Why did you decide to have a baby? Was it because you had got married and it seemed like the next thing to do? Have you always dreamed about having children and just waited for the right time? Was it an accident and hopefully a pleasant surprise?

I’ve always known I wanted to have kids. But after we got married I felt a lot of pressure to have a child. Mainly because it seems to be the only thing people ask you once you have tied the knot. But in the end, the reason we started a family was all down to broodiness. I don’t get broody around other people’s children. In fact, pre-kids I was one of those people who frowned at your children running around the restaurant and thought they should be better behaved. Don’t get me wrong, I loved cuddles with my friends’ babies, but I was more than happy to give them back. [Aside: what makes me broody now is looking at pics and videos of the J as a baby – she was so cute!!]

So why did we have kids, you might ask? I had been on the pill for a good 10 years and decided to take a break (with a view to maybe have children in the next few years). Then, a few months later I went through my first period of broodiness. It was a weird primal feeling that I just really wanted to have a baby. It was like my body was telling me you should be having a baby now. But I ignore it and it went away. Then a few months later it came back again. The third time that it returned, I realised that I couldn’t ignore it any longer. So we decided to tentatively start trying and two months later we were pregnant. By then it was too late and we couldn’t change our minds!

Fast-forward to the present day and we have an almost three year old. I knew I didn’t want to have a small gap between kids, at least two years if not three. The thought of 2 kids under 2 fills me with dread. We decided that the J would benefit from having a sibling as she loves her younger cousin and is so sweet with babies. So, we would start trying for a baby last summer – that was the plan. But then my brother decided he wanted to get married in Fiji in the October. As I had terrible morning sickness for the first 4 months of my first pregnancy, I decided I didn’t want to risk having morning sickness on a long flight.

We changed our plan and decide to start trying while on holiday – only a few more months to wait. Luckily, a chance conversation with a friend about our trip and perhaps some joke about shagging in Fiji, I mentioned our baby-making plans and she brought up the Zika virus. After a trip to the doctors (who was no help and simply looked on the World Health Organization website!) and a fair amount of my own online research – much of which was misleading – we realised we would have to wait for 6 months after our trip to start trying to get pregnant.

There’s conflicting advice about Zika virus and conception. If you are pregnant, the advice is clear – do not go to places with a high or moderate risk of Zika. The risk of what can happen to your unborn child if you contract Zika is unthinkable and just not worth the risk. I was surprised that Princess Meghan went to Fiji (around the same time as us) while she was preggers.

But if you want to have a baby, the advice is a bit murkier: some sites say that if you show no symptoms you should wait 2 months, others say that you can have Zika with no symptoms, if you are a single person its 2 months but a couple is 6 months as there is a small risk that it can be sexually transmitted. Surely, if you’ve both waited 2 months then the disease has gone??? It doesn’t make sense to me, but to be sure we are waiting for 6 months.

The only problem with having that long to think about making a baby, you start to question your choices! Do we want to go back to the sleepless nights? Am I ready to give my body over to another human for 9 months plus? And so on. I tend to prefer spontaneous decisions that you can choose to regret later.

So the countdown is on – we are almost three months in to the six month ‘no unprotected sex’ period. I have to say, I am pretty desperate to get cracking, with very frequent broody periods yet again, but patience is a virtue. Perhaps we should see it as a blessing in disguise. By the time we potentially have the baby, the J will be 4 years old and on her way to school the following summer. She’ll be old enough to help out with her younger brother or sister and should understand what’s going on. Grump says that he clearly remembers his sister being born when he was 3 years, 10 months and that it was very special. While I was under 2 when my brother was born and have no memories of it.

As a final note: I’ve been doing dry January this month and have been offered FREE prosecco twice that I have turned down. It has been a tough time. I didn’t drink any alcohol in my last pregnancy and don’t plan on doing it with the next one. That means I’ve got Feb-April to get my booze on… perhaps my next blog post will be about mum hangovers!