Go read the Disclaimer again. I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. Seriously.
Look, moving while forming a family, whether in anticipation of getting pregnant, while pregnant, or after having one or more children, is basically insane.
If you move before you are pregnant to the perfect place to raise a family and then have trouble forming a family (due to relationship issues or fertility problems), you will be surrounded by what you don't and possibly can't have. You may also be distant from a lot of what you do for fun while waiting for kids to take over your life, not to mention separated from your support circle and kinship network.
If you move while you are pregnant, you will probably have to go through all the hassles of finding grocery stores that stock what you want, a new hair stylist, a new health care provider (which can be tricky while pregnant, because they tend to book mothers early and be too busy to take women further along), etc. The changing hormones of pregnancy make managing the details of a move more difficult. The belly gets in the way of lifting boxes. If you are nauseous or extremely exhausted from the pregnancy, or having other medical problems, it just gets worse.
If you move after you have had the baby, you may still be recovering from the birth, managing breastfeeding, attempting to wean, trying to get the kid to take naps, dealing with their interest in everything going on around them and the stress of changing child care providers. Even the best adjusted baby is going to be thrown for a loop by a move.
I'm not silly enough to think that having more than one child makes this any easier.
Yet, despite all these very good reasons not to move, people really get the itch to move while forming a family. I ought to know. I questioned the judgment of people who did it (I tried to be polite, but I don't know how well I succeeded). Roland and I moved across country not once, but twice during a year and a half that included part of my pregnancy and Teddy's first year of life.
We didn't even move because we had to to pay the bills. We moved the first time because Roland really, really, really hated his job (evil, evil company, and a particularly bad boss), and his job search found him a place in the city I grew up in, Seattle. We moved the second time because that company had gone through a lot of changes, and we realized we vastly preferred to live in a house in a place that was quiet and dark at night. Specifically, our house, back in Brookline, NH. I still think that both decisions were good decisions, because we moved to improve our quality of life, and because we had a realistic idea of what we were getting into (even when some of the details weren't what we had hoped). That said, I think Roland wishes we'd stayed put, and I'm not prepared to argue.
Having done this, I have, needless to say, some formed opinions about when moving is a good idea, when it isn't, and how to tell the difference. I learned a lot about how to find ways to make the place you are living in work for you, even if it isn't ideal.
Storing Stuff (so you don't have to move, or to prepare for a move)
Getting the Job to Adapt to You
Finding Fun Kid Stuff in the City
Finding Fun Kid Stuff in a Really Small Town
Home: the Physical Locus of the Family
Copyright 2006 by Rebecca Allen.
Created November 12, 2006 Updated February 20, 2007