Pros & Con's of baby making while in nursing school.

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Hello everyone. I'm 26 I have a 7yr old son, and a 7 yr old stepdaughter. I start nursing school Jan 4th, upcoming spring. My question is what are the pro's and con's of conceiving a child during nursing school. Our children are getting older, and we are not getting younger. Please give testimony, feedback and your best advice. I have been contemplating this for sometime, while pursuing other degree's before this one. Please help!

Specializes in M/S, LTC, Corrections, PDN & drug rehab.
What this chick here with the gloves says! ^

Yeah but you can have all the sex you want, just use protection/birth control. :p

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Specializes in Neonatal Nurse Practitioner.

Pros

If you wanted it, you get a baby.

Cons

If you didn't want it, you get a baby.

Possible difficulty with school.

Possible problems in pregnancy/sick baby may cause an inexcusable number of absences causing you to withdraw/sit out.

You have to to start worrying about childcare while in school.

Studying "while the baby sleeps" is not reality.

"I'm going to group study." Nope, no you're not.

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Only cons. Nursing school is hard, and there is a lot of work to do. Save your conceiving efforts for when you're in a better position to do so.

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I'm going to be the voice of dissent. I'm older and I've seen it done. I got my masters while working full-time with kids. I had a classmate who had her first at the end of our first year - finals finished May 5th, baby born May 15th. When school started again, Baby went to day-care just as if mom worked. Dad was in school too.

I also have a friend who had her baby during 3L (third year of law school) and an MD friend who had hers in her third year of med school. I'd venture that law school and med school are similar to nursing school in terms of intensity, demands and schedules.

It all depends on how you manage the challenges. Do you have family to help when the baby/kids are sick? Did you have an easy, no-complications pregnancy the first time? Does your husband make enough money so there's not money stress in addition to kid/school stress? All that being said, I'd not do it until you finish your first year of nursing school (assuming a 2-year program), see how you do in school, see how your other two kids do with you in classes, see if your husband picks up the slack when you have a paper to write and the existing kids are sick. Even with that, you may have to go on bed rest and pffft there goes your semester. Are you going to be ok with that? Or premature labor and a sick baby. It's a risk. But everything is a risk.

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I went to school with lots if preggos. It's not that hard if you do it early on in school. You don't want to have a baby the week of your pinning or go on job interviews pregnant.

Women work and go to school pregnant all the time.

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Specializes in Adult and Pediatric Vascular Access, Paramedic.

The pros ... sex , sex, and more sex.

The cons... nursing school is a ton of work and it can be exhausting without being pregnant. I would wait.

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Don't do it. Your only 26 and many women don't even have their first child until their 30's.

You already have a commitment to your husband and current children to care for them while you attend nursing school. This will be an adjustment all by itself for everyone involved. Add a pregnancy and later a newborn while still in school would most likely create a very unpleasant experience for everyone and the one that least deserves that is your new baby.

Pregnancy and childbirth are unpredictable. You already have one child so you may have experienced this already. I had to go on FMLA three weeks early because if I wasn't laying on my left side my BP would be in the 200's/100's. I didn't have pre-eclampsia, but my BP was dangerously high so I was on strict bed rest the moment I was cleared from observation in the hospital until the day I had a scheduled c-section. After that I had to recover from abdominal surgery which added additional activity restrictions for a set time period. My daughter had her days and nights mixed up for almost the whole first year. I was a basket case and probably didn't get more than a few hours of sleep each day during that time period and thought I was going to go crazy. I totally did not expect to have this kind of experience and none of my friends or family had every had a story like mine so it was an unpleasant wake-up call. If I had been in nursing school at that time, I would have quit before they even would have had to throw me out. The stress would be too much.

A few years seems like a lot of time at age 26 but it's really not. When you finish school you will still be at an age where your fertility won't be in jeopardy. You can secure a stable job to provide a good future for your family and then when it's the right time to conceive your baby you won't be burdened by the what if's and the consequences that can occur if there are complications with the pregnancy or health issues with the newborn. Your baby will deserve to have a mother that can give him/her the attention that they need. Unexpected pregnancies happen and people deal with them as they occur, but a planned family should avoid chaos when possible and try to plan for the best possible outcomes. Good luck to you and your family with whatever you decide.

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Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.

I think it really depends on the individual. Some people can multitask like that. Some people can't. It also depends on the timing- I went to school with someone who unexpectedly ended up pregnant and gave birth in the middle of finals week. Had a lot of incompletes on her transcript at the end of the semester. Not sure how it ended up turning out for her- she definitely didn't graduate with the class she started with.

You haven't even started yet, you're still young (heck, I'm in my 30s, haven't even gotten married yet, and still want kids in the future), and I would at least wait and see how you do in school before making a final decision.

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Specializes in NICU, telemetry.

I wouldn't try to get pregnant during nursing school, but that's just me. People do it and are fine, but not every school is forgiving. Some will not let you take semesters off for things like maternity leave once the baby is born, be easy on having to miss for appointments, etc., even if you end up having health issues. I wouldn't want to purposely get pregnant knowing the stress I would be going through with school alone. Having already gone through nursing school, I can't imagine now having to do it while getting pregnant and having a newborn.

I get where you are coming from though. I am a year older (and have NO kids yet!), feel pushed by the "ticking internal clock", and I just started NP school...but even I am going to try and wait, because...no. Lol.

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Specializes in ICU.

I've had several of my coworkers get pregnant recently. Two of them ended up on surprise bedrest for the last four to six weeks.

That's why I'd say don't do it - if your pregnancy goes well, that's fine - but I'd had to have to repeat a year of nursing school because you had a pregnancy-related complication. School is way too expensive for that.

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Specializes in Med-Surg, NICU.

I never understand why people make their lives harder than it needs to be...

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Have people done it sure, but why make your life more difficult than it has to be? I had my first, spring break my last semester before nursing school so she was a few months when I started. While it wasn't especially difficult I defiantly missed out on a lot her first year as I was working and going to school. I can never get that first year back.

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