Getting Ready For Baby

The process of having a baby is as old as time itself. Man meets woman, they have sex, and voilà – a baby is made. It sounds simple enough, but when my husband and I decided it was time to start a family after four years of marriage, it wasn’t quite as easy as that. Before we got down to the business of baby-making, we needed three things:

Knowing that we were “ready”

Two months after we got married in October 2010, I went on birth control, because having a surprise baby wasn’t the best idea for the stage of life my husband and I were in at the time. Fast-forward four years and we are ready. My husband and I had started having serious baby conversations. There were many reasons why this felt like the right time:

• We knew if we didn’t do it now, we’d find a million reasons to put it off till our 40s.
• We felt ready.
  

  When we first began the conversation about starting a family, my husband went to the outlet mall and got two Nike shirts: one said “Good Scorer,” and the other said “I Dunked It.” I think he was trying to tell me something.

• When we would visit our friends who have kids (and almost all of our friends did at this point), my husband had to drag me away to prevent me from drooling and asking inappropriate questions – some of which I asked anyway, because I have great friends.
• We finally felt stable. I know you are never fully financially ready to have a kid, but we felt stable enough.

Saying goodbye to birth control

This was one step I had mixed feelings about. When I went to see my gynecologist for a birth control prescription four years ago, I really didn’t want to be there – I wanted children.

Say goodbye to birth control!

But like I said earlier, an unplanned baby wasn’t in the cards for us. So I went on the pill and ushered in one of the best times of my life: no periods! Plus, I had virtually no PMS symptoms. I hadn’t felt this free since I was twelve! Going off birth control was going to be tough, but periods need to happen for babies to be made. My husband said it best: “With any luck, you’ll stop seeing them again soon.”

Getting a clean bill of health

Ideally, I should have done this before saying goodbye to my little white-and-brown friends, but I was impatient. Besides, I figured since I was still standing, my health couldn’t be that bad. I covered everything (well, almost) …

First, I went to see the dentist to make sure my teeth and gums were okay. I learned from one of my many magazine subscriptions that gum health has an effect on your pregnancy.

Then I went to get my eyes checked, just to make sure that everything was okay there. I needed contacts, plus I wanted to confirm that my tendency to bump into immovable objects had nothing to do with an underlying issue.

Finally, I went to see the internist for my preconception checkup. If you have already done a preconception checkup, you might see what is wrong with that sentence. If you haven’t, let me explain it to you: you see, when a woman wants to have a baby, she goes to see an OB-GYN, not an internist!

But it didn’t add up in my brain until I told the internist the purpose of the visit. He gave me a blank stare and said, “Sorry, I don’t do that. You have to see an OB.” It took me a minute to figure it out.

I did ask him to run some tests to check my liver and thyroid in addition to the other things that he would normally check. My liver needed looking at because I had been on antimalarial medication for almost three years straight, and I wanted my thyroid checked to make sure that it had nothing to do with my recent and otherwise healthy weight loss.

As I walked out of the office, I did a Google search for an OB within walking distance of my apartment. The next available appointment was not for another six weeks, and I took it.

Everything turned out okay, thank goodness, and we decided to get started even though I hadn’t seen the right doctor. This post marks the start of my journey through my first pregnancy, and because of the type of person I am, I figure it’s going to be interesting. We’ll just have to wait and see!

PS: I finally made it to an OB. In my next post, The Beginning of the Shortest Ride,  you’ll find out my OB’s “prescription” for a healthy conception.

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