Decisions, Decisions

Now that I feel like our life with MIL is somewhat settled (a whole long story) it’s time to assess what our family needs are.

Ray and I talked and I was honest with him. I’ve been on the fence about wanting to have another baby because of a few factors. First, I adore Clara to death and I want to give her all my love an attention. I am not sure I could love another one as much as I love and adore her. Second, financially things are good right now with just one. Having two means higher daycare tuition, more clothing (especially if we have a boy), more stuff in general (although a lot of the stuff we have is gender neutral with respect to pack & plays, swings, car seats and strollers so at least there is that). Third, I want to go back to school when Clara starts elementary school (in 4 years- I actually wanted to go back much sooner but that isn’t in the cards) and I am not sure I would be able to do that if we had a 2 year old at home. Lastly, the pain of infertility is still pretty fresh. Not to mention our current insurance is an HSA which covers infertility 100% but that’s because I am basically paying out of pocket with a tax-free account (no good really). His benefits (which we declined) pay for all pre-existing conditions except (get this) infertility! So basically I would need different insurance (a straight PPO with a co-pay would be ideal but even my company’s PPO option is a co-insurance thing.)

But I thought long and hard about our financial situation and I realized that in 18 months Ray will have completed paying off his student loans. As in done forever!!! Which is amazes me because he’s only been out of undergrad for 9 years. I worked really hard at come up with a “snowball” plan for paying off the loans (if anyone wants details on how we did this you can just send me a msg and I’ll explain it to you). What was supposed to happen at the end of that 18 months was that I was supposed to take whatever money he was throwing towards his loan and put it towards the smaller of my two remaining loans. But considering the nature of student loans I told Ray that we not do that. Instead we could put that money into daycare costs for another baby…

He said he thought it was a good plan (what?) and what time frame was I looking at. I said providing this all goes the way it’s supposed to (which we know it won’t) 9 months would be the soonest so that if a miracle occurs and I get pregnant right away then we have the 9 additional months to pay off the loan and it would put us right where we need to be. If it doesn’t happen right away (more likely the case) we’ll just keep trying and if it doesn’t happen within 6 months we’ll go back and get help from the RE again. I also figure that if I wait the 9 months from now we’ll have figured out the insurance situation (going back to the PPO and have the HSA money for the co-insurance payments). Moreover it gives Ray a few months to figure out his job situation (that’s post for another day because it means we may be moving. And now that we’re no longer talking with his mother/family we have no reason to really stay).

So that’s the tentative plans right now. It’s nice to dream that things will go just how we plan them to go. But even if they don’t I think giving it another try is in our best interest. I want another baby and I want Clara to have a sibling now more than ever because of our situation with Ray’s family. Maybe it’s not the best reason but I think, even if we stay where we are now, in the jobs we have now, in the house we currently own we can do it. And as far as school goes- well I think having one in kinders and one in pre-school is okay so long as we can swing it financially I know we’ll find a way to make it work time wise.