Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After Taking a Couple of Vacations First?
Last month I met my friend Lila at our favorite corner brunch spot, the one with sticky syrup-stained menus and iced coffee that comes in chipped mason jars. She pushed a piece of sourdough avocado toast around her plate, her new passport with two fresh stamps tucked in her purse right next to her ovulation tracker case. “We’ve been talking about starting a family for three years,” she said, twisting her engagement ring around her finger. “We finally saved up and took the two big trips we planned back when we got married—one to the Amalfi Coast, one to a cabin in the Rockies to hike. But now I can’t decide. Should I wait to get pregnant now that we’ve checked these off? What if I rush it and regret not having more time just us?”
I’d been in that exact spot five years earlier. My husband and I had just wrapped two big pre-baby trips of our own: a two-week road trip around Iceland, and an extended long weekend in New Orleans for a friend’s wedding, where we ate so many beignets I gained three pounds and didn’t even care. Every mom I followed online, every well-meaning aunt at family barbecues, told me the same thing: Get all your travel out now. Once you have a kid, you’ll never want to go anywhere again, or at least never anywhere fun without an extra carry-on of sippy cups and diaper rash cream. So I listened. I decided we’d wait six more months to do one more trip to the Gulf Coast beach we’d loved since we started dating, just the two of us, then we’d start trying.
What happened? That six months stretched, because we had to reschedule once when my husband got a new job and couldn’t take time off. By the time we actually went, I was so anxious to start trying for a baby that I spent half the trip checking fertility message boards on my phone instead of watching the sunset. When we finally started trying, it took 10 months for me to get pregnant. I spent a lot of that time wondering why I’d waited. What if I’d started back when we first talked about it, before we added that extra trip? What would have changed?
After my son was born, I learned pretty quickly that the whole “no more travel after baby” thing is overblown. We took him to that same Gulf Coast beach when he was 10 months old. We rented a ground-floor condo with a porch instead of the tiny bunk room we used to stay in, we brought a pack ‘n play and a cooler of pureed sweet potato, and we only did one 2-mile walk a day instead of the 5-mile hikes we used to do. After he went to bed at 7, we sat on the porch and drank cheap beer and watched the waves, same as we always did. It was different, but it wasn’t worse. When he turned two, my mom watched him for four long days and we went back to Iceland, just the two of us. It was just as magical as it would have been five years earlier. The Northern Lights still came, the hot springs still felt just as warm. We just didn’t have to rush to fit 10 waterfalls into one day, which I’d call an upgrade.
I told Lila that the best thing I ever did for this question was stop thinking of it as an either/or. Most people act like you have to get all your travel done first, or start trying right now and give up on travel forever, but that’s not true. There’s a middle ground that doesn’t require you to pick one or the other.
For example, I tell anyone who asks this to write down their pre-baby travel bucket list, then cross off everything except the three non-negotiable trips you actually can’t imagine not doing before you start. For Lila, that was the two she just took. She didn’t have a third, so she was done. No adding a trip to Japan, or a river cruise in Europe, just because someone on Instagram said you should. Bucket lists grow if you let them, and you can wait forever checking off new boxes. That’s the first small shift that makes this decision easier.
The second, if you still want one more trip, don’t put off starting trying to wait for it. Book the trip for six months from now, and start trying now. If you get pregnant before the trip, talk to your doctor—most low-risk pregnancies can handle travel in the second trimester, you just swap the multi-day hike for a few lazy beach days and skip the raw oysters. If you don’t get pregnant yet, you get to go on the trip you wanted anyway. If you get pregnant and can’t go, you can reschedule it for after the baby is born, when you can go with or without them. That’s way better than putting your whole life on hold waiting for the perfect time.
The last thing I reminded Lila of is that you can still take trips without your kid after they’re born. A lot of people act like once you have a baby, you’re chained to the house forever, but that’s not true. Most grandparents are happy to step in for a long weekend, and if yours aren’t, you can split a babysitter with another couple you trust who also want a night or two away. It doesn’t have to be a big expensive trip, even a 48-hour trip to a nearby hotel feels like the old you, just with a new perspective.
Last week Lila texted me a screenshot of her calendar, with the first day of her next cycle circled, and a confirmation email for a small trip to Crete next fall tucked below it. She said they decided to start trying this month, and they’re keeping the trip. If she’s pregnant by then, they’ll cut the hiking itinerary in half and book a waterfront hotel instead of the hostel they were looking at. If the baby’s already here, they’ll either bring him along and rent a villa with a few hours of nanny care a week, or ask her mom to come meet them there to watch him while they go out for late dinner. Either way works, she said.
She said she stopped worrying about getting all the fun in before the baby comes, because she realized the fun just changes, it doesn’t stop. I don’t know how it’ll go for her, of course. Trying to have a baby doesn’t always go the way you plan, no matter when you start. But right now, this feels right for her. And that’s the best any of us can ask for.
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