Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple of Vacations? What I Learned From My Choice
I’m leaning against a weathered cedar railing on our rental balcony in Maui, salt sticking to my bare legs, watching my husband turn pineapple slices over a charcoal grill. My phone pings in my pocket, and when I pull it up, it’s a text from my sister-in-law: “Just saw the positive this morning. Can’t believe you’re still out here gallivanting when you could be starting your family.” It’s 2021, we’re two weeks into our second pre-planned pre-baby vacation, and I’ve already gotten this exact question from three other people in the last month. Everyone acts like waiting a few months to travel before starting a family is some reckless, selfish choice.
We got married in 2019, I was 28, and the baby questions started before the wedding cake was cut. We’d had these two trips on our bucket list since we were broke college kids dating long distance: a two-week road trip through the Scottish Highlands we’d dreamed up during a late-night study break, and this Maui trip to celebrate my 30th birthday. We had the savings set aside, we had our time off approved, but suddenly everyone from my aunt to our neighbors was acting like we were putting our whole future on hold for a couple of tan lines.
I still think about that Scotland trip. We drove a beat-up rental car that smelled like sheep, stopped whenever we wanted to jump into a cold loch for a swim, changed our entire route at the last minute because we saw a sign for a castle we’d never heard of. I twisted my ankle on a trail halfway through the trip, and instead of rushing to a doctor or cutting our day short, we hobbled to the nearest pub, sat by a crackling fireplace for four hours drinking warm cider and playing cribbage. No one needed a snack every 90 minutes. No one had a meltdown because the grass was too itchy or the sky was too bright. I remember sitting there thinking, this isn’t just a vacation. This is the last time for a while it’ll just be the two of us, moving at our own pace.
That night in Maui, after my sister-in-law’s text, I stayed up scrolling Google and parenting forums, panicking a little. What if we wait and it takes us years to get pregnant? What am I doing? Most of the takes I found were all or nothing: either “travel now or you’ll never get a real vacation again” or “you’re being silly, kids travel great, stop putting it off.” No one talked about the middle ground, about what it actually looks like to weigh the choice.
We got home from Maui two weeks later, stopped using birth control, and got pregnant in three months. Our daughter is two now, and we’ve taken a handful of family trips since she was born. Last spring we drove to the Gulf Coast to visit my parents, a trip that should take six hours but took 12 because of potty stops and a screaming meltdown when she outgrew her swimsuit mid-drive. We spent three hours packing diapers, extra clothes, a portable crib, her favorite stuffed animal, and a whole cooler of snacks, and by the time we got to the beach, she fell asleep in the car seat for two hours. It was sweet, in its own way, but it wasn’t the relaxed, spontaneous trip I took to Scotland or Maui. That’s not a knock on family travel – it’s just different.
After two years of being a parent, I’ve come up with a few concrete things I wish someone had walked me through when I was panicking about my choice. First, ask yourself what you’d actually be giving up if you got pregnant now. If your “couple of vacations” are a few long weekends at a family campground an hour from home, you can absolutely do that with a baby. It’s messy, but it’s doable, and you can still have fun. But if you’re planning multi-week international trips that require 10 miles of hiking a day, last-minute route changes, or late nights exploring, that’s just not something you can do with a kid under 5, not without turning it into something completely different than what you wanted. It’s okay to want the experience you planned for, instead of settling for a watered-down version later.
Second, if you’re worried about fertility risks, check in with your doctor before you lock in your trips. Before I left for Maui, I went in for a pre-conception checkup, got a basic hormone panel done, and talked through my plan to wait six more months. My OB told me that a six to 12 month wait isn’t a meaningful risk for most people in their 20s and early 30s, but if you’re over 35, or have a history of irregular periods or other reproductive issues, you can do some basic testing first and plan your trips around that. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing – you can take a shorter trip now, do your testing, and plan the bigger trip for later if that makes sense.
Third, be honest with yourself about why you want to wait. If you’re putting off pregnancy because you’re scared of being a parent, that’s a different conversation than waiting because you want these specific memories that are just yours and your partner’s. There’s no shame in wanting that.
Last month, my sister-in-law came to visit with her one-year-old, and we flipped through my photo album from Scotland. She sighed and said she wishes they’d waited to do that trip they planned before they had their kid. I told her we’re already planning to go back when our daughter is 10, that it’ll be different but still fun. I don’t know if we would have struggled to conceive if we’d waited another year, I don’t know if we’d have regretted it if we’d gotten pregnant right after our wedding. For me, though, the six month wait was worth it. I have those memories that are just mine and my husband’s, before we were mom and dad, and that’s something I wouldn’t trade. It might not be the right choice for you, but it’s okay to prioritize the things that matter to you, even if it’s just a couple of vacations.
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