Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple of Vacations? A Parent’s Real Experience
The rain streaked the window of our neighborhood coffee shop last Saturday, and Lila pushed a crumb-strewn plate across the table toward me, her phone face-up showing a sun-dappled photo of the Douro Valley. She and her boyfriend have two trips booked this year: a 10-day tour of Portugal in September, and a yearly backcountry ski trip with her college friends in January. For six months, they’ve been talking about starting to try for a baby. “Everyone keeps telling me I shouldn’t wait,” she said, stirring her latte so hard the foam spilled over the edge. “My mom says I’m 32, I shouldn’t put it off for fun. But what if I regret skipping these trips?”
I sat back and thought about five years ago, when I was sitting in that exact same booth, asking myself the exact same question. My husband and I had booked a two-week road trip around Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, backcountry camping and hiking the whole way, then a trip to Florida to visit my grandma, who was 88 and had been asking me to come down for years. Our families were split: one side said go, take the trips, another side said stop waiting, just start trying. I waited. We went on both trips.
We hiked 8 miles a day, slept in a tent that smelled like old rain gear, ate gas station burritos for lunch every day, and stayed up until 1am drinking cheap wine by the campfire because we didn’t have to get up for anyone. In Florida, I spent three full days just sitting on my grandma’s porch, peeling oranges and listening to her talk about growing up during the Great Depression. I didn’t have to cut a story short to get a baby down for a nap, I didn’t have to cut the trip short because someone got sick. She died two years later. I still have that notebook full of her stories I wrote down those days, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
The thing no one tells you when you’re asking this question is that there’s no universal right answer, but there are concrete things you can ask yourself to figure out what’s right for you, instead of just listening to everyone else’s guilt trips.
First, ask what those trips actually are, not just how long they are. Are these the trips you’ve been planning and saving for for years, centered around things you can’t do or don’t want to do pregnant? For me, the whole point of the Olympic trip was backcountry camping, which I would never have done pregnant—there’s no cell service, the nearest hospital is an hour away, and I didn’t want to risk anything. For Lila, the Portugal trip is something she’s been saving for since she was a teenager, when her mom first told her stories about growing up outside Porto. The whole trip is built around walking through vineyards and small villages, something that would be a lot harder if she’s 30 weeks pregnant by September. These aren’t two long weekends at the lake you can rebook next year; these are trips that fit a very specific window of planning and expectation.
Second, check what your actual timeline pressure is, not the pressure other people are putting on you. If you’re in your late 30s, or you’ve had fertility issues in the past, or your doctor has told you to start trying as soon as possible, then waiting a year for two vacations is probably not the right call. You can adjust your trips instead—skip the strenuous hiking, book a nicer hotel instead of camping, and still have a good time. But if you’re young, healthy, and have no reason to think getting pregnant will be hard, don’t let anyone guilt you into rushing. When I was waiting, my aunt kept sending me articles about “advanced maternal age” every other week, even though I was only 31. I ended up muting her texts, because that pressure wasn’t helpful. My timeline is my own.
Third, be honest about what travel looks like for you the first few years after having a baby. It’s not that you can’t travel with little kids—you can, and a lot of people love it. But it’s not the same kind of travel you do when it’s just you and your partner. The first three years after my son was born, the farthest we went was a three-hour drive to my in-laws’ cabin. We didn’t do any two-week trips where we just go wherever we want, whenever we want. We were tired, we were adjusting to being parents, and leaving the house with a toddler requires 40 pounds of gear and a lot of planning. That’s not a complaint—it’s just how it is. Those carefree, just-us trips don’t come around very often once you have kids, and if you can squeeze them in before, that’s okay.
I also know people who didn’t wait, and they don’t regret it either. My cousin got pregnant accidentally right before her honeymoon, and she went to Italy anyway, swapped the mountain hikes for gelato tasting in Rome, and said it was the best trip she ever had. A friend of mine got pregnant between her two booked trips, just took the first one while she was early in pregnancy, and loved it. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. The only wrong answer is the one that leaves you wondering “what if” for years after.
By the time we finished our coffee, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. Lila tapped her phone screen once, then locked it and slid it into her bag. “I’m going to wait,” she said. “If it takes longer than we expect to get pregnant after, that’s okay. I’d rather have these trips than look back and wish I’d gone.” We walked out to the parking lot, she got in her car, and waved before pulling away. I don’t know how everything will work out for her. I don’t know if she’ll get pregnant right after the trips, or if it’ll take longer, or if those trips will end up being everything she’s dreamed of. But I do know that whatever happens, she made the choice that was right for her, not the choice everyone else told her to make. That’s more than most of us get when we’re standing at that crossroads, wondering what to do next.
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