The right time?

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prone_to_wander

Registered User
I'd like some advice. My husband and I are considering starting our family beginning this fall. And I am all over the board about our decision. I want to start now. I don't want to start now. I want to start now. I don't want to start now.

I like what Hong Kong has to offer. A domestic helper, bilingual or triligual education. safety. There are many perks to having a kid here.

My family is really far away.
I have a really strong community of friends who are like family and they are very far away.
I'd have to continue working after the birth and I think 10 weeks is way too short a period for maternity leave.
I'm worried about the pollution.
I'd much prefer a home birth than feel pressured in a hospital.
I'm worried that my body will get all stretched out and I'll feel ugly and unlovable.
And that I won't achieve goals I've set out for myself, that I'll have to put all my ambitions on hold for who knows how long.
I'm worried that I'm too selfish and that I'll be a bad mother.

All in all, I do want a family. I do have some time to play with but I'm not sure I can quench this feeling of wanting a baby until we go back to Canada (years away).

So does anyone have any thoughts? Words of advice? Go though similar feelings?
 
Well I think probably EVERY mother has had some of the same/similar thoughts that you are having! So don't feel alone...lol!

And for some women there is just never the right time to begin...sometimes you just have to plunge in, knowing that in your heart you do want a family and now is as good a time as any. In fact every time I saw a positive on my pregnancy tests I had simultaneous feelings of joy and panic! No turning back now! lol Then within a very short time, just joy...but everyone feels something different, some women end up hating pregnancy, some love it...its all ok...

The same way when we start a new job, we sometimes wonder if we are going to be good enough at the e job and what we do is learn along the way and become better and better at it. We research, we ask others for help and we use our instincts. The same happens when you fall pregnant and have a baby.

It is sometimes hard being an expat and having your children, you don't have all your best friends and family for support and that really is hard sometimes but sometimes believe it or not, its quite nice! lol

You can always find a way to have your birth the way you want to - sometimes it take a little research but generally you can.

It would be nice not to have to go back to work so quickly but there are mums all over the world that face this and I'm sure you will make the decision that works best for your family at the time.

Best of luck!
 
I felt the same way you did, I moved to Hong Kong last July, and my hubby and I wanted to start a family, then I got offered an awsome job and started to feel selfish because for me to take the job I couldnt get pregnant because it was a lot of travel....I also last year lost 70 pounds and was terrified to gain any weight back! At the end I turned the job away, and the company gave me a job in the office so it turned out well....The weight gain there isnt anything you can do about it and yes there has been days where I hated being pregnant and looked in the mirror and hated my body and how I looked, but you know what when you feel your baby kick for the first time, hear the heart beat, have an ultra sound all of that disappers and its all worth it...Im now 36 weeks pregnant and when I see my belly move around it puts tears in my eyes.

As long as you have great support from your hubby and friends for those times when you feel depressed due to the hormones, you will be ok. My hubby says that he thinks I look so sexy pregnant and he says our love for each other is even stronger now. The only crapy thing is the weight gain, but hey a couple of months on a diet and your all back to normal, I think its worth it!

Good luck, from one felllow Canadian to another! :)
 
another canadian here...

EVERY mother i've ever met has felt EXACTLY the same way!

there's no doubt that having a baby changes your life completely and forever. for 99% of us, that change is wonderful. i would NEVER go back to life before! (although there are times, i question this!LOL)

think of it this way...how many people do you think on their deathbed say, "geez... i wish i'd spent more time working!" i'm guessing not many.

