Beginning TTC Journey

[Squirrel45690]

Hi all. I’d love some advice. I’m 30 y/o married lady and my husband and I have began our journey for TTC.

Before we got to this point we have been talking in depth about our plans, finances, home and career as most do. I really want some advice, we live in our lovely 2 bed home in a busy town 5-10 mins walk from my parents. We love our home but are keen to move to a quieter village.

the question is, I’d like to all being well be Pregnant within the next 12 months and as I know how expensive being a new mum / maternity is, should we look to move house before so we have our bigger family home in the village? My
pros for this are bigger home, a driveway (we don’t have) and a village feel, but then something is pulling me to stay, being on maternity leave will incur many costs and if we keep our current house our mortgage will be lower / bills lower etc

I’d love peoples advice on the whole moving idea, should we move before we get pregnant, whilst we are or wait until I’m back?

I appreciate all of this is based off becoming pregnant which I am not currently and am aware of the beautiful, not always smooth sailing journey it can be.

please let me know what you think x

How far away from family is the other village?

Haven’t narrowed down the exact one but the ones we wish to look at are 15-35 mins away

Slightly different situation to you but we live in a 2 bedroom house and have a 4 year old son. We have just started TTC for our second child and ideally, would love a 3 bedroom house and I’d love to have that in place first but we can’t afford to save for both moving house and to cover maternity leave. After discussions with my OH, we have decided to try for baby number 2 whilst staying in our current house due to keeping the same mortgage costs etc. so that we can focus on saving for my time on maternity leave if / whenever that will be. Then (hopefully!) after this, we will focus on moving to somewhere bigger (by then we will be more in need of the extra space so I feel we should just stay put for the time being as we are managing in the 2 bed as it’s just the 3 of us - Financially this is best for us as we know where we are with our mortgage too). I think it’s down to personal preference and financial circumstances so wishing you good luck with your TTC journey and moving house too if you decide to! 😊

Thanks for your reply @sunshinecitrus1

good luck on your journey for baby no2 that’s so exciting! We are thinking the same, on one hand where we live is great, we’ve just always wanted to raise a family in more of a village, but looking at the costs for maternity and to move, it’s got to be one or the other I think.. we’ve said we’re going to see what happens and plan to move in spring but if a baby is on the cards for us then we will reassess. It’s so hard with the cost of going off on maternity leave and planning..

good luck!

@Squirrel45690 It’s really tricky as you don’t know what’s going to happen! You could conceive in the first month of trying or it could take a very long time so forward planning is so hard work 😂 hard to know what to do for the best! Also, another important thing for you to consider is at the moment your parents are 5-10 minutes away from you and with a new baby, although you’re not planning to move a million miles away you might be very grateful having them close by in the early days!

I have just finished my maternity leave and I found living in a town to be fantastic! You seem to need to do a lot of errands when you have a small baby (pharmacy/post office/GP/nursery booking/supermarket etc etc) and it was so lovely just being able to pop her in the pram and walk to whatever we needed. In our town there is also a baby group of some sort pretty much every day. I imagine all of these things would be a bit more tricky in a village. My advice would be to stay in a town till DC is old enough to need lots of outside space and running around and maybe move then. Also living so close to family when you have a new baby would be really helpful! When you have a baby a bigger house just means more stuff to clean and tidy!

I'd honestly consider if moving to a village further away from your parents is a good idea at all? Having help nearby when you have a baby is invaluable, and also you could feel very isolated in a village. We live in a town, chose smaller house to do so, and it has been the absolute best thing since I've been on maternity leave. Just being able to walk out the door with the baby and get a coffee, walk round town, and now being able to go to the playground, toddler groups etc, within a few minutes walk. is just amazing. I would hate having to get in the car all the time, such a faff, and some babies hate the car! I'd stay put, save the stress of moving whilst TTC or pregnant, a 2-bed is fine to have a baby. Then reassess once hopefully baby is here, you could easily stay put for a while.

My best advice would be do whatever you would want to do regardless of having a baby. If a life in a small village is what you want, do it. Don't wait thinking 'its better to stay nearer parents for when baby is tiny'. Equally if you only want a village life because you have a vision of having a baby there and wouldn't want to move without being parents, stay put.

I say this as someone two years into TTC suffering multiple losses. After a lot of umning and ahhing my partner bought a two seater car on the basis of let's sell that when the baby's born. Suffice to say we've had plenty use of the car so far. Do the things you want to do, don't delay them or make choices you only want conditionally when TTC. Sometimes the journey is absolutely anything but beautiful, and living in an area you don't want to be (town or village) will make it worse.

Thanks for the comments — yeah it’s weighing up financial pros & cons, having my parents close by, although they do work FT so I don’t know how much they’d be around, but it’ll be a journey, I’m just excited to see where and what falls into place, as I appreciate this is all a journey