Starting a family with your partner is an exciting time, but it can also be a complicated time. As much as you may wish otherwise, having children isn’t always as easy or as smooth of a process as some people portray it.
It is important to be aware ahead of time of some of the issues you may face and how to handle them.
Disagreements with Your Partner
The first thing you should do before you start trying for children is to get on the same page as your partner. Nothing can cause more issues in your relationship than having differing views on whether or not you want children or how many children you want to have.
Before you think about trying for children, you should have some serious conversations about becoming parents, how to handle pregnancy, and what life after your child is born looks like.
Fertility Issues
Even if you want children, that doesn’t mean that it will easily work out or that you will even be able to have children. Approximately 1 in 5 women will struggle to get pregnant for over a year, and 1 in 4 women will struggle to carry a pregnancy to full term. If this is something you are struggling with, it is still possible to have children.
Fertility treatments and adoption are both options that can help you. International adoptions can involve more waiting time than domestic adoptions. They can also come with a variety of other complications, because of international laws and other hoops to jump through. If you are struggling with fertility, the first thing you should do is talk to your gynecologist about what your options are and if there are any treatments that could help you.
Health Complications
Even if you are able to successfully get pregnant, that doesn’t mean everything is smooth sailing from there on. Even the easiest pregnancies can run the risk of health complications. There is a reason that doctors want pregnant women to have regular appointments. Many women deal with high blood pressure, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, or prenatal and postpartum depression. It is important to stick to the schedule of doctor appointments and testing that your OBGYN gives you, in order to spot these problems early and prevent them from causing any serious damage to your pregnancy.
Being aware of the issues and problems that you may come up against allows you to be prepared ahead of time and to create a plan to deal with them. The important thing is to work together with your partner to build the family you are dreaming of.
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