Guest post
I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl five years ago this month, so I thought I’d write a little blog post about the beginning of her life and how it affected me. My husband and I were living in our first home when we found out that I was expecting, and we knew that our lives would suddenly be a lot different from what they were. We were OK with that though as we felt very blessed to be awaiting the birth of our first child. It did mean that we had to be very organised and plan our future a bit better though, so we got out our notepads and jotted down ideas and things to do.
Here are just four of the things that I did when I was expecting my daughter – you might want to keep some of these in mind when you’re in a similar position.
Looked for a new home
We had bought our home as first-time buyers and at the time it was perfect for our needs. With a baby on the way, we knew that we didn’t have enough storage space for everything we’d need to buy, and a living room on the first floor wasn’t the most convenient layout for family life. Therefore we started looking in the windows of estate agents, as well as checking listings on the web. It took two months until we found a property in our budget, and we managed to move in and decorate a few rooms before our daughter came squalling into the world.
Bought lot of new things
When we had our new house, we were able to buy everything we’d need for our little girl. I found a lot of it second hand at local baby sales as well as on auction sites online. We had a budget that we needed to stick to, so although it was very tempting to buy all the cute things we saw, it was important for us to not get carried away.
Created a Will
I didn’t need any more reasons to draw up a Will once I knew I was having a little girl. I wanted to make sure all of our assets were down in writing and all of my wishes would be legally binding should the worst happen. I nominated my sister and her husband to be the named protectors of my children if my husband and I were taken seriously ill or had a fatal accident. It’s never nice to think about but I’d rather make sure that the right steps would be taken.
Left my job
As a new mother, I wanted to be at home with my daughter to interact with her as much as possible. My own mum was very hands-on when I was little, and I wanted to do the same. This meant I decided to resign from my job, and simply would do a bit of freelance from home when I had a few spare hours. I’m just about to start full time work again, so we’ll see how the transition goes!
