How do I know I want a baby?

Hi Fun Advice, wow I haven’t been on here for so long, I don’t know who’s on here now or if my old friends are still active but regardless, I need some help!

I am now 20, and my partner is turning 23 very soon. He wants a baby so badly, but I’m just not sure I’m ready yet. We recently moved from New Zealand to Australia and I don’t feel settled yet. I like it here, and it’s a permanent move (it cost 2k to fly our dog over!!) but I don’t yet feel comfortable here. We have started our own business in Property Management / Property Services as contractors and it is going well. It will definitely provide a stable and generous income to support a baby, and I wouldn’t have to work while pregnant or in the first few years of baby’s life. We are currently looking for a place more suitable for our lifestyle- we have a large dog and it’s difficult finding a rental that will allow him but hopefully we get into somewhere better, soon. We are saving to buy/build our first home and will hopefully have a good deposit before baby would be born (assuming we will conceive easily and soon).

My partner has grown up around young children and already has nephews and many small cousins. He would be a great father, he loves kids. I love kids also, and definitely want to have children soon, but my kind of ‘soon’ is 2-3 years whereas his kind of soon is to try tonight. He is so worried that he’s running out of time. He wants to be able to play sports and run around with his kids and even though of course you can do that at 40, he wants to do it at 30 which I completely understand.

I’m worried that having children now will limit everything I do, I don’t care for ‘partying’, never have never will, but I have such a wanderlust and need to travel. I’ve always wanted to travel nomadically but I know having a child would cut this fantasy out of my life all together. I know I would still be able to travel later on, on planned vacations with my partner and children but I dream of living in nature, hiking, camping, hitchiking, meeting crazy strange people along the way and being carefree.

My problem here though, is that I know that won’t even happen in my life in my current situation. We have our dog too, and he’s more than just a dog to us, hell we sold everything we own in order to fly him across the pacific ocean with us. So it’s not like I would be able to travel like that anyway. I guess I have always known I’ve missed out on this want of mine but only now am I coming to terms with it….

As far as careers go, I’ve always wanted to be a police woman or a firefighter. This is where I actually would prefer to have kids now, because I can raise my (preferably 1-2-3) children, then still have time to get into the kind of physical career I want. Whereas if I amble around and start training for that career now, I’ll be faced with the decision of giving up my career life completely to have kids at 24ish, or not having kids at all, which isn’t an option for me. So career wise I would like to have kids now.

I’m actually figuring a lot out while typing this haha, so I guess my problem is:

My partner wants kids now at 23. I am 20. We both love kids and could raise one right now comfortably. It suits our careers to do it now. Both our families would be supportive, no dramas there. The child would be able to grow up with our dog which we want. (Titan, dog, is 1) We earn enough to still be able to keep saving for a house, with a child.

The only thing for me is that I feel it would cut my travel life off completely. Which is kind of not true, because we could still travel with a young child. Or we could go on a holiday for a short period like a week and family could look after the child with no problems.

I don’t really know exactly what I’m asking here, I’d just like some different opinions on my situation.

By the way I’ve already completed 2 college degrees, and my partner has a bachelors degree, although neither of us use our degrees in our work!! So we are both educated, just in case somebody brings that up in discussion which I’m sure it will haha.