, will be able to relate to each other better and help socialize each other, and I’ll be able to get through each stage within a relatively short span of time.

The cons are numerous too. We’re definitely not financially ready. But if we decided to have another one, I’m sure we could make it work. I’m just looking at the stretch of the next 4 years, and I can’t see a time when it would be “perfect” to have another baby. I’ll finish school in 3 years, then it will be time to get licensed, then I’ll be new at a job. I don’t want a gap longer than 4-5 yrs. between my first and second, and I can’t help but think we should do it now.

How do parents make this decision? Do they leave it to fate? Do they just trust that everything will work out if baby comes along?

And what of my best friend couple? She’s ready, and he’s not. In my head, I know that it’s only fair that they both be ready for a new baby. But I can’t help feel a pang of pain on behalf of my girl friend when I see her watching babies, or hear news of her brother welcoming his first child. It literally is painful for her not to be a mother right now. Should my guy friend, her husband, just ignore his misgivings about having a baby now, as opposed to later, because no one is ever really ready for a child? They’re not asking for my advice, but if he did, I feel like I would end up yelling at him to get over it already and give her a baby. I guess, it’s a good thing they’re not asking for my advice .

For some couple, having baby #1 or #2 seems so cut and dried. They just know it’s time. They try for a baby, they get pregnant and all’s well that ends well. But for others, like me and my friends, we’re never really sure. What if, in 4 years, I do try for a baby and it takes us 2 years to get pregnant like the first time? Or longer cause I’m older?

I wish there were easy answers to questions like this. I know ultimately, a couple must be aligned in the decision and that everything usually works out. I just wish sometimes we were in on the conclusion beforehand.

Pregnant women have a lot of questions. When will my morning sickness end? What will I see on my ultrasound? And what’s the best car seat to buy?

Here’s a great resource with the answers to all of the above: Aha! Baby.

From trying to conceive through to labor and delivery, Aha! Baby is a search website devoted to pregnancy.

The website is organized into topics such as conception, baby names, pregnancy baby showers, and mom’s health. You can pick a frequently asked question from one of the topics, or ask your own.

The reason Aha! Baby is more useful than Google or Yahoo search engines, is that all the information Aha! Baby provides to answer your question is reviewed to make sure it’s accurate and useful.

I’ve never had more questions about anything than when I was pregnant, and this website has everything organized to make finding answers – the best answers – as easy as possible.

Expectant moms, add this one to your bookmarks now!

There’s been much fuss lately over whether coffee is safe to drink during pregnancy. A summary of the current research: it’s probably safe in moderation, but don’t drink 47 cokes or ten gallons of coffee a day if pregnant.

However, doctors in the Netherlands have discovered the drinking coffee before you get pregnant may be harming your chances of conceiving. Wannabe moms who drank more than four cups of coffee a day had a 26% lower chance of conceiving naturally. Compare that to the damaging effects of smoking – reducing chances by 44%, of being overweight – reducing changes of conceiving by 29%, or drinking alcohol more than three times a week – 26% less likely to conceive.

Doctors already knew that being overweight, smoking and drinking all affect fertility, but are surprised that caffeine has comparable effects.

Conversely, fathers-to-be might benefit by drinking coffee. Men with drowsy sperm can wake them up with a cup of joe, which seems to increase sperm mobility i.e. bettering the chances of the little wiggly things getting to the egg, instead of giving up or getting a bit tired and needing to sit down and then forgetting what they are supposed to do on the way.

Random caffeine fact: spiders can’t spin a web after imbibing caffeine. They get all frantic and confused, and make something that looks like toddler art rather than a web. Spiders high on marijuana or LSD did a better job than the ones who’d drunk lattes. NASA did this research. Aren’t you glad your tax dollars are spent so wisely? (And no, my toddler isn’t on drugs.)

So for those trying to get pregnant, when you brew up a cup of coffee or find a fridge pack of Pepsi has found it’s way into your shopping cart (sneaky little things, those fridge packs) give it to your man, and hopefully it will benefit you both. And you’ll fill up the favor bank for exchanging for foot-rubs and back massages when you do get pregnant.

When my husband and I were trying to conceive our first baby it was common knowledge among our friends and family. Everyone knew we were trying to have a baby, and everyone had ideas that they wanted to share with us. Apparently we were the only people who didn’t know how to make a baby. I mean, we knew how to make a baby logistically, but since it wasn’t working everyone had a tip for us.

Many of our advisers said the timing of our attempts was everything. We heard a wide variety of ideas: try to make a baby every single night, try to make a baby every other night, try to make a baby only once a month after carefully timing my ovulation…it was exhausting. We tried every method suggested to us, and none of them worked. I won’t even go into the various positions suggested by well-meaning folks.

