Hi Abigail,

My husband and I have been married for just under a year. When we tied the knot, we agreed that we wanted to wait a few years to have kids, because both of us felt strongly that we shouldn’t start a family until we were able to support ourselves. But we’re both starting to get the “should we have a baby now” itch.

We’re not currently self-sufficient. I am in medical school, and he is in law school. My husband has an amazing job lined up for after school, and we have a definite plan to reach self-sufficiency in the next three years. We’re both feeling impatient to start a family, but my husband is always the voice of reason. He reminds me, whenever I bring it up, why we decided to wait.

Another factor is that we’re near our parents, who would be helping to support us financially, if we had a baby. They would be so happy to have a grandchild nearby: All our nieces and nephews live far away. I know we’re young, and I have a while yet before my fertility starts waning, but I just feel so lucky to have a partner who I want to start a family with and parents (and in-laws) who are healthy and close. Am I crazy for not wanting to wait?

—Claire, 24

Claire,

Seven weeks after I took the New York Bar Exam, I met my husband. He lived in Los Angeles. Even accepting a date with a guy who lived on the opposite coast—a place I’d never visited and where I knew no one—risked taking a Sharpie to all my well-made plans.

I was sworn into the New York Bar six months later, packed up my things, and moved to Southern California, where—I was assured by everyone—there was almost no legal work to be had. Did I want to practice entertainment law? No, no I did not. Would my New York Bar membership be useful where I was headed? Also, no. Was I aware that I would have to take the dreaded California Bar Exam if I wanted to work there? I thanked my co-clerks for the hot tip.

Friends wished me luck in the way Marco Polo’s must have—certain they’d never see or hear from me again. I didn’t have much in the way of a satisfying response to offer any of them. Because I sensed something I couldn’t yet put into words: that there was another, higher-order logic, not reducible to a flowchart, inscribed in the human heart...