10 weeks of mat leave sucks. however, i work for myself and i only took 5. i hated to go back to work, but i had no choice, it was work or starve. i chose work. very quickly though i decided to go back to what i'd done for years... teach children. (at the time of my first, i had a beauty salon). i now own a successful playgroup centre and i LOVE my job! i even get to take my own kids when there is space in the class!

pollution: yes, this is a concern for us. i've been here for over 14 years. it's getting worse. it is one of the main things that makes me consider moving back to canada. but to combat it, we moved out to sai kung country park. it is probably the cleanest air in hk, although it still isn't great.

friends & family overseas: yes, this is the MAJOR reason i would consider moving back. i won't lie to you, it's tough. but on the bright side, you can meet some wonderful mums here in hk! there are plenty of us around! LOL!

fat & stretched out: well that's natural, isn't it... afterall... you ARE growing another human being! it is a truly amazing thing that women are able to do. rather than feeling "unwomanly" i would argue that being pregnant makes you feel MORE womanly! that is not to say that by 36weeks-ish you are not ready to deliver already.... just that you should take pride in what your body is accomplishing! it's an amazing and truly awesome thing!

being a bad mum: i think that even after delivery, every woman has days where she questions herself (just read these forums!). but once the baby arrives, your life as you knew it ends forever. you no longer think of yourself as the most important being in the world. there is someone that you held in your body and nurtured that is dependent SOLEY on you and your hubby/helper (if you breastfeed, then moreso on you!). you will find that instead of that new pair of shoes for yourself, you'd rather buy that really cool baby toy instead. when i go shopping now, i rarely look for things for myself. but i'm ALWAYS on the lookout for things for my two kids.

a friend of mine is going to thailand tomorrow, without her 2 year old, for 5 days. i don't hold it against her. i almost envy her in some ways, because i couldn't do it myself. i would miss my kids too much and by the end, i'd be miserable.

when i see my kids, even if i've just been gone for a few hours. my whole world seems to light up. i never thought i'd feel this way....
 
There are only two things you can be sure of - there will never be a 'right' time, and one day it will be too late. There will always be something more to be achieved, another financial hurdle that would best be out of the way, another career goal to be accomplished.... I don't think anyone could truely tell you that they felt they had done all they wanted to do before having kids. There are many compelling reasons for waiting till you go home but even then you will probably still find the decision just as difficult.

I would say the fact that you are questioning the idea at all indicates that you probably are ready, but only you and your hubby can make the decision. As for myself - I just had to wait for one of those 'oh, why not' moments and leave the rational thinking till later!

All the best with one of the most irrational, amazing, fabulous, life changing decisions anyone can make.
 
How old old are you? Is there any rush to have a baby?

While it's true that there is never really a 'right time' to have a baby, just remember that if you really aren't ready, you can't give them back.
 
Also need to add,

It is something that only you can know the answer to.

We could of had children when we first arrived in HK, but i look back at what my husband and I acheived in the 5 years before having a baby and I'm glad we waited.

That said, I think HK is a fantastic place to have a baby.

A great quote I once read:

Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face, you better be absolutley sure it's what you want.
 
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Thank you so much

Thank you everyone for your encouraging words.

I guess I know what I want. I want to start a family and I'm just overwhelmed with my thoughts on everything that can go wrong.

I like what you said Fee about financial hurdles. I thought maybe we should wait until we have more in the bank or I have my masters or or or....

And Cara, it is encouraging that you started a different business than the one you had going before after you had kids. I am looking to change careers but I can't do it right away.

Matty I'm middle-ish in age. I still have some time to play with.

I'm looking at a mountain I want to climb and I'm scared and worried and I don't have much of a map but I still want to climb it.

Thank you again. You guys have really brightened my spirit on this.
 
my grandfather told my mother and she passed it on to me,
"don't wait until you 'can afford' a baby... it will NEVER happen if you do."

as for not having a map... none of us have... you are in good company!
 
I think that your concerns are all legitimate and should all be weighed very carefully, since you are at the stage where you're still able to make the decision (not already pregnant).

If I were you, I would write down a pros and cons list and then reason with yourself if your "worst case scenarios" come true on the negative side if you could deal with it and how you would cope. I think everything is do-able if you have a plan, right?

In my experience, babies do rearrange life--and depending on your goals and personality, it's not always an easy adjustment.

It wasn't an easy adjustment for me and still isn't. I did get stretched out and fat and still feel with feeling unlovable. My baby has not been easy to take care of (not that any baby actually is, but compared with friends' babies mine is much more high maintenance) and I often deal with a sense of lost identity.

