Should I wait to get pregnant after a couple of vacations? A parent’s honest perspective
The iced latte in front of me was sweating through its cardboard sleeve when Lila leaned across the table, voice dropping like she was asking for a secret. “I’ve been wanting a baby for a year, but me and Jake just booked two back-to-back beach trips next year. Should I wait to get pregnant after we go?”
I smiled, because that was exactly the question I was asking myself four years ago, sitting at this same table with my own older cousin, twisting a straw wrapper around my finger. Back then, my husband Mark and I had just put down deposits for a 10-day trip to Japan, followed by a destination wedding for his best friend in Cabo three months later. I was 29, ready to start trying, but every time I went to pull that ovulation test strip out of the back of my bathroom cabinet, under my extra shampoo and a half-empty bottle of dry shampoo, I paused.
There was plenty of pressure to just start. My mom kept leaving fertility articles in my Facebook messages, saying your egg quality drops after 30, don’t wait. My sister-in-law, who had her first kid at 25, rolled her eyes when I mentioned waiting. “You can travel with a baby, it’s fine. We took Mia to Disney when she was 10 months old.” At Christmas that year, my great-aunt asked me when we’d stop “vacation hopping” and “get serious about starting a family.” I just passed the mashed potatoes and didn’t answer.
I decided to wait anyway. What happened next is just the ordinary stuff people don’t post about. We went to Japan first. We walked 11 miles a day, wandering the back streets of Kyoto, stopping for street takoyaki at 10pm when most families with kids were already heading back to their hotels. I drank as much matcha beer as I wanted, ate raw sushi from a little stand by the train station, didn’t have to cut every outing short because I was too tired or needed a bathroom every 20 minutes. We got lost on a hiking trail outside Osaka and just laughed, instead of panicking because we had a bedtime to make. Then Cabo: we snorkeled with sea lions, stayed up until 2am playing card games with our friends, drank frozen margaritas on the sand at noon, packed only one carry-on each, no diaper bags, no portable cribs, no list of snacks a mile long.
We got home in October, started trying that month, and I got pregnant three months later. It all worked out the way I wanted it to. Now, I have a two-year-old named Mia, and we just got back from our first family beach trip last month. I love that trip, don’t get me wrong. But I spent 75% of the time chasing her away from seagulls, changing sandy diapers in the back of the car, and didn’t get through more than 20 pages of the novel I packed. That’s just how it is when you travel with a toddler, and I wouldn’t trade it. But I also don’t regret the two trips I took before she was here.
A lot of people will make you feel selfish for wanting to wait. They’ll act like any delay in having a baby is a bad choice, or that you’re putting fun above parenthood. But what no one talks about are the small, concrete things that actually matter when you’re making this choice.
First: If your trips are already booked, pull up the cancellation policy right now. Most international flights and non-refundable hotel deposits can’t be transferred if you have to cancel because of pregnancy complications or debilitating first-trimester sickness. I know three different people who lost a combined $8,000 because they got pregnant before a pre-booked trip and couldn’t go. That’s a lot of money to throw away for no reason, especially when you’re about to have a kid and need every extra dollar for diapers, daycare, and all the unexpected stuff that pops up. If you can cancel for a full credit, it’s less of a big deal. If you can’t, that’s a real practical factor worth weighing.
Second: Talk to your doctor first, plain and simple. If you have known fertility issues, or you’re over 35 and your doctor has advised you to start trying as soon as possible, don’t wait. That’s a hard line, and it’s not worth risking your ability to have a baby for a vacation. But if you’re healthy, your doctor says waiting another 6 to 12 months won’t change anything for your odds, then the choice is yours. No one else gets to make that call for you.
Third: Ask yourself what you’d regret more. If you get pregnant now and have to skip or cut your trips short, will you spend the first few months of your new baby’s life looking back and wishing you’d gone? If you wait and it takes longer than you expected to get pregnant, will you blame yourself for the delay? For me, I knew I’d regret skipping the trips more than waiting a year. For my friend Sarah, who got pregnant accidentally right before her honeymoon, she never regretted it—she brought her 4-month-old on a delayed honeymoon a year later and had a great time. There’s no wrong answer, just what fits your life.
Lila stirred her latte, tapping her phone where her trip confirmation email was pulled up. She said her doctor told her waiting a year was totally fine, and the trips are non-refundable. She’s gonna go. I told her that sounds like the right choice for her. I don’t know how it’ll go for her, whether she’ll get pregnant right after or it’ll take a while, but I know she won’t spend the rest of her life wondering what that trip would’ve been like. That’s enough for right now.
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