Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple of Vacations? A Parent’s Honest Take
The salt crust on my 2018 Honda CR-V’s bumper was still crumbing off when my phone pinged, halfway home from our Yucatan beach vacation. I fished it out from under a bag of sandy beach towels and read my sister’s text: “Mom asked again. Are you starting to try for a baby after this trip, or still waiting for another?” I passed the phone to my husband, who was driving, and he shrugged one shoulder, the same way he’d shrugged off the question at every family dinner for two years. We’d gotten married, and almost immediately, everyone had an opinion: don’t wait, your fertility drops, why put it off for just vacations? I’d typed the exact question into Google at 2 a.m. more than once: should I wait to get pregnant after a couple of vacations?
We’d had this plan, the two of us, before we even walked down the aisle. I’d grown up going on the same family camping trip every year, and we never got to do the big, adventurous stuff my parents couldn’t afford. My husband had never been anywhere outside the country. We checked the first trip off our list a year after the wedding: a 7-day backpacking trip in Rocky Mountain National Park, 10 miles a day, camping under trees with no cell service. I drank beer at the summit after our hardest climb, stayed up until 1 a.m. talking, didn’t have to calculate the risk of listeria in the campground hot dogs or stop every 45 minutes to pee. It was everything we wanted. Then we saved for another year for the beach trip, and that was just as unplanned and perfect: we wandered the market in Merida at noon, ate street tacos from a cart with a handwritten sign, went cave diving at 7 a.m. without coordinating around nap times or packing extra formula.
Halfway through the beach trip, though, the doubt crept in. We were sitting on the sand after sunset, drinking margaritas, and I got a news alert about a study that said women over 30 have a lower chance of conceiving each year they wait. My cousin had just had a miscarriage at 36, and I started crying into my margarita, sudden and messy. What if we were being stupid? What if we wasted our best fertility years on sunburn and bad tacos, and ended up with nothing? We talked about it until the sand got cold, and that’s when I realized most of the advice online only told one side of the story: either rush to start as soon as you can, or take all the time you want, your body your choice. No one talked about the middle ground, the messy part where you want both, and you don’t know which one to pick.
A week after we got home, I went to my OB for that basic fertility check I’d been putting off. That’s the first thing I tell people now when they ask me this question: don’t just guess where you stand. If you want to wait for a couple of trips, book the basic fertility workup first. It takes two quick appointments, they can check your ovarian reserve and any underlying issues like undiagnosed PCOS, and you’ll know if waiting a year is a low-risk choice or something that could make it harder to get pregnant later. I was 31, everything checked out fine, so we had the green light to go through with our planned trips, then start trying. That’s way better than stressing about it the whole time you’re on vacation, right?
The second thing I tell people is to prioritize the trips that actually matter, not every trip on your bucket list. We originally had a 10-day trip to Italy planned as a third vacation before starting, but when we looked at the timeline, that would’ve pushed starting back another year. We realized we didn’t need Italy that bad—we could go for a long weekend in Napa instead, before the baby came, or save Italy for when our kid is old enough to enjoy it with us. We cut the third trip, started trying three months after we got back from Yucatan, and got pregnant on the third try. That compromise kept me from stressing, and we still got the two big trips we’d been dreaming of for years.
I don’t say waiting is the right choice for everyone. My friend with PCOS waited a year to check off a European trip, and it took her four years of IVF to get pregnant, and she still says she regrets waiting that long. If your workup says you have a higher risk of infertility, or you’re over 35, don’t wait for two vacations. You can take shorter trips, or do a babymoon once you’re pregnant, that’s still good. I also don’t say starting right away is wrong, either. My neighbor started trying two months after her wedding, got pregnant right away, and she loves being a young mom, and she and her husband do kid-friendly trips every year and they’re happy. It’s not a moral thing, it’s just what works for you.
My daughter is two now, and last weekend we tried to go to the local lake for the day. We packed the diaper bag, three different snack options, her life jacket, a hat, extra clothes, and stopped twice on the 20-minute drive for her to get out and pee. We got there, she took one step in the water, said it was too cold, and had a full meltdown because we wouldn’t buy her the $15 ice cream cone from the snack bar. We packed everything up and went home after 45 minutes. As I was folding up the faded beach towel we’d bought on our Yucatan trip, I thought about how that trip was just me and my husband, no meltdowns, no extra snacks, no schedule. I don’t regret that time at all.
Last week, my 28-year-old cousin pulled me aside at a birthday party and asked me the same question: she has two trips booked next year, should she wait to start trying? I told her what I know: get the checkup first, be honest with your partner about what you actually want, don’t let anyone rush you, but don’t put it off longer than you have to just to check every box. There’s no perfect answer, just the one that works for you. Right now, my daughter’s climbing onto my lap, covered in chocolate chip cookie crumbs, and I’m closing my laptop to go wipe her off. It’s messy, it’s loud, it’s nothing like those quiet vacations. But I’m glad I got both.
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