Is It Time To Get Pregnant?

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These are the big milestones I've wanted as long as I can remember:  graduate high school, go off to college, start a career, get married, and have a baby. Not everyone takes this path in life of course, or even wants to, but these are the things I want.

So I've been bringing up the subject of starting a family to my husband for a while.  I have grown used to his response  "Someday Honey." I know he wants children -- I probably would not have married him if he did not. He is just not ready yet.

That is, he was just not ready until a recent a text conversation spanning 7,000 miles.  My husband mentioned he was ready to start a family after the deployment.

At first I thought he was crazy, the Army is not a career for him and he will be done with his contract shortly after returning home. We have no idea where we will be living or working when that time comes. I might bring up the baby subject a lot, but surely this is not the right time for us.

Or is it?  I know the reasons I'm ready to have a baby. I want to be a younger mother. I want four kids about two or three years apart and that takes time. My husband said that building our savings during this deployment would mean we would be more financially secure and ready to start our family.

That night I sat in our apartment in silence going over and over the conversation.  When my fellow military spouses ask if we are going to have children,  I usually say that we are  waiting until after the Army to start our family.

Most of them look at me like I'm crazy and tell me how there are so many benefits to being pregnant while covered under Tricare. Perhaps that isn't so far off base, I know medical bills can be expensive with a pregnancy. If we started our family while still covered by Tricare, we could be saving quite a bit of money. As someone who has recently become very interested in our personal finances that sounded like a win-win situation.

I took out a calendar and figured out down to the month when we must get pregnant by in order to be covered under Tricare. My husband was hoping to spend about six months of time together as just the two of us before trying to get pregnant but he saw the benefits of my plan. Babies were all I could think about. I was so excited that we had finally made it to this stage in our life!

Then a friend pointed out that we had been given incorrect information about our Tricare coverage. After a few Google searches and a phone call to Tricare I discovered that we would not still be covered nine months after my last possible "get pregnant" date like I had thought. We would not even be covered nine months after he got home. I was devastated, there is no way I would be willing to get pregnant when I don't even know who our insurance provider would be, so our plans to start a family are again on the back burner.

My excitement has crashed down around me.  But I'm still wondering:  What made you decide it was the right time to get pregnant? Did you face any set backs with your timing?  What else would you keep in mind if you were in our situation?

Guest blogger Andrea is a twenty-something Army wife married to a pretty awesome guy named Eric. Right now he's hanging out in the desert overseas on his first deployment and Andrea taking care of things back in Georgia while working full time in the financial industry.  Read more of Andrea's blog here.

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