My boyfriend and I have been together for just about 2 years, we are both in our mid 30s and each have a child from previous relationships. My daughter is 14 (I had her when I was 19) and his son is almost 3. I’ve never been married, he is divorced. We know we want to get married and have kids but we are just waiting for the right time, we are going to start househunting sometime next year, and get the ball rolling from there. I know it isn’t necessary these days and no offense AT ALL to those who want to have kids when they’re unmarried, but I expressed my desire to do this the “right” way this time around. I want to be married before we have our kids, I spent the whole pregnancy with my daughter being afraid for my future and I don’t want that again. I don’t want to get pregnant without our home and marriage in place, it’s important to me and he knows that.

We’ve had 2 birth control chemical pregnancies and I was terrified both times. I’m not on BC now, we decided to just use condoms because the hormones kill me and the copper IUD is what we were using with our last unplanned pregnancy. I was on NuvaRing for almost 4 months after that chemical but I stopped it 2 weeks ago. I haven’t had a period yet but I’ve been taking OPKs every couple of days to see if/when my cycle gets back in swing. The OPKs have been super negative so we haven’t been as careful with condoms as we should be... we have been using withdrawal while my cycle has been off, but we know there’s a risk albeit a small one.

I’m 34 and I can hear the loud echoing of my biological clock ticking in my ears. I told him I don’t want to wait to too long have a baby because of the heightened risk of complications or pregnancy loss. The baby fever the past year or 6 months has been strong, I know it’s not the right time so we’ve been (mostly) preventing but I am so beyond ready to get things going. I’ve been to 3 baby showers in 3 months including one today... y’all I was hormonal AF at this shower. The baby’s middle name is going to be Olivia, which is the name we would want to name our baby if it were to be a girl. I’ve been getting signs here and there for the past 2 weeks: random ads for prenatal vitamins popping up on my phone, a new store in my neighborhood sent out promotional coupon booklets in the mail for diapers/wipes/formula, I cut open a bell pepper and there was a tiny bell pepper growing inside it, an ad for at-home gender testing kits popped up while playing games on my phone... babies EVERYWHERE. It’s been killing me. The baby shower today pushed me over the edge, which prompted this conversation:

I think we’re actually going to start talking about TTC. I’m losing it. I’m dying over here! I can’t even concentrate on my work right now, I’m so excited for him to come home so we can talk about this. I just had to share with folks who would understand 😊