Dr. Laura,

While I take no issue with any of your items in the blog, "Are You Ready to Have a Baby?", when I first read the title I just had to laugh. "Ready" may be much too strong of a word.

Let me caveat this by saying I am the father of two almost grown children, one in college and the other about to graduate high school. My wife and I had everything in place for our children when they came along. We even had some money in the bank for their college. (It was the wrong place to put it, but more on that later.)  We were "adequately prepared", but ready?...well that was quite another thing. I doubt anyone can actually be "ready" to have a baby because you never know what that baby is going to be like. With our first, we didn't get a full night's sleep for about three months. Our second was a collicky boy. My wife says if he had been our first we would never have had the second one. We didn't get a full night's sleep with him for six months. And we could not keep fresh bottles ready for him before he was demanding to be fed again. He is not now, nor has he ever been the slightest bit overweight.

Now about that bank thing...My wife inherited a nice trust for our kids' college money from her parents when they died. It was not so much that we could retire or anything, but it was more than most parents have to start their kids college funds. So my wife faithfully put the money into a Money Market account at the bank and would not hear of doing anything "risky" with it.  After 16 years, we have slightly more than we started with. But unfortunately what had been more than enough when the kids were little is not quite enough now. That's how quickly college tuition and other expenses have escalated. We can handle it only because we had built our home with money we saved in advance. We have never had any payments on it or any loans outstanding against our home. And for the most part the same applies to our vehicles. There's no question we have been blessed financially. But we did make thoughtful preparations well before the kids - or even each other - came along. As a single guy I was paying off my first house well before I even met my wife, instead of buying the obligatory Corvette or sail boat. So we did start our family a little later in life than most people do, but we have had needed resources all along the way as a result.

Martin