Also, I want to expand on your self-reflection about understanding how birth control works. It’s definitely important for a couple to understand how that factors into their plans for a pregnancy!

Birth control that works via hormones (daily pills; some IUDs; shots, patches, other implants) require time for adjustment and, also as you said, medical advice for how to adjust properly, especially if those are used to treat other hormonal-influenced symptoms in the body. For those unfamiliar, the hormones in some birth control are for regulating the ovulation (this is why menses are predictable every month), therefore when someone ceases to take that medicine, the body is re-adjusting to its baseline functionality.

Now, for other methods of birth control that do not use hormones as a means of regulation or barrier (condoms, male and female; copper-based IUDs; Fertility Awareness Methods [FAMs / natural family planning]; abstinence), there is not any adjustment of hormones related to ovulation, so there would be a shorter/non-existent timeframe for increased probability of pregnancy since the body doesn’t have to re-adjust to that baseline.

That is all to say that understanding your preferred birth control method is critical to thinking about timing that you and your partner have discussed and, in the context of this discussion, works with your dual-military / dual-career lifestyle. That could mean that partners need to wait for this physical re-adjustment and limit/cease sexual intercourse to support that adjustment, OR that means that ceasing the preferred birth control would have immediate effects, and they need to take action (or not) in that regard.

Talking through this for your relationship is the keystone if you are considering deliberate planning of your pregnancy together.