The “First Few Years”

Next came the years of partying it up as childless married folk.  Although I was haunted by constant reminders of babies on a daily basis, I was reassured by the thought that my question of “help us know when we should start a family”, had yet to be answered.

The other night I was listening to my friends (marriage veterans) discuss how “so and so” had such a difficult first year of marriage.  Another friend (also a marriage veteran) piped in and stated, “Those first few years are always the hardest for everyone”.  I sat there, taking in those sweeping statements, and I just… couldn’t… relate. 

Our first few years of marriage were (dare I say it)… fun.  Many things happened our “first few years” that could have made for a difficult marriage: we bought our first home, we remodeled our first home (it was the epitome of sweat equity), we made peace with Marty, we became proud dog owners, we profusely apologize to the neighbors for our dog attacking their child, we took the dog to the pound, kittens!, the Husband lost his job, one of our cats ran away, the Husband helped me through my emotional insecurities and body image issues (that’s not to say those have gone away), we sometimes struggled to make ends meet financially, I worried about things I had no control over….

The list goes on and on… but the important part here is that I didn’t feel our marriage was ever difficult or hard.  We seriously didn’t have our first knock down drag out fight until very VERY recently (and even then it wasn’t THAT bad, we resolved the issue, and then kissed made up about a half hour later).

See what I'm talking about?  Bliss.

So… the “first few years” for the Husband and I were great.  I don’t know if babies and children would have totally ruined our “first few years”… and we’ll never know one way or the other… so I’ll just reiterate how fun it was to grow together as a couple during those “first few years”.

Those “help us know when we should start a family” prayers continued.  We never had a lightening bolt “ah-ha!” moment where we suddenly realized we needed to start having babies ASAP… it was more of a general realization that it wasn’t NOT the right time.  We didn’t feel like we shouldn’t be having babies.  We weren't being told "NO!!!!!!  Don't do it!!!!"  

So, we tossed birth control out the door and our baby journey began.