Preparing for Pregnancy

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Your preconception checkup . Emotional preparation for pregnancy . Physical preparation for pregnancy . The career costs of having a baby . Financial factors . Taxing matters . Making a decision you can live with

Preparing for Pregnancy

Scarlett O'Hara said it best: "Death and taxes and childbirth. There's never any convenient time for any of them." If Margaret Mitchell had written her famous novel Gone With the Wind today rather than in an era when family planning was even less of an exact art than it is now, she might have noted that there's never an ideal time to conceive a child.

There is, after all, always a good reason to postpone a pregnancy: too much is happening at work, you don't have enough money in the bank, you want to lose the extra weight you've been carrying around since your freshman year at college, and so on.

The biological clock waits for no woman, however. If you postpone your family too long, you reduce your chances of being able to have your own biological child. In a recent article in Business Week, Dr. Zev Rosenwaks, director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility at New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center, made the point that women who decide to postpone childbearing until it's the "right time" need to be aware of the risks: "If you can try to become pregnant at a younger age, you should. You're likely to get pregnant more often and earlier. You're likely to have a healthier pregnancy because you're less likely to have a miscarriage and less likely to have a chromosomal abnormality. You're likely to have as many children as you want."

David Meldrum, a reproductive endocrinologist at the Center for Advanced Reproductive Care in Redondo Beach, California, echoed those thoughts in a recent interview with The Atlanta Journal and Constitution: "Women aren't told enough about the decline of fertility with age. Many don't realize that if they wait, motherhood may pass them by."

That said, the biological clock isn't the only factor that warrants consideration when you're contemplating a pregnancy. It's important to consider such additional factors as your physical and emotional readiness for parenthood, the career costs of having a baby, and your financial situation.

Unofficially…
They're not getting older, they're getting pregnant! According to a recent article in Town and Country magazine, the number of births to women in their early 40s has increased by 50% since 1970. In 1992, 55,702 babies were born to women between the ages of 40 and 44, and 2,008 to women between the ages of 45 and 48.

First things first
The time to start taking care of your body is before you get pregnant. Studies have shown that you increase your odds of having a healthy baby if you are in the best possible physical condition before you conceive.

Your answers to the questions in our Preconception Checklist should give you an idea of how physically ready your body is to support a pregnancy. These are also the types of questions your caregiver is likely to ask at your first appointment.