So, You Want to Have a Baby

Excerpted from
Before Your Pregnancy: A 90 Day Guide for Couples on How to Prepare for a Healthy Conception
By Amy Ogle, Lisa Mazzullo, M.D.

For many couples, conceiving a child is one of the high points in their romantic lives. To be sure, creating another human being represents the acme of a loving, committed relationship. Nevertheless, there are some decidedly unromantic, practical, even mundane issues you ought to address well before you light the scented candles.

Are you emotionally ready for conception? How about financially? Are your home, job, and travel environments working in your favor? Are you ready to make the kind of lifestyle changes required for responsible preconception-and future parenthood? In the first three chapters we discuss a host of topics, many of which you may not have considered relevant to preconception, and provide critical information your doctor may not have told you-or may not even know.

Psyched Up Or Stressed Out?
Are You Emotionally Ready?

Adam and Beth, married a few years, are driving to see their closest friends, who have just had a baby. In the car, they reminisce about all the fun they'd had as a foursome: getting together for pizza, going to Jazz clubs, taking a few camping trips together. When they arrive at their friends' home they meet the baby and see all the accoutrements of new parenthood: the bassinet, the crib, the changing table, the diapers. Beth watches how naturally her friend handles the baby and how comfortably she feeds and changes him. "I could do that," Beth thinks to herself. Adam watches his friend cradle his son ever so gently before setting him down in the bassinet. He, too, finds himself thinking, "This wouldn't be so bad." On the way home, they look at each other, take a deep breath, and say, almost in unison, "Maybe we should start thinking about..."

Adam and Beth have just taken a huge leap toward becoming ready for parenthood. Being ready for parenthood generally means that you have taken steps, consciously or unconsciously, to adjust your physical, mental, and relational situation to create an optimal environment in which your future baby can thrive. Everything looks a little different when seen through the lens of prospective parenthood. Political issues somehow begin to seem more personally relevant. Environmental safety takes on greater importance. You start to care about the projected increase in college tuition over the next twenty years and may choose to live in an area based on the quality of the schools there. Although few of us actually manage to be fully mentally and emotionally prepared before getting pregnant, thinking about the is-sues that follow will give you a good head start.

It's About Two of You

The most important thing you can do at this stage of planning is simply enjoy each other and strengthen the emotional bonds between, you. Do the things you love to do together. As your friends who already have children will tell you, relish the moments of uninterrupted conversation and spontaneous outings. Once you have a baby, it will be very important to keep nurturing the person that your partner was before he or she became a parent, so that neither of you ends up losing touch with why you fell in love with each other in the first place. Dr. Arthur Segreti, a clinical psychologist, and his wife, Ramona Segreti, a social worker also in clinical practice, suggest doing "small kindnesses" for each other, such as drawing a bath, making a cup of tea, or packing a healthy lunch for your partner to take to work. They also recommend that couples keep a mutual gratitude journal, in which each person thanks the other for something that was done that day (and to do this even when you're in the midst of an argument and feeling that you have nothing to be thankful for.

You and your partner will have to make some adjustments in your relationship to accommodate the practical demands of pregnancy and of having an infant. Many couples ask us how they will know when they are ready to go from being a cozy twosome to a sometimes frazzled threesome, or foursome. "Parenthood is a natural progression in a healthy relationship." says Dr. Segreti. "Healthy" is the operative word here: there must be a solid core of love, commitment, trust, and respect between the partners for the relationship to weather the emotional storms of parenthood. Of course, by "healthy" we do not mean "perfect." Nonetheless, when thinking about trying to get pregnant, examine your relationship closely to see what works and what needs some fine-tuning.

Think of yourselves as a team in every aspect of planning for pregnancy, especially because teamwork and mutual support will be crucial later on, when the baby is actually here. Talk to your partner about what the prospect of parenthood means to you and about your hopes and fears. It's definitely easier to talk about finances and work schedules over a nice candlelit meal than it will be when you Ye both sleep-deprived and in the throes of adjusting to the new baby If there are problems or tensions in your relationship, now is the time to try to work them out. Repressing or denying them won't make them go away; procrastinating will only exacerbate them. Having a child is not going to save cm already troubled relationship. Rather, the added stress of caring for a newborn may be the straw that breaks the camel's back. So take as much time as you need-seek counseling if you feel it might be useful-to make sure your relationship is on solid ground before you begin trying.

If in your discussions it becomes clear that you and your partner do not feel the same way about prospective parenthood, it is essential that you both do some soul-searching. What is holding the reluctant partner back? Financial worries? The prospect of switching to a career slow track? Fears of repealing a difficult childhood? Many people who say they aren't ready yet do acknowledge that they want to have children eventually. Their reluctance must be respected. You may consider entering couples therapy to help son out the issues surrounding parenthood for both of you, and to figure out if a mutually acceptable time frame can be established.

Sometimes the impact of a recent miscarriage can temporarily cause one partner to be more reluctant about trying to conceive. "It is important to let yourself grieve after a miscarriage," says Lois Piatt, M.S., R.N., who has been practicing in the Chicago area for eighteen years and specializes in mental health issues surrounding pregnancy, parenthood, pregnancy loss, and infertility. Though everyone is different, the average grieving period after a pregnancy loss is three to six months. Some couples want to start trying to conceive immediately after a miscarriage; others need to take more time. Whether you and your spouse fall into one category or the other, keep in mind one important fact: more than 85 percent of miscarriages are random events that are unlikely to occur again.