There are lots of sensible types that spent years saving vast amounts of cash, before they even began to try for their first baby. I would like to say Mr Hubby and I were exactly these type of people…. but well, we weren’t. Our story was a little less predictable.
After 11 years together, one October day we decided that we would start ‘trying’ for a baby after Christmas. This resulted in a very exciting festive period for me, as I naively thought that I would probably be pregnant by the end of January, February latest. Well, why wouldn’t I?
However, it didn’t happen like that, months turned into years and it wasn’t long before my every waking hour was consumed by my desire to have a baby and become a mum. Eventually, after almost as much heartbreak as I could bear, we were diagnosed with unexplained fertility. We were told our options were to wait and see (not an option for us, due to my fast decreasing sanity and increasing age), IUI or IVF. IUI is much cheaper, but has less success rate than IVF. Due to my age (I was 35 at the time) and where we live, we would have to pay for our IVF ourselves.
We had no savings to fall back on, so from January to August we worked all the hours we could. We sold things we didn’t need anymore and finally (amazingly) hit our goal number in August 2012. With the money sitting in our current account and the initial IVF appointment booked, I was late. Being too scared to do a test, at the first possible opportunity (like usual), I waited as long as possible. We went to the Olympics in London, thinking but not knowing, that we would be parent’s, not wanting to believe. As to believe is to be disappointed.
On the last possible day to be able to cancel our IVF appointment without being charged a huge fee, I did a test and saw what we had longed for, for so long. Pregnant proudly displayed on the stick.
Baby’s first time on camera! An early scan at about 6/7 weeks due to our fertility issues.
At this point my car decided to suffer from a terminal illness and had to go to the scrap yard in the sky. Leaving us in a quandry, having not yet had the 12 week scan, we didn’t fully believe we were pregnant, but I needed a car to get to work! I didn’t want to spend our IVF money, in case it all went wrong and we needed it for it’s true purpose. In the end we put our faith in the universe and I bought a car. My little IVF car.
13 week scan
Finding out she was a ‘she’ at 20 weeks.
If we were to have another child, we would look to try and prepare in a more traditional way, perhaps investing is an ISA or another investment. You never know when you set out to be parent’s, what life is going to throw at you. Having savings to fall back on certainly would have taken some of the stress off us.
Luckily for us, our story had a happy ending and Baby is now approaching her second birthday. My little IVF car is still going strong and is now Baby’s chauffeur driven transport (although sometimes she does try to drive herself!…..).
Did you save before starting a family?
Disclosure: This is a collaborative post.
