“When Are You Having Kids?”

*To all my friends & family reading this, I’M NOT PREGNANT.* To be completely honest, “when are you having kids?” is a question I anticipated getting a lot after we got married, and I really don’t get it as much as I expected I would. Instead, more people are quick to assume that I already am pregnant (head over to my Instagram story to learn more about that) 😆. Since it’s Friday, I wanted to keep things lighthearted and chat about the topic of having babies, motherhood, what scares me about pregnancy and what I’m looking forward to the most.

We all know the drill, you get married and start popping out kids — well, in society’s eyes of course. Justin and I have never really had a set plan when it comes to these things, but we’ve always wanted a family. We got engaged in December 2015 during our senior year of college knowing we wanted to wait a year after we graduated to get married (June 2017). Beyond that, we didn’t have a timeline of when we wanted to have a baby. We did know that we wanted to buy a house first, and now that we crossed that off our list, who knows!

I feel like starting a family is a bit of a taboo subject, when in reality, I feel like we all have similar thoughts and feelings when thinking about what this chapter of our lives will be like. I wanted to make this an open conversation in this post and talk about it all, even the “scary” stuff — no judgement here!

PREGNANCY

Like I said, I think pregnancy scares everyone, whether they like to admit it or not. It’s so crazy what a women’s body can do and what it goes through when having a child. To be completely honest, I have a strong feeling that I’m going to have a really bad pregnancy. I hope I’m wrong, but I really feel this heavily. One of the big reasons is that I’ll have to go off of all my medication.

I never wanted to be someone who had to “depend” on medication, and I was so reluctant to ever take pills until adulthood. As the years went on, I realized some medicines were going to make my day-to-day life much smoother and less painless, and some days would simply require it to make it through.

My birth control helps regulate my ovarian cysts, which I have issues with rupturing (thanks genetics!). When it happens, it’s the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced and my Google searches have told me that it’s worse than childbirth (🙃). I went off birth control for a month or so back at the end of 2017 per the request of my endocrinologist (he wanted to see how the hormones affect my migraines and it turns out they don’t really), and I ruptured a cluster of cysts for HOURS one morning. Needless to say, I went back on birth control that same day.

I will also have to go off all of my migraine meds, and you guys know how much I have to depend on those. I have an onset and a preventive medication, and those will both have to go bye-bye. Will pregnancy just be one long 9-month migraine? That’s my fear!

Aside from all of that, there’s obviously all the other effects pregnancy has on your body. It’s a beautiful thing to be able to grow a child, and I hope that’s a reality for us. My mom and I have relatively similar body types and she gained 80 lbs with her first pregnancy with my brother (wow Mom, I’m genuinely impressed) and had a lot of stretch marks. I’m curious to see how much of that is genetic and how that could go for me. Oh, and another big one is tearing. Ahhh!

I want to change my eating habits and be a bit healthier before we start trying to have kids. I’ll want to fill my body with nutrients that are good for the baby, and for me, I think it would be best to start making that lifestyle change beforehand. Everyone told me that when I hit 25, my body would start to decline and I wouldn’t be able to eat the same junk anymore, and I must say it’s kind of true. There are certain meals that I feel sick after eating and I can’t handle nearly as much greasy stuff. It’s a bummer, but it was inevitable and I want to make eating cleaner a priority!

BECOMING A MOTHER

I’ve always dreamed about being a mother, but I’m not going to know what it’s actually like until I become one. It’s amazing to me to think about how your instincts will kick in and you’ll know what to do from a mothering standpoint to some extent — so crazy!

Your time is one of the biggest shifts when becoming a parent. With all the extra work I do outside of my 9-5, I’ll be interested to see how much of that will be possible. I fully understand that it will take time to get used to, and I always want to make my blog a priority simply because it’s who I am and it’s something that fuels me. I don’t plan on disappearing on you guys whatsoever, don’t worry! I want to share the whole journey.

Another thing, I think we all fantasize about having kids when our friends do. It’s hard not to imagine your future children growing up with your friends’ kids. I have one friend with a child (he lives far away), but the rest of my local friends aren’t married yet, so we’re on different timelines. Of course I think it would be nice to experience pregnancy for the first time with a friend, but that will just be luck if that happens.

NAMES & THINGS

We have a couple picked out that we like. Am I the only one that’s constantly afraid that someone from high school or something is going to swipe the name I want before I have the chance to use it?! This makes me want to put our names out in the open to claim them (if only that was a thing), but I also want to keep them private… so there’s really no winning there. 😂 I love last names as first names and stereotypical “boy names” for girls. Maybe we’ll pull a One Tree Hill and name one of our kids Saylor, lol.

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What are your thoughts on starting a family? I’d love to chat with you in the comments. As always, thanks so much for reading & I hope you have a great weekend!