It was reality--and most women I know face the same reality. But, some women find that motherhood and all that goes with it is so overwhelmingly positive that they consider all the negative stuff to be tolerable or no big deal.

Having said this, because of health implications, depending on your age, if you find that your list has a strong leaning to the positives outweighing the negatives, or the negatives being manageable, I would jump in and have a baby. Most people I know, overall, don't regret having children but I do know people who regret waiting to have them because with age they often lose the energy they might have had at a younger age and getting pregnant in itself can be more of a challenge that is stressful and expensive.

All the rest can be figured out later. None of us know the answer and none of us can predict how things go with being a parent but since you've said you want to be a parent, I think you should just become one.

Make a plan to meet all the obstacles--as well as you can (i.e. staying in touch with parents, having a home birth etc.). As far as home birth goes, maybe you can arrange to go back to Canada for your birth and recovery--I did that with my birth and it worked excellently for our family.
 
Prone to Wander, besides all the things you are weighing up now, remember that there is something that may be outside your control, ie the length of time it takes for you to conceive and have a baby. I was 36 when we seriously started trying. Conceived easily but miscarried... and then another 2 miscarriages. It was devastating and confusing and led to a whole host of questions and tests. At the time we were living in Thailand, where expat lifestyle was excellent and we could have a host of nannies, housekeepers, drivers, catering, large condo, lovely holidays ... but no baby appeared. Fast forward 5 years later, we had just about given up, and to my great surprise I found I was pregnant. You can imagine how petrified I was in the first few months of pregnancy. But everything went well and today we have a gorgeous 3 month old. I am not saying that what happened to us will happen to you, but what I mean is that I never expected that it would take 5 years for us to have our baby. Reading articles on couples struggling with infertility, they say the same too. Unless you are absolutely sure you DONT want a baby, don't wait too long, because you may need all the time you can get.
 
the negatives could easily reach into the hundreds...

the positives???

i have two wonderful kids that i couldn't imagine living without....


(reminds me of the episode of friends before ross and rachel get together.... ross makes a list of rachel's positives vs. his staying with julie....

under rachel's negatives...a few paltry things
under rachel's positives? SHE'S RACHEL!)
 
Or if you're like some, you simply get pregnant unexpectedly and deal with it as your entire life changes, inside and out.
It was the best unexpected surprise I ever could have imagined or planned for.
I don't think having babies is a science or something that you need to sit and rationalise so much - it's just something that either happens to you or you do, but something that is completely natural.
 
i second/third the person who said there is no good time for having a baby.

i'm also canadian who has been here for a while and has children who see their grandparents once of twice a year. it is a loss, especially when i see how close my nieces and nephew are to their grandparents.

however, as you mentioned, there are huge bonuses to having and raising children in hong kong.

having a child is a life changing experience. i can see why you are taking it so seriously, but there is never going to be a perfect time or a perfect place to have a baby.

and as far as the parenting map...i think a lot of us feel at the end of the day, "i will try to do better tomorrow!" however mums are the best sources of information i have encountered in any country or situation.

good luck in your decision. ....BTW - what does your partner want to do??
 
The other thing to consider is that when you do decide it is the right time, you may not get pregnant right away, If you end up fertility problems, and you haven't started and do even know this until you are over 30, it could be a lot harder than if you were 25, also may impact on the number of children you have.
 
decision made.

After some soul searching, thinking about what you guys have said, and what others have said; I think we are going to try. We've been married several years, we both want a family and I guess we have just been looking for the right time. But there are positives and negatives to all times and there will never be any perfect moment.

My partner and I are in the same boat. We both want kids and think it might be a good time to start. We are going to just see if we can get lucky and we'll start trying when we'd really like to get pregnant so I can also have the summer holidays as a maternity leave. If we don't immediately get pregnant, it isn't the end of the world. I know you can't really engineer things, but it can't hurt to give it a try.

To be updated? ;)
 
congratulations! when all is said and done, you'll look back and wonder what life was like before baby arrived!
 
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