Contraception - do you bother? (for LTTTCers)

[Lenny]

I am still desperately clucky for another baby, but I accept my DHs desire to stop.
Contraception ( I didn't try the mini pill but got an iud) really just stopped me beating myself up every 28 days. Overanalysing things and getting excited if I was a few hours late, then mourning the 'what could have been'. It's over 4 years since ds2 came into the world, that's how long it took to conceive ds1. Maybe we would have been lucky and conceived the super surprise baby. But probably not. But I'll never know. I do think about it all still.

I often feel fortunate to 'know' you ladies. This jumble of feelings would hardly make sense to anyone else.

[Bloom]

This thread came up at just the right time for me.

I am one of "those women" who had IVF (first two babies) and then fell pregnant naturally! We didn't use any form of contraception at all between pregnancies and we agreed that we would be delighted with a miracle bub. (And we were delighted but very very surprised to find myself pregnant naturally!) It did change our plans in terms of going back to work, having a significant overseas trip with extended family, etc.

Plus if we didn't fall pregnant naturally, we would have gone back to do IVF with the hope of having 2 more (total 4) children. However, now with 3 children (and no frosties), we don't want to do IVF to have one more baby (we believe that every frostie should be transferred as life begins at conception, so we wouldn't feel comfortable destroying a frostie)

So, we aren't using contraception but aren't expecting to fall pregnant either but at some point we'll have to decide that we wouldn't want a surprise miracle and think about birth control.... But I'm not sure if that will be when DD3 (our youngest) reaches Grade 1 or some other time... I think I'd prefer not to be pregnant after 35 (leaving me only 3 years or so) but I know that lots of people are successfully pregnant after 35 and I realised I'm very blessed to have had the chance to have 3 kids before 35!

Funny area that this whole thought process is impacting is buying a 7 seater car! We'd like to be able to take friend's kids and nieces and nephews places, but we'll need a bigger car. However, I think the car that we'd buy for occasionally using 7 seats would be different to the car we'll buy if we always need 6 seats (for a family of 6)... But we don't know which one will be us until we decide to stop trying or have a fourth!.