Delayed gratification

So, the only thing holding us back from trying to get pregnant right now is this whole Torsten quitting his job and starting his own company thing.

Which, granted, is a pretty good reason not to be trying right now. But it is also the only thing that I am still struggling to come to terms with about Torsten's company.

Originally I was told that I had to wait a year after surgery to get pregnant. I knew that I didn't really have to wait, but I figured that I would. It about meshed with our vague timeline anyway. No big deal.

But there isn't really a surgery-related reason to wait. With the bypass, there would be, because you lose so much weight so fast and your body needs time to adjust. Though even with bypass, it's not that big a deal to get pregnant before the year is up--you just have to make sure you're getting enough nutrients to nourish the baby.

With the lap-band, since it isn't malabsorptive and the weight loss is much slower, there isn't really a concern about the health of the baby. This is especially true because the fill can be let out of the band, or reduced, allowing you to eat as much or as little as you need during pregnancy. This is one of the reasons that I chose the band over the bypass.

So the real reason to wait a year post-band to get pregnant is mental. It's a big shift to go from being able to eat whatever you want to having to be much more careful about what you eat. It's very challenging for some people to adjust to a whole new way of life, and to learn how to eat the right things in order to get all the necessary nutrients. It's a huge change in your life, and for a lot of people it's the first time they've ever really focused on themselves like this, and so it makes sense to take a year to learn and adjust.

But it hasn't taken me a year. I had a head start because I was already eating healthy and working out before the surgery, so it wasn't a seismic shift in lifestyle for me. Certainly things have changed drastically for me since the surgery, but it's more in the realm of now the healthy eating and working out actually helps, and changes my mindset in a lot of ways.

So at my appointment earlier this month, I was discussing all this with my social worker and she said that as far as she's concerned, from a personal and health perspective, I am totally ready to get pregnant at any time, and there's no reason for me to wait the rest of the year before starting to try.

Under other circumstances I'd have rushed home gleefully and thrown my birth control straight in the trash. But now, under these circumstances, the surgery is no longer our primary reason to wait.

Of course I know, we both know, that if I did get pregnant now it would be fine. We wouldn't be able to throw every little luxury at our baby, but honestly, even if we were millionaires we probably wouldn't do that anyway. Certainly if I got pregnant while we were both earning our standard incomes we would go a little crazier with the buying of the baby stuff than we will if I get pregnant this year. But that's not really it.

It's mostly just that Torsten is taking a big risk by quitting his job and starting his company. He has me and my income as a safety net, and that's great, and I'm totally supportive of the whole thing. But there is a slightly more intangible part of his safety net as well, and that's the fact that right now it's just the two of us and we don't have a whole lot to lose. We have a house, but I can't really foresee a situation in which we would lose that. And there isn't really anything else.

We're adults. We're used to living frugally. We're making this choice for ourselves. We don't have anyone else to worry about as we make financial decisions. We have faith in ourselves, our earning power, and our ability to bounce back if it turns out that this company doesn't work out. We're young and we're flexible and we have very few responsibilities. The timing is right.

Once I get pregnant, that will put a deadline on the success of the company. Torsten will feel, whether or not it's rational, that he has nine months from the day I pee on that stick to make his company succeed. And if it doesn't, he'll feel that he has to desperately seek out the first job he can find in order to support our kid. And in a market like this, it could take quite some time for a job, any job, to come along.

He doesn't need that kind of pressure. Even though we know that if we had a baby now, on one income, with the company earning nothing, we'd be fine, the psychological pressure and the stress it would cause would turn this from the fun, exciting project it currently is to a huge source of stress and doubt for Torsten. And that's not what his company should be about. He has worked so hard for this. He deserves to have the time and space he needs to make it happen the way it should.

And so we continue to wait on the baby thing. And I know that in the end we'll probably be glad we did, because we'll love our baby so much and not be able to fathom that if we'd gotten pregnant earlier, we'd have ended up with a different baby. And a few months doesn't really make that much of a difference in the long run. And right now is really the best time for this to happen. And we can enjoy being just the two of us for that much longer. And it will all work out in the end.

I know all those things are true. I'm comfortable with our decision. I'm happy that Torsten is doing this and I know that it will be worth the wait.

But oh, I want it so much, and I don't want to wait one minute longer to start trying. I want a baby. And I would really, really like to have it now.