When should we start a family?

[jd2715]

Hello, I'm new to the forum, so I hope this is the right place for this post.

My husband is a second year med student. We have a lot of debt, which is hard because I am ready to start a family. I am at peak reproductive fitness, and pregnancy will only get harder from here. I could work a well paying but stressful job and get us out of debt in 4 years, but the demands of the job would not allow me to have children simultaneously. When I do have children, I feel compelled to stay at home with them. I feel like I have to choose between either raising my children in poverty or being miserable for the next 4 years (and very possibly living long distance from my husband for 2 of those years) in order to pay off his debt, in addition to letting my reproductive fitness decline.

I am just wondering how you all approached family planning, and what you feel the positives and negatives of your approach were in hindsight. Would you do anything differently if you could?

[diggitydot]

Welcome to the group!

The "when is the best time to have kids" question is a pretty common one with med peeps. Unfortunately, there's no single answer. Everyone's situation is different. Some of us had kids prior to med school, some during med school, others during training, some wait until post-training, and some never have kids.

Whatever you two choose, it isn't ever going to be super easy or the exact perfect time. Even those rare times when all goes as planned, shit still can (and frequently does) go sideways.

No matter when you two elect to begin adding to your family, flexibility and a willingness to do a LOT of the parental heavy lifting yourself sans help goes a long way.

We had kids prior to med school. It wasn't easy, but we made it work. That's really all anyone can do, whatever the situation.

[spaz]

I would wait. We got married in med school. But waited until after residency to have children and it was the best decision we made and we had very little debt. We did it for several reasons, only the first one being financial. The second one was that I wanted to have him home at least a little bit when the kids were small. Are you prepared to raise your kids by yourself right now? I wasn't, so I waited. I was able to do what I wanted to do until we had children, then I was chained down. At least since he was in private practice, it was a little bit easier. We had some money in the bank so I could use a MDO. I wouldn't have been able to do so if we had done it earlier. If you are already in debt it will be harder to get out. We had a very nice savings when I got pregnant. ( We saved most of my salary for 5 years and lived off of his residency salary.) My oldest had some severe health problems and we went through our savings in a year. I'm not sure what would have happened if we had done that in med school. I'm not sure how old you are. But I was 28, 30 and 35 when I had kids. I would not go back and change the timing.

[diggitydot]

^^Perfect example of how different everyone's path and experience can be. What works for one fam isn't necessarily what works for others.

Do whatever makes the most sense to you guys.

[SuzySunshine]

Like has been said, everyone is different. We also got married in med school but waited until past the half way point of residency for kids because DH had 8 years of residency/fellowship. I also worked and saved as much as possible while he was in school/early residency. I didn't love my job but it was tolerable and paid the bills. I'm glad we waited, when DH was done with training our kids were 4 and 2, they now remember more of daddy being around then not. And we had fertility issues but still have two great kids, we were 31 when our first was born.

[SoonerTexan]

There's no good answer. We had one is MS2 and one in MS4 and the timing was great. However I did continue to work, so we weren't financially strapped.

The two years apart thing does give me pause though...can you elaborate? My husbands family did that when he and his sister were little and there is still bitterness 25 years later

[JDAZ11]

How old are you? (if you don't mind me asking...).

My DH and waited until after his 9 years of post medical training were over to start trying (well technically we did start trying about half way through the last year of his fellowship)....And that isn't working out so well for us!

The one nice thing is that we don't need to worry about the cost of fertility treatments at this point. And our age has noting (or little) to do with our issues, so I guess I don't regret waiting. But would have been nice to know a little earlier...

Good luck with whatever you decide.

[jd2715]

It is great getting these different perspectives on what has worked for different families. I know every family has different needs, but it's useful to see how you feel about your decision in hindsight.

My husband currently goes to med school in a city with zero opportunities for my career. The closest opportunity is over a 6 hour drive away. Of the jobs that are available, I am overqualified, and they pay very little compared to what I could be making if I stay on my career path for 4 years. If I accept a job in a different city, we could potentially get him a med school transfer for years 3 and 4. But the chances for a transfer don't seem great, from what I can tell. We already did long distance for 9 months while engaged in order to save money, and that nearly killed me. So I don't know if I could handle two years.

I don't particularly care about this career, but making more money means paying off debt faster and being able to have children sooner.

[MsSassyBaskets]

We are due to have our first in February of 4th year. I am lucky enough to have a career track job that I can work remotely, so I've been able to support us throughout. He will graduate with school debt but nothing else. I'll keep working, and his residency salary will go toward paying off debt. We are both 31, so we didn't want to wait any longer, and we felt we could make it work with my career. We expect him to have a few easier rotations toward the end of 4th year, so he will have some time to spend with the kiddo before residency starts. Like everyone said, it's just whatever works for you. I wouldn't count on a transfer though, that's extremely rare.

[niener]

EDITED:
Originally I replied with a link to the "ultimate family planning sticky" thread before I realized that the Pregnancy sub-forum is actually a private forum. Sorry about that! Not helpful.

Admins -- could we move that sticky into the general Parenting forum instead of the Pregnancy sub-forum? The majority of the links included in that sticky link to posts that are in public forums anyway.

[scrub-jay]

When should we start a family?

We had ours MS1 and MS4. I worked through med school and we have loans to pay off when training is finished. I'm glad my children are able to see us living while money is tight and seeing how to budget. We have no regrets on when we had ours, I'm glad we didn't wait. Like everyone has said, it's just a personal decision that has pros and cons no matter what you choose.

[TulipsAndSunscreen]

We had one in MS4 and one PGY2. I have continued to work out of necessity. I work my ass off to afford everything including our amazing nanny.

Point is - this both is and isn't my dream life. I wish I didn't have to work but I ADORE my kids and am so glad we had them when we did. I'm willing to make this sacrifice to have them around NOW. We could have waited and I could have then stayed home but I'm super happy they're here now.

I'm 31 and had them at 28 and 30 if that matters.

[ides]

When should we start a family?

To each there own. We waited until middle of his second year of residency and our son was born in third year. We are older than average so it was good timing for us. We were ready.

We got married two years before before medical school.

[GreyhoundsRUs]

Had kids during PGY2 and PGY 4. We started dating during college, got married during MS2. I was a high school teacher, but since kids have stayed home. We live in a pretty low COL city, so it's doable.

I had them at 29 and almost 31. We didn't want to wait until after training since that is a 6 year process.

[Pollyanna]

No one can answer this question but you and your hubby. If we waited until we were done with training we would only have one child. Luckily we knew life isn't just about perfect timing. We had babies 1-3 during grad school and baby number 4 MS1, baby 5 in residency and 6 the first month of the job. Our babies were perfectly timed for us, now you and your hubby need to decide what's right for your family.