Should I Wait to Get Pregnant Until After Our Vacations? A Parent’s Honest Take
I was pushing my daughter on the swings when I overheard a woman on the phone near the bench. She said, “We’re going to do the Portugal trip in May and then the wedding in September. After that, we’ll start trying. It just feels better to have those things behind us first.”
I knew exactly what she meant. I had said the same thing once, in almost the same tone, a little measured, a little hopeful, as if I were drawing a line across a calendar and saying: life starts after this.
My husband and I did the last-big-trip thing too. We planned a two-week trip to Costa Rica with the quiet understanding that it was the “before baby” trip. We didn’t say it out loud often, but it was in every decision. We chose the sort of hotel with no television. We hiked and watched monkeys and drank coffee that tasted like someone’s backyard. It was beautiful. It was also exhausting in a strange way. Every sunset felt like it came with an expiration date. We kept saying, “This is the last time we can do this,” which is a weird way to enjoy a sunset.
When we got home, I thought I’d be pregnant within a few months. I had done all the planning. I had read the books. I had the trip behind me, which was supposed to mean I was ready. But bodies don’t read calendars. Month after month, I looked at the Costa Rica photos and felt confused. The trip was supposed to be the marker before the beginning. Instead, it became something else: the memory of a countdown.
Looking back, the vacation question isn’t really about vacations. It’s about wanting a clean line between who you are and who you’ll become. You want to close a chapter and open another. But parenthood doesn’t arrive like that. It creeps in slowly, often in the middle of a regular Thursday. And even when it does arrive, you don’t suddenly feel like a different person. You just feel like yourself, with a newborn in your arms, wondering what you were so worried about and also why you didn’t worry more.
So if you’re asking whether you should wait until after those couple of vacations, I don’t think there’s one answer. The trips might be exactly what you need. They might be the right amount of time to save money, sleep in, and take long drives. They might also be a way of postponing something you can’t fully prepare for. The key is to figure out which one it is for you.
One thing that helped us was setting a time to check in instead of a final decision. My husband and I sat down and said, “Let’s enjoy the trip. Then, one month after we get back, we’ll talk about how we feel.” That did two things. It took the pressure off the vacation itself, and it gave us a natural moment to revisit. We still had the trip. But we weren’t standing on the edge of the whole rest of our lives while standing in a hotel lobby.
Another useful exercise was writing down what we would miss most about life before kids. At first we wrote things like “spontaneity” and “sleep.” But when we actually got specific, the list looked different. My husband wrote “slow Sunday morning pancakes.” I wrote “having one full day to read a book.” Those things didn’t require two international vacations. They were small rhythms. And most of them weren’t actually about travel at all. They were about quiet and space, which is a different category.
If your reason for waiting is practical, that’s worth naming too. A friend of mine delayed pregnancy for a year because she had two triathlons and a major work project. That was a real trade, not a vague fear. She knew what she needed. Another friend said she and her husband were waiting until “the right time,” and after a few years she realized the right time would never appear on an itinerary. It had to be built.
Also, be honest about what “after a couple of vacations” really means. If you’re 29 and have been together for five years, waiting six months is different from if you’re 38. Age isn’t the only factor, but it matters. I’m not saying panic. I’m saying the phrase “just a couple more trips” can stretch into a year, and a year can become two. When I finally went to my doctor, she said, “You’ve been waiting for the right time for a while. At some point, the right time is just a decision.” She was compassionate and direct, and it helped me stop using the trips as a shield.
That phrase—using trips as a shield—stayed with me. A vacation is a concrete thing. It has a date, a booking confirmation, a list of things to pack. It feels productive. Meanwhile, trying to get pregnant is vulnerable and uncertain. It’s much easier to talk about an upcoming trip than it is to talk about the fact that you’re scared. Or that you’re not sure you’ll be a good parent. Or that you’ve seen friends struggle and you don’t feel ready for that possibility.
I sat there at the playground that afternoon, watching my daughter pump her legs higher. I almost said something to the woman on the phone. But I didn’t. It’s not my place. Everyone has their own way of drawing their own line.
But if I could talk to her, I’d say this: you don’t have to give up travel just because you’re pregnant or parenting. It changes, but it doesn’t end. We took our daughter on a road trip when she was four months old. It was a disaster. She cried at a restaurant. We left a national park without seeing the actual park. But we learned to plan differently. We learned to stop at rest stops more often. A year later, we flew to the coast and she spent the whole flight asleep on my chest. The trip wasn’t perfect. But it was ours.
I don’t know whether we made the right call, waiting until after Costa Rica. Some mornings I think we should have waited longer, or started earlier, or spent less time planning and more time just being. Other mornings I look at the photos and feel glad we had those weeks alone. The trip wasn’t wasted. It’s just part of the story that happened before she did.
If you’re sitting with the vacation question, I hope you get the trips. I hope they’re full and messy and exactly what you needed. And I hope that when you ask yourself whether to wait, you listen for what’s behind the question. You might hear a practical timeline, or a genuine desire for one more season of just the two of you. Or you might hear the quieter thought: “I’m not sure I’m ready.” And that’s okay. Not knowing is allowed. You don’t need to have it settled before you get on the plane.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Should I Wait to Get Pregnant Until After Our Vacations