Maggie Evans 
When starting a family, there are many things you need to take into account. It’s a very stressful time, so it’s better to get some critical things organized before taking such a significant step.
Knowing where you stand before making big decisions about a baby can be a real time-saver. It might also stop arguments and anxiety from putting strain on your relationship with your spouse, helping to make those crucial nine months that much easier.
Make sure your finances are in order (or you can rely on one income with savings)
Money can be one of life’s great stresses. Ensuring that you have enough of it to get by while buying toys and quickly outgrown clothes for the baby can be a bit of a struggle. On top of this, it’s impossible to know precisely how much of everything you’re going to need, as being a new parent is very unpredictable. Saving up before and during the pregnancy can be an excellent way to build up some fallback funds to help you through.
Decide whether you want to go on maternity or paternity leave, or a bit of both
You and your partner need to decide whether you go on solid maternity leave or half and half with paternity leave. This decision can be left up until the late pregnancy stages but is generally best decided before it gets that late.
Solid maternity leave can be an excellent opportunity to recover and have quality time with the baby, but joining that with paternity leave can help your baby bond with the father and benefit both sides of the relationship.
Get the right health insurance to help with financial stress
Looking after both people in the relationship is always imperative, but you need to be extra careful when there is a pregnancy. A medical bill can be a massive expense and can put a lot of financial stress on a relationship.
By having a qualified health plan, which you can learn more about here, you can help curb the expense and help take some of that stress away. So, all you need to do is make sure that you’re taking care of each other in the best ways possible.
Prepare for the needs of your child
As everybody knows, the way you bring a child up should depend on the child’s needs, not always the parents, especially if the child is disabled in any way. You should probably also think about things your child will need and what it can learn from a young age.
You need to be prepared to match the speed that the child learns, whether that be slowly or quickly, and you need to be ready to expand your knowledge to help the child if you need to, for example, learning ASL.
A few final thoughts
By doing these four things, you are helping to prepare yourself and your spouse for the upcoming addition to your family without causing too many problems in your relationship in what can be a very stressful time.