We heard from friends that the only way to have a baby was to not try. In other words, the stress of trying was so taxing that my body would shut down. So we tried to be nonchalant in our attempts at getting pregnant. That didn’t work either.

My poor husband was victim to many unsolicited tips too. He was told to wear boxers instead of briefs, to take in extra Vitamin C, and to stop drinking Mountain Dew. He was such a trooper. Not only did he listen politely to all the advice, but he actually tried what people said. Still no baby.

I think that most pregnancies just happen when they’re ready to happen. There is no tip I can pass on to help anyone get pregnant because I’m not sure if any of the million tips we received actually helped. I did wind up pregnant, but as the scientist in me says (in a stern voice): Correlation does not equal causation. I don’t think the extra Vitamin C helped my husband impregnate me, but hopefully it stopped him from getting a cold or something.

I don’t think I can.

A woman in Brighton, England has already given away seven babies and is willing to carry and give away another. She was reported to have said that, “I don’t love the baby and I don’t want the baby for myself – the baby is conceived for my couple.”

This is actually baffling for someone like me, who has seemingly loved my unborn children even before I actually conceived them. Heck, before I found someone worthy to conceive them with even.

The Free Online Dictionary defines surrogate mothers as “a woman who agrees to bear a child for another woman, either through artificial insemination by the other woman’s husband or partner or by carrying until birth the other woman’s surgically implanted fertilized egg”. In a lot of countries, surrogacy is legal provided that only the reasonable expenses are paid for by the prospective parents. These expenses include, but may not be limited to, fertility procedures, prenatal check-ups and lab tests, food allowance, vitamins and/or other drugs required by the surrogate mother. Sometimes, this may also cover a minimal allowance for the mother in case she suffers from loss of income due to the pregnancy.

Surrogate mothers come in various forms and shapes. It can be your sister, your sister-in-law, or your mother. It can be a friend or a stranger a surrogacy agency has set you up with. It can even be outsourced now. But whoever they are, they are heaven sent to couples who are unable to conceive on their own.

Now, many say that a child becomes bonded to his host, usually his mother but in this case, his surrogate mother. Firstly, it’s her voice he hears all the time. Secondly, unborn fetuses seem to share the mother’s emotions through the hormones associated with them. Some studies also suggest that mothers who felt no attachment to their unborn child are more likely to have kids with emotional problems.

So isn’t there some disconnect somehow after the baby is given up?

And yet, there have been many adoptive parents who have lovingly cared for children they didn’t conceive, proving that being a psychological parent is the more important thing to be.

Still, I really don’t think I am made of the same mettle as these surrogate mothers. It must take great courage and a really strong self-concept to be able to nurture a child within you, and then have the grace to give it up.

Are you?

Resources:
Ask Dr. Sears

It took me a while to get pregnant with my first baby. My husband and I tried for almost a year, and this came as a huge surprise to us since we’re used to working hard for something and then getting it. We were left scratching our heads, befuddled that month after month our efforts resulted in no pregnancy.

The worst was when I would feel menstrual cramps coming on. Each month I would convince myself that I was pregnant, and then each month I would feel the familiar cramping and immediately feel like a failure. We had gone into this venture as educated as we possibly could. I was already on prenatal vitamins, we’d had the preconception appointment with our doctor, we’d read several pregnancy books cover to cover…heck, I had even given up coffee so that caffeine wouldn’t harm the baby I was sure I would be pregnant with any day. Having made all these changes, yet seeing no results, was incredibly frustrating. The thing I hated most was the smarmy comment most people gave: “Well, at least you can have fun trying, chuckle-chuckle-chuckle.” No, it wasn’t fun. I began to detest the process because we kept failing.

I did eventually get pregnant, and then my second pregnancy happened so quickly that we joke that I became pregnant the instant my husband walked off the plane returning from Iraq. I’m glad that my pregnancies turned out the way they did, however, because my kids are ridiculously clever and I adore them more than I adore chocolate (that’s a lot of adoration, by the way). If they hadn’t come along when they had, maybe they wouldn’t be the same kids. It was worth the wait.

If you’re trying to conceive, cut yourself some slack. You probably want a baby more than anything in the world, and maybe even the sight of a mother carrying a child makes you burst into tears. Know that you’re not alone! More women than you realize are going through the same feelings you are. When the time comes for your pregnancy to finally happen you’ll quickly forget about how frustrating it is to try unsuccessfully to conceive, and all you’ll think about is how you can’t wait to hold your baby in your arms…or, if you’re like me, all you’ll think about is how you can’t wait for morning sickness to pass.