By Becky Hurley

Congratulations. You’re pregnant! Now starts the planning and preparations for all that is to come to get ready for baby’s arrival. Along with all of the stuffed animals, swaddle blankets and onesies, they will eventually need a space in your home to call their own.

I get it. You and your husband have been dreaming of your future home where you want to raise your babies. You start scouring Pinterest for baby room decorating ideas, painting tips, furniture and you’re looking around your current digs and in your mind, its not happening there. So you think, now is the time. We need to move. We need to find a home that is perfect for our babies. But not only that, it better have an awesome kitchen AND laundry room, because let’s be honest, you’ll be spending allot of time in those two places even more so than the baby room.

You can go one of two different routes:

1. You can search Zillow and Trulia (or call your local real estate agent at Hurley Ranch) and check out houses for days, weeks or months looking for an existing home, the one you’ve been dreaming of, the one that makes your heart go pitter patter, the one you can see settling down in and decorating that baby room after all. You may strike gold and find it.

Or

2. You decide you can’t find what you are looking for and the best option for you and your family is to build a brand new home. The one you can customize to make your own, add in that fireplace, put in those granite countertops, pick out those beautiful cabinets and enjoy those new floors. It’s brand new so there are no fixes, repairs, etc. needed prior to moving in. PERFECT!

Either way, we are here for you and we’ve been there too! Let the NESTING begin!

During our time building homes, I have been pregnant myself, now twice! I’m currently 37 weeks along with baby #2 so now was a good time to shed some light on this topic. In my first pregnancy with our daughter who is now two, we didn’t have any employees at the time. It was just my husband, Noah and I. We general contracted the building of not only one house, but 12 houses that year. I didn’t even get to see the final completion of the last 3 because I was hospitalized for a partial placental abruption 7 weeks early due to high blood pressure. I learned my lesson this time. We have been blessed with two wonderful employees in 2018 and a third starting recently in 2019. With their help we have coordinated the building of 17 houses in 2018 and in 2019 so far we have 6 homes currently in progress with several duplexes coming. We also did a complete remodel of our office (to make space for our employees) and built a new home design studio this Summer, all while having no functioning bathroom until halfway through my pregnancy! Whew! What a year.

Having our employees has been a Godsend to us. I’ve been doing much more research on pregnancy and health this time after a rather traumatic experience in my first pregnancy and see things in a totally new light.

Here are some tips for you Mamas who are planning to tackle the swapping of homes in the middle of pregnancy:

1. You are wonder woman! You are growing a human! You and baby come first. Take care of you. Whatever that means for you. Please remember that.
2. Building, Buying and Selling a home can be stressful. Do you have a tendency toward high blood pressure in pregnancy, like me? If so, I would recommend waiting until after baby is born if you can. If you can’t wait, just make sure you are taking time to relax and have your spouse help whenever needed as much as possible. Please refer to tip #1.
3. Start early in pregnancy. Contact a real estate agent or home builder early to get the process started now. That way you can hopefully have the buying, packing, swapping of houses done before third trimester.
4. Building a home? It generally takes 6 months from time of digging for us to complete a custom home. We recommend selecting all of your finishes at the beginning of the process or as much as possible so you aren’t making big decisions as your pregnancy advances. Pregnancy brain. It’s a real thing.
5. Relax and enjoy this moment in time as much as you can. This is a life milestone in more ways than one. Enjoy and please let us know what we can do to make the process of either building, buying or selling easier for you. We’ve been there too and we want to help in any way we can.

Good luck too all the expectant mamas out there who are going through this process. It is not easy and you are doing the best you can for your babies. Bringing life into the world is a tough job and a beautiful thing.

Cheers!

Becky