I keep asking if I should wait to get pregnant just so I can go on two more trips first
I’m sitting on my bedroom floor folding laundry right now, and I just dug my old blue bikini out from the back of the drawer. The right strap snapped on our trip to Florida back in March, I sewed it back twice with floss I stole from my mom’s craft bag, and it’s already fraying again. I held it up for a second and immediately got stuck on the same question I’ve been turning over in my head for three months: should I wait to get pregnant until after we go on the two trips we’ve got booked?
One’s the road trip around the Canadian Rockies next September, the other’s my best friend Lila’s bachelorette in Portugal next May. We put deposits down on both before we ever started talking seriously about trying, and now that we’re ready-ish to start, every time I bring up pushing back trying I get this weird twist in my stomach, like I’m being selfish for putting beach walks and cheap wine before a baby.
I brought it up at my annual checkup last month, right after she asked when we were planning to start. I mumbled something about the two trips and she just leaned back against the exam table, washed her hands, and said “that’s totally your call” in that neutral doctor voice. It was fine, she didn’t judge me, but I left the office overthinking it for three days, convinced she was side-eyeing me for prioritizing vacations over starting a family. My mom said I was being ridiculous, that she waited two years after she got married to have my brother so she and my dad could do a cross-country road trip, and no one called her selfish back then. But that was 40 years ago, now everyone’s got an opinion on when you should have kids, how you should do it, what you should prioritize.
I’ve got one friend who got pregnant accidentally two weeks before her dream trip to Japan. She was only 10 weeks along, she still went, she ate all the cooked ramen and walked 8 miles a day and said it was the best trip she ever took, even with the morning sickness. Another friend got pregnant before her honeymoon to Greece, got hit with terrible hyperemesis, spent the entire week vomiting in the hotel bathroom, and still says she can’t look at the photos from the trip without feeling sick. Don’t get me wrong, Instagram is full of gorgeous glowing pregnant women hiking mountains and sipping mocktails on beaches, but I’ve also seen the texts my cousin sent me when she was pregnant on her babymoon, complaining that she couldn’t walk more than 20 minutes without having to sit down, and that her husband had to carry all their bags and she felt like a dead weight. No one posts that part. So it’s not like there’s a right answer, it’s just what you’re willing to risk, I guess.
Half the time I think, why wait? If I get pregnant now, we can still go on both trips. I’ll just skip the wine and the 10-mile hikes, it’ll be fine. Lila would still want me there, no matter what. But the other half of me, the petty, selfish half, thinks I’ve wanted to hike that backcountry trail in the Rockies since I was 16, when my mom drove me through there and we couldn’t afford the permits or the gear to do it. I want to drink cheap boxed wine in that little cabin we booked with a clawfoot tub overlooking the lake, turn in late after sitting on the porch watching the stars with my partner, I don’t want to be 5 months pregnant and sore and exhausted, turning in at 8pm alone while he sits out there. I want to stay up until 2am drinking port with Lila in our tiny Lisbon Airbnb, laughing about our terrible college exes, not be the person who has to bow out early because my feet hurt or I need to pee every 20 minutes. I want these trips to be what they’re supposed to be, not just anecdotes for how we adjusted when I got pregnant early.
But then I get the other kind of scared. What if I wait 18 months, and then it takes two years to get pregnant? What if I put this off for trips that end up being just fine, and then I’m stuck waiting for a baby for years, wondering why I rushed to lock in the trips instead of just starting? Last month I had that weird random spotting mid-cycle, went in for an ultrasound, everything was fine, but it still made my heart drop. I’m 32, I know that’s not old, I know people have healthy babies way later, but that little voice in the back of my head won’t shut up. And I feel guilty even saying that, because I know so many people who would give anything to be in my position, to have the option to wait, to be able to afford two big trips in a year, to be healthy enough to have a baby. Who am I to overthink this?
My cat just jumped up on the pile of laundry and is chewing on the laptop cord, so I have to pause to yank it away from her. My partner just got home from the grocery store, he brought me that salted caramel iced coffee I like, and he just yelled from the kitchen “you still thinking about this?” I yelled back “yeah, still thinking” and he laughed and said there’s no rush, whatever I want is fine. I just tucked that broken-strap bikini back into the drawer, I guess I’ll need it for Portugal either way, if I go pregnant or not.
I don’t have the answer yet. Some days I’m sure we should wait, some days I’m sure we should start trying next month. I guess that’s just how it is, right? No one gives you a map for this stuff, you just guess and see what happens. I’m not going to get a perfect outcome no matter what I choose, so I guess I’ll just keep thinking about it a little longer, while I drink my iced coffee. (Word count: 1182)
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