Should I Wait to Get Pregnant Until After a Couple of Vacations?
Lila drops her half-eaten pepperoni pizza slice on a crumpled paper plate, leans across my kitchen table, and asks, “So, what do you think? Should I wait to get pregnant until after we take those two trips we booked?” My 2-year-old Eli is currently smearing blue crayon across the edge of the table, and I’m wiping apple juice off my sleeve that he just spilled, so it takes me a second to catch up. She and her partner have had these trips locked in for six months: a Pacific Coast road trip next spring, and a non-refundable beach trip to Mexico that fall. They’ve been talking about starting a family for a year, and now they’re stuck on the timing.
I remember being in that exact spot back in 2019. My husband Jake and I had a two-week trip to Japan planned, and a follow-up Italy trip booked for a year later. We went back and forth for weeks: do we wait to start trying until after both trips, or do we start now? We ended up jumping in, and I got pregnant two weeks before we left for Japan. I threw up on a bullet train outside Kyoto, survived on matcha ice cream to settle my stomach, and we still hiked slowly up to the Fushimi Inari torii gates at sunrise. It wasn’t the trip we’d planned, but it was still one of my favorite memories. We ended up canceling the Italy trip, though, lost our $800 deposit, and didn’t take any big trips for the next two years after Eli was born.
That’s the fear, right? The thing that makes people want to wait: the idea that once you have a baby, you’ll never get to take a nice vacation again. Lila mentioned her cousin, who had a baby two years ago and hasn’t been anywhere overnight since. Daycare eats her whole paycheck, she doesn’t have family within three hours to watch the kid, and even a weekend at a hotel feels out of reach. That’s a real struggle for a lot of new parents, I don’t dismiss that. But it’s not a permanent state, and it doesn’t mean you’ll never get to travel again. I’ve found that the narrative that pre-baby vacations are the last fun trips you’ll ever have is overblown.
I didn’t give Lila that vague “just follow your heart” advice people love to throw around. I gave her the three concrete things I wish someone had told me back when I was debating the same thing. First, pull out your trip confirmations right now and check the details. Call your travel insurance and ask exactly what pregnancy-related cancellations cover. Most standard policies will cover you if you have to cancel for a complication, and you can usually add extra pregnancy coverage for less than $50, if it’s not already included. If you can get your deposit back if you end up needing to cancel, half the stress is gone. When I canceled our Italy trip, I had no idea we could have added that coverage for $25, and it would have saved us that $800 loss.
Second, if your trips are non-refundable and you can’t get coverage, talk to your OB now before you start trying. Ask what their guidance is for traveling in the first and second trimester. For most people with no pre-existing conditions, OBs clear you to fly and road trip up until 28 weeks, anyway. You don’t have to choose between your booked trip and starting your family. You can start trying, and if you get pregnant, you just go, you just adjust your itinerary a little. Skip the multi-day strenuous hike, skip the raw oysters, build in extra nap stops. It’s still a vacation.
Third, set up a separate savings account right now, and put $50 a month in it marked for your first family vacation after the baby turns one. You don’t need a lot to start. That way, you know you already have money set aside for a trip once the baby is here, so you don’t feel like you’re giving up travel forever to start your family now. Even if it’s just a long weekend at a lake cabin three hours from home, it’s still a trip, and it’s still yours.
Eli climbed into my lap mid-conversation and started chewing on the end of my hair, and Lila typed all three things into her notes app on her phone. She said the $1200 deposit for Mexico is a big hit for them, that’s the main thing holding her back from starting now. She’s still leaning towards waiting, because she really wants to go snorkeling and doesn’t want to spend the whole trip dealing with morning sickness on the beach. That makes total sense. There’s no one right answer here. I know couples who waited and said it was the best decision they ever made, and I know couples who didn’t wait and say they don’t regret it at all.
Last week, Jake and I took Eli to a local zoo, it was 92 degrees, he threw a fit because we wouldn’t buy him a $25 stuffed giraffe, and we left after an hour and stopped for soft serve on the way home. It wasn’t the fancy pre-baby European vacation I thought I’d given up when I got pregnant. It was messy, it was short, it was way more stressful than that trip to Japan. But it was ours. Vacations change when you have kids, but they don’t disappear. Whatever you decide, you’ll adjust. That’s the thing no one mentions when you’re debating the timing.
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