For me..it was all open ended with just an idea of how I wanted to approach it… no truly firm plans until some medical things made some decisions for me.
I knew I wanted a dog, children, a home.. but always felt I should wait to have a dog or children until I could provide a good environment and care properly for them.. Had I gotten pregnant unexpectedly or found a stray dog—I might have gone with the flow..but .. it all kinda went to plan.
For example, I didn’t get a dog until I bought a house with a yard and built a fence. With the fence built and the time to devote to training a puppy..I went to my area SPCA (aka: dog rescue) and adopted a dog that needed a home.
I always knew I wanted children someday—but waited until I met and married someone who I knew would be a wonderful father and co-parent. (He was a single parent to a 1yr. old baby girl when I met him—so I had the excellent advantage of seeing him parent before we married.) Luckily we were able to have children..
Now due to unexpected medical events I no longer have the choice to have more children…but if we wanted, we could make the decision to adopt perhaps. So.. perhaps the decision wasn’t really mine to make all along… it just happened when it happened..and I was fortunate enough that things worked out like they did.