Married for a month, we want to start a family... pros and cons?

Question

What are pros and cons for this from your OWN experience of having a child within the first year of marriage.

Answer 1

1] the first year of marraige is very stressful - but pregnancy is even worse! Spend this year enjoying each other, and learning all the good and not so good, so you can deal with it.
2] babies are expensive - at least twice as much as you think they are. You also either quit working, or pay for child care.
3] pay off debts, save enough for the basics for your home, maybe a down payment on a house, and a nest egg in case of emergencies. Take the opportunity to vacation together - a few long weekends, or a week away. Learn to appreciate each other!
4] both my sisters had babies within the first year - neither was financially stable, and they still have financial problems
[ their kids are 29 and 26! ] My husband and I waited a bit, but we were already financially stable when we married - no debts, bought a house, now putting our two through college.
Much, much easier for us than them.

Answer 2

Well, we never had a child the first year, second year, third year and so on up until the seventh year. We just celebrated our 7th anniversary and our son will be 1 this weekend (with another on the way too), so I'd like to offer you this side of the coin.

I don't know what it would have been like had we had a child the first year (and we wanted to, we just couldn't). Looking back now (you always have 20/20 vision into the past), I don't think it would have been all peaches and cream.

In those early years we were just getting to know each other, had we had a child right away I don't think we would have had time to discuss how to fill in the gaps between our parenting styles.

Now, having had a chance to have all the fun we wanted, vacations, parties, just being with each other, I think that waiting so long (and I agree it was a long time, I wouldn't have chosen to wait quite that long) was really good for us. We had a thousand Saturday nights to curl up on the couch and watch a movie. Now... we can't watch a movie until after the boy goes to bed and by that time we're way too tired. We used to sleep in on Saturday mornings, I think the last time I slept in was before the baby ever came. We had a wonderful time becoming godparents to my second cousin, babysitting, spoiling and all-around practicing to have a family... and it did us good. By the time Nicolas came, we knew what we wanted our family to be like, we knew how we didn't want our kids to behave, we knew how we were going to deal with emergency situations when they came up. And by the time he came, we were READY. We weren't scared, we knew what we were doing, no worries about money, buying a house, work, we just had our baby and overnight we blended into a family of 3.

I don't want to discourage you into thinking that having a child so early on in your marriage is going to be bad because it's not, but it won't give you and your partner a chance to really be a couple before becoming a family. And even if you lived together for 2 years before you got married, being married is still different, you still feel and act different. So many marriages today end up in divorce and the main reasons that couples fight are over their children and money. Well, a baby costs a lot of money.

Give your marriage a chance to grow, for a year or so, and then bring babies into the picture. It's amazing what a difference a year or two of marriage makes in your maturiy and responsibility factor and during that time, you and your husband can have a ton of fun being a couple.

Congratulations!

Answer 3

give yourself a little more time to be married! enjoy the time you have together first THEN decide on having a baby.