My daughter & her husband are 30 & lawyers in high -stress & time consuming jobs. They want to have a baby but are waiting for the "right" time. They plan to move to a lower-stress town, where she can get a job with less hours that would allow her time to have a meaningful relationship with the baby.

The firm she is at now has no provisions for part-time work for mothers. Most of the female lawyers don't have kids & if they do, they have personal assistants & nannies. My daughter doesn't want to go that route. But their plans could not pan out as anticipated. What if the small town cannot support two lawyers? What if she has a difficult pregnancy & can't work? There are so many things that could go wrong, but I think you have to go forward & not be immobilized by the what if's.

My husband says there is no "perfect" time to have a baby. Your life is going to be disrupted & carefully made plans may backfire, but raising children was the highlight of his life (mine, too, except I spent so much time in depression, which I regret terribly). We weren't "broke" but close! But we were young (I was 22) & he was in college so we shopped at Goodwill, etc., & it all worked out.

As long as you are not being totally irresponsible , like living on welfare or barely making ends meet, or have no insurance (that daughter was 2 1/2 mos. early--boy, did we need that insurance from my work--it still took us 5 years to pay our portion of the hospital bill), or a drug/alcohol problem, unstable relationship, etc. Those should be concerns that are addressed, but worrying about the what if's really can steal some incredible experiences from your life.--Suzy