We, my husband and I, live in a small mid terrace house in the centre of a city and it’s been great place for various reasons - no need to own a car, great amenities, entertainment, etc. Though with our future additions coming along (I’ve heard they come with a swathe of add-on’s from buggies to bed’s and toys to nappies) we knew at some stage the need to move to a bigger place. Flicking through Daft and MyHome was a nightly ritual, and whenever we would pop out to see my parents on the weekends, I’d retrieve the Irish Examiner Property paper from the recycling bin to try and find our future family home. As an outline plan we told each other we would have the first kid, then the second kid, still living in our teeny tiny city centre home and after everything had settled we would buy a bigger house. We save a high portion of our income so our ‘baby, baby, house’ approach was very practical in terms of being able to afford a deposit in the intervening years of our kids being born.

Last winter, as our journey to start a family trudged along and during an evening of us sending each other WhatsApp messages with links to houses for sale in West Cork as we watched Netflix, we found one. Our search criteria was determined by himself having always wanted a garden because our current one didn’t have one and my love West Cork, specifically around Clonakility. The house ticked all of those boxes and very much piqued both our interests. We had developed a pragmatic outlook on everything since our surrogacy journey had fumbled a bit so didn’t think we would buy it and organised to drive down to take a look anyways.

‘Fuck!’ I kept saying to myself as we walked around the area where the house was located and he kept coy but I could tell her liked it too. A modern house, built in early 2000’s, unfinished inside, set on a good bit of land, and adjacent to a river. Oh, and it’s 10 minutes from Clonakility and all the beaches we love. I rang the auctioneers to organise a viewing and the receptionist said, ‘Oh Frank’s on leave this week, and viewings will begin next week. I’ll get him to give you a call, whats your details?’ A viewing appointment was booked in for the following Friday at 10AM.

All the way home in the car I kept saying ‘Fuck, fuck, bollix!’ and hoped we would absolutely hate it after our viewing but we didn’t. We only fell in love with it more which they say never to do. I rang our current mortgage provider in earnest to find out if we could get a second mortgage and we could. We put in an offer and after a tense bidding process, we were accepted at just over the asking price. We’re now at the stage between ‘Sale Agreed’ and ‘Sold’ that could take weeks or months but we’re both committed to moving our lives to West Cork. I guess it’s now going to be ‘house, baby, baby’ or ‘house, baby, nothing for ages and then baby’ because we’ve got so much to do! ^^