Should You Wait to Get Pregnant Until After a Couple More Vacations? What a Parent Learned
We were sitting on a patio in San Diego, watching the sun drop behind the hotel pool, and my wife said, “What if we just took that trip to Japan first?” We had been half-planning a baby for a year. We had the savings, the stable jobs, the two-bedroom apartment with one room we were already calling the nursery. But the idea of another year without diapers, without 2 a.m. feedings, with just our passports and a carry-on each—that was hard to give up. We both knew that once a baby came, travel would look different. The question was whether we were okay with that, or whether we should wait.
We went back and forth for months. I argued that we were young enough, so why rush? She argued that we’d never feel truly “ready” anyway, and that vacations would always be there, just with more planning. We even made a list. On one side: Kyoto in spring, a beach in Portugal, maybe a safari. On the other: the chance to introduce our parents to their first grandchild, the idea of being younger parents when the kid was in college, the simple fact that we wanted to be parents. The list didn’t help. No spreadsheet can tell you when to start a family.
In the end, we didn’t wait. We got pregnant a month after that trip to San Diego. We didn’t make it to Japan. But three years later, we’ve managed to take our toddler to the mountains twice, to the beach once, and to visit my wife’s cousin in Chicago. None of those trips looked anything like the vacations we used to plan. Our last “vacation” involved a hotel room with a pack-and-play, a sound machine, and us taking turns eating room service while the other walked our daughter in the hallway because she’d decided that 7 p.m. was a great time to scream. We did see the ocean. We did build a sandcastle. We also spent one entire afternoon in the hotel bathroom, hiding from a meltdown that came out of nowhere.
Here’s what I’ve learned, looking back at that question we kept asking ourselves. The desire to wait for a couple more vacations isn’t really about the vacations. It’s about holding onto a version of life that feels easy and uncomplicated. And that version is going to change eventually, whether you have a baby or not. Your friends move away, your parents get older, your job demands more, your knees start making weird noises. The “perfect time” to have a child is a myth we tell ourselves to feel in control. But that doesn’t mean the worry is silly. It’s normal to want to protect the freedom you have. The key is to be honest about what you’re actually protecting and what you’re willing to trade.
We also realized that waiting for “a couple of vacations” doesn’t solve the core problem. The problem is that you’re comparing a hypothetical future with a baby against a real present with travel. And in that comparison, the present always wins because it’s real. The future is full of unknowns, so it feels riskier. But when we actually had our daughter, we found that the risk wasn’t as scary as we thought. The first flight we took with her—when she was eleven months old—was a disaster. She cried for forty minutes, she spilled apple juice on the lady next to us, and we nearly missed our connection. But we survived. And the second flight was better, because we had a system. We had a carry-on with exactly one toy per hour of flight, a stash of snacks we’d rationed, and we’d booked seats near the bathroom. We learned that traveling with a baby is less about coasting and more about problem-solving.
For any parent thinking about this same question, here are a few things that actually helped us, without needing a whole different mindset.
Schedule trips around the kid’s schedule, not the itinerary. When we went to the beach, we stopped pretending we’d be on the sand at noon like we used to. Instead, we went early in the morning, stayed for two hours, and were back at the nap time. It wasn’t a full beach day. It was a beach window. That worked.
The second thing is to lower the stakes of “vacation.” We started calling them “trips.” That word doesn’t carry the expectation of total relaxation. A trip is just getting away from home. If we manage to see one thing, eat one good meal, and get one family photo, that’s a win. If the toddler melts down, that’s also part of the trip. The memories you’ll laugh about later are usually the disasters anyway.
Third, we stopped waiting for a “baby-proof” time to travel. There’s never a perfect age. Infants are heavy and need a lot of gear. Toddlers run away. Preschoolers complain about walking. School-age kids are stuck to school calendars. You just pick your version of hard.
But I also want to say this: waiting is not wrong. Some parents do decide to take those couple of vacations, or a year of travel, or whatever it is that they feel they need before expanding their family. And that’s valid. There’s no rule that says you must have a baby now. Everyone’s timeline is different. The question is whether you’re waiting for something real or something you’ll never feel—like being completely ready.
In our case, we didn’t wait, and I don’t regret it. But there are days when I wish we had gone to Japan. There are days when I’m exhausted and I scroll through old photos and think, “We could have had one more year.” And there are days when my daughter looks at me with her head tilted and says, “Dada, why?” and I realize that whatever we gave up, we gained something we didn’t know how to measure.
We still talk about Japan. We have a list of preschool-friendly excursions we might do when she’s a little older. We also talk about having a second child, and I catch myself thinking, “Maybe we should take one more trip before that.” Old habits die hard. I’ll probably have this same conversation with my wife again, just with a different kid in the picture. I don’t think the answer gets any easier. You just learn to live with the uncertainty.
So if you’re sitting on a patio somewhere, weighing the cost of a baby against the cost of a plane ticket, don’t beat yourself up for asking. That’s normal. Just know that whichever way you choose, you’ll adjust. Life has a way of filling in the space you give it, with diapers or with postcards, and either one can be a good story.
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