Bitten by the bug

My husband Neil and I are high school and college sweethearts and have been together since we were 16, and married for 3 1/2 years. We've been talking about when we might start a family for awhile - we've actually been saying "in a couple years" for almost 4 years now!

To be honest, we've bounced between waiting until we're in our early 30s to start or to try to get pregnant as early as next year. This summer, we had pretty much settled on waiting a few more years - since I just turned 26 in September and Neil just began a two year graduate program and is not working full time. Well, this all changed after a quick weekend trip to Alabama to see our dear friends Mike and Angela and their new baby Anna.


Me and Anna.

Anna was born around Easter so she was not even 4 months old when we went down south to meet her. We had an absolute blast with our friends - we tried to get them out of the house without the baby and let them have some adult time with us. But to be honest, I loved every minute of being with baby Anna! She is an extremely good baby - rarely cries, will let anyone hold her, sleeps through the night, and just is happy and smiley all the time. She is what some people call a "trick baby" - she tricks you into wanting one because she is so good!


Neil and Anna.

But I loved all of it. I loved playing with Anna, holding her, feeding her, seeing her wake up after a nap, everything! I talked a lot with my friend Angela about her pregnancy, the birth, being a mom, just the whole experience, and I started immediately getting a little bit of the baby bug!

While we were packing up the car to head back to Ohio, I was really sad to leave Anna because I knew I was going to miss so many milestones and so many things until the next time we see her. Neil and I started our drive and after talking about how much fun we had we both agreed that we really wanted to have a baby!

Mike and Angela didn't make it look easy necessarily but they made it look possible. We know there are a lot of sacrifices when you have a baby at our age - not going out as much, etc.. but I could tell how absolutely in love they are with their daughter and how much their relationship had grown because of her.

After the trip we had started talking a lot more about our timeline and what we were both thinking in regards to starting a family. We have an idea about when we might start trying which we don't want to reveal yet - but I think we both are definitely on the same page about having a baby "in the next couple years"!

Really excited!!