Should We Wait to Get Pregnant Until After Our Vacations? A Realistic Look at the Timing
We were sitting on the deck of a rented cabin in the mountains, two weeks after booking a hiking trip to Peru and a week of beach plans in Mexico. My partner had just refilled my glass of wine, which was a mistake, because the next sentence out of his mouth was: “So if we get pregnant this month, your due date would be right between the two trips, right?”
I pulled out my phone and did the math. Yes. The first trip would hit me right around six weeks pregnant. The second would land near twenty weeks. I’d either be nauseous on a hiking trail or heavily pregnant on a beach. And then, even if that all went fine, the baby would arrive and we wouldn’t travel for a long time. I remember staring at the mountain view and thinking, “So we have to decide: baby or vacations.”
We talked about it for weeks. I read forums where women described their first-trimester exhaustion on a European honeymoon. I heard from a coworker who said she was glad she’d gone to Japan before getting pregnant because she read about someone who had to sit out entire days in Paris. The math felt like a deadline. If we didn’t conceive soon, the due date would shift and the trips might be safe. But that meant waiting another month or two, and then maybe the timing would be wrong again.
Looking back, the real question wasn’t about the vacations at all.
We ended up not waiting. I got pregnant that month, and we went to Peru anyway. The first trip was nothing like I imagined. I was exhausted in a way I’d never been exhausted before. We’d planned these ambitious day hikes, and instead I spent most mornings dozing in the hotel room while my partner went to museums alone. The altitude made everything worse. I remember sitting on a park bench in Cusco while he ate a sandwich and said, “This is still good. It’s just different.” And he was right. We watched the light hit the mountains, and I didn’t need to climb them. We just needed to be there.
The beach trip was easier and harder at once. I was twenty weeks, finally showing, and the heat was intense. We traded long walks for short ones, and I drank a lot of coconut water while he snorkeled. It wasn’t a wild vacation. But we did sit with our feet in the sand and say, “Next time we do this, we’ll have a child with us,” and that made the sand feel more valuable.
That’s the thing nobody tells you: a vacation before a baby doesn’t feel like a farewell. It feels like a practice run. Because even then, we were already adjusting. We were learning that the trip wasn’t about checking off a list of activities. It was about being in a strange place together and handling the changes as they came. If a missed hike ruins your vacation, then you’re not really ready for a baby—not because of the timeline, but because of the expectation. Babies are a constant series of changed plans, and travel is one of the easiest places to see how you handle that.
I’m not a doctor, and I’m not here to tell anyone what to do with their body. But from the parenting side, I’ve noticed that what actually affects a child’s early development isn’t whether their parents went to Peru beforehand. It’s whether the parents are reasonably okay with each other, whether they have a stable enough home, and whether they can shift course when life throws them something unexpected. A vacation schedule measures none of that.
I thought about a friend who made a different choice. She and her husband waited an extra four months so they could take an anniversary trip to Portugal before trying to conceive. She got pregnant right after, and then the pandemic hit. They spent the whole pregnancy at home. She told me later, “We waited for the perfect trip, and then we couldn’t go anywhere anyway.” It’s not a moral or a lesson. It’s just a reminder that plans have a shelf life.
If you’re asking whether to wait until after a couple of vacations, I’d say don’t treat the vacations as a hard deadline. Instead, ask yourselves what you’re actually worried about. Are you worried about being physically uncomfortable on a trip? That will happen, and it’s temporary. Are you worried about not having another time alone as a couple? That’s valid, but a baby doesn’t erase that time completely—it just makes it rarer and more precious. Are you worried that a child will end your freedom? If that’s the real fear, a vacation won’t fix it.
Practical things to think about, though, are real. First-trimester fatigue is very real, so if you’re planning a physically demanding trip and you don’t want to miss it, waiting a few weeks is a completely reasonable choice. Third trimester flying can be uncomfortable, and some airlines restrict travel past a certain point. If you want a babymoon with more mobility, earlier is usually better. But that’s a comfort consideration, not a developmental one.
What actually helps a family with a new baby is not a last-minute trip. It’s having a few people you can call at 2 a.m. It’s a partner who will take the baby without being asked. It’s a community, a meal train, or even just a local delivery service you’re not too proud to use. It’s having a car seat installed and knowing how to set up a pack-and-play in under ten minutes. If you have those things in place, you can travel with a baby later, and it will be absurd and exhausting and absolutely fine.
We took our first trip with our daughter when she was five months old. I remember the hotel room floor covered in burp cloths and a travel bassinet in the corner. We didn’t see any sights. We took turns walking the hallway with a crying baby and ordered room service. It wasn’t a vacation in the old sense. But I sat on the balcony while she napped, and I felt free in a way I hadn’t expected. Free didn’t mean far away. It meant we managed to change the plan and survive it.
Now we’re talking about a second child. We have a couple of trips planned this year, and the same question has come up again. Should we try to conceive before or after? We’re not asking the same way this time. We’re both a little older, a little more tired. The answer is probably that it doesn’t matter much. The trips will happen. The baby will come whenever they come. What matters is that we keep talking about it, keep adjusting the plan, and don’t believe for a second that a calendar will make the decision for us.
If you’re standing where we were, I’d say: make your choice, but be honest about why. If you want to take one more trip as just the two of you, that’s a good reason. It’s not selfish. It’s not a mistake. But don’t pretend it’s a necessary step before you can be a good parent. You don’t need to finish the world before you bring someone into it. You just need to be ready to see the world a little differently.
We still don’t know if we made the “right” choice. There’s no way to run the other version. But I’m sitting here now, months later, and I don’t feel like we lost anything. We traded a few hikes for a slower trip, and then a slower trip for a family that laughs at the airport security line. It’s not the vacation I planned. It’s better in ways I couldn’t have calculated with a due date calculator. I just had to live it to find out.
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