Andrea Kahl of Long Island, N.Y., didn't exactly give her husband an ultimatum, but she did put him on notice. For Donna Wade of Sacramento, Calif., it took a year of careful negotiation. Their common topic can make or break a marriage: "Let's have a baby. It's time. I'm ready." With both women, their spouses weren't quite ready yet. Fortunately, the couples worked through the issue successfully, and you can too.

In Kahl's case, the couple wanted children. They discussed it extensively before marriage. Andrea, however, wanted children fairly soon into the marriage. "I looked at my in-laws," she says. "They're in their early 50s. Their son is established, and their youngest child is getting married – and they're still so young. They have the time and energy to travel and enjoy their grandchildren. That's where I want my family to be when I'm that age."

Paul Kahl, on the other hand, wanted to proceed with his life in a more orderly fashion. Andrea says he wanted certain things established first, such as owning a house. Andrea believed having a baby didn't have to be so well planned. After seven months of marriage, she solved the problem by telling Paul that they were going to begin trying to conceive in a year. Then it seemed like babies were everywhere, she says. "Every time we turned on the TV, there seemed to be a movie about having a baby or commercials showing beautiful babies. It definitely stayed on his radar."

By the time a year rolled around, Paul was ready, and Andrea was pregnant within two weeks. Their daughter is now 3 years old. When it was time to try for the second, Andrea didn't have to do any convincing because of a life-changing event that happened when she was newly pregnant with their first child – September 11, 2001.

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