Should I Wait