Our Baby Bucket List

Baby Bucket List: a list of things you want to do before having a baby

When we first got together, Neil and I didn’t really think a child was in our future. And, for the first few years of our lives together, we had never really discussed having children. After a year of marriage something changed and we both started to get a little baby fever and we began to consider what life would be like if we did decide to have a baby.

As our second year of marriage progressed, we started to seriously think about having a baby and what that would mean for us. We also discussed the things that we would like to do before we started really trying to have a baby. Essentially, you could call this our “Baby Bucket List”- a list of things we wanted to do before starting a new life with a baby. However, as you will come to learn sometimes, life has a different plan and that makes completing everything on the list a challenge.

Our Baby Bucket List:

• Travel: We’ve done more than our fair share of traveling over the last four years of marriage between countless trips to Boston, yearly trips to Portland, Maine and NYC and a few big trips including Christmas at Disney World and an Eastern Caribbean Cruise.

• Savings: Our goal was to have a substantial savings before even trying to have a baby and this is one goal we have accomplished and are still maintaining.  We both know that having a baby is an expense and since we have always planned for me to be a SAHM/WAHM a good savings was completely necessary before a baby came into the picture.

• Stable Jobs: Over the 6 years that Neil and I have been together I have been a student and have held two different office jobs and now have taken on work doing a number of freelance jobs and am a self-employeed health coach.  Neil has had three different jobs- one contract job, one job that he left when we moved to Vermont and his current place of employment which he has been at for over four years and is doing really well (he even just received a promotion). Both of us feeling comfortable with our work and having financial stability makes having a baby so much less stressful.

• Finish Health Coaching Program: One of the big things for me was that I wanted to finish my health coaching program before we had a baby.  I completed the program in February 2011 and even went on to complete the immersion program in March 2012 (while pregnant!).  By becoming a health coach I can do work that I am passionate about and I am able to make my own hours and work from home even while having a baby (with some necessary support and help as well).

 

• Run a half-marathon together:  While Neil recently finished his first half marathon, this is the one item that I was unable to complete.  Honestly, we didn’t plan to get pregnant this past fall, however, we knew that it was a possibility that we could get pregnant at any time and we were comfortable with that.  Not thinking that we would I actually signed up for two different half marathons, the first of which we had to defer to this coming November because Neil had a bike accident and the second was this past March.  Since I ended up having awful morning sickness my entire first trimester running took a back seat and I did not complete the March half-marathon.  Moral of the story: you can’t plan for everything.

Do/did you have a baby bucket list? What is/was on your list?

Related Links:

• KathEats: Baby Bucket List
• Pregtastic: Baby Bucket Lists