Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple of Vacations? What I Learned From My Choice
I was folding laundry last month, staring at the crumpled stack of matching swimsuits I bought for our 2021 Amalfi Coast trip, when my little sister texted: “Still no baby number two? Are you sure waiting after those two summer vacations was the right call?”
Three years ago, before we had our daughter, my husband and I were in exactly this spot. We’d talked about starting to try for a baby for almost six months, and we already had two big trips locked in: a two-week backpacking trip through Japan we’d planned when we got married, and a free week at my cousin’s mountain cabin outside Breckenridge that was only available that September.
My OB told me when I asked that the choice was 100% ours. She said there was no medical reason I couldn’t start trying right away, just that I’d have to adjust the trips if I got pregnant. But I couldn’t shake the mental image: morning sickness on the overnight train from Tokyo to Kyoto, skipping the 3-mile hike up Fushimi Inari because my blood pressure was too high, turning down the 10-seat omakase counter I’d booked six months in advance because of the raw fish rule. I was 29, we had no reason to think fertility would be an issue for us, so we decided to wait: start trying after we got back from both trips.
My mom sighed when I told her, said your egg count doesn’t wait for vacation photos. My best friend, who’d been trying to get pregnant for two years at that point, got quiet over brunch and said she’d trade any European trip for a positive pregnancy test. I felt guilty for weeks, like I was being selfish for prioritizing a couple trips over starting a family.
We went on both trips anyway. We hiked Fushimi Inari in a rainstorm, ate convenience store onigiri for lunch while we waited for the rain to clear, drank too much sake at a tiny bar in Golden Gai, woke up at 6 a.m. every day at the cabin to fish, drank beer on the porch after dark, didn’t set an alarm once in four weeks. When we got home, we started trying, and I got pregnant on the third try. Our daughter is almost two now, and that trip is still one of my favorite memories with my husband. We have a thousand blurry photos, and a running joke about the time we got lost in the rain and had to hitch a ride with a group of college students from Osaka.
But that same year, my roommate Lila made the exact same choice. She and her husband waited to start trying after two back-to-back European vacations, same as us. She was 31, no red flags at her preconception checkup, same as me. It took her four years to get pregnant. She had two miscarriages, spent $30,000 on IVF, and just had her first baby this spring. When I saw her a couple months ago, she said she still loves the photos from those trips, but she’d trade the whole trip to Paris to have not gone through those four years of heartache.
That’s when I started thinking about this question, because so many people my age (late 20s, early 30s) ask me now: should I wait? It’s not a yes or no answer, but there are a few small, concrete things I tell people that don’t involve generic takes.
First, book a 15-minute preconception appointment with your OB before you decide. Ask them specifically about your own fertility history, not generic internet stats. If you’re 36, or you’ve had irregular cycles your whole life, or you’ve had a miscarriage before, that changes the math. If you’re 27 and healthy with no red flags, that’s a different place to start. I did this, and my doctor told me there was no increased risk for me to wait six months, which made my choice feel a lot less reckless.
Second, write down three specific things you want to do on each of your vacations that you wouldn’t enjoy the same way pregnant. A lot of people repeat the line that you need to “get away before baby” because that’s what everyone on social media says, but when you actually sit down to write it out, you might realize you just want a few days at the beach, which you can totally do even if you’re six months pregnant. For me, I had three clear things: hike Fushimi Inari, eat raw sushi at that omakase counter, hike a 14er in Colorado. I wouldn’t have been able to do any of those comfortably or safely pregnant, so that made waiting worth it for me. If you can only come up with one thing, or nothing at all, there’s no reason to put it off.
Third, if people are pressuring you one way or the other, just use this line: “I’ve looked into my own situation, and this is what feels right for me right now. I don’t need advice on this.” It stops the conversation without fighting, and it’s way easier than trying to defend your choice to every cousin who asks at Thanksgiving.
Last week, I pulled out our Japan photo album while my daughter napped on the couch. She grabbed a photo of us covered in rain and babbled “mommy, daddy!” I don’t regret my choice for a second. But I also know Lila would make a different choice if she did it again. There’s no one right answer, but it doesn’t have to be a blind guess. Right now, we’re planning one more small vacation before we start trying for baby number two, and we did the three things exercise, checked in with my doctor, and that’s enough for me. We’ll see how it goes.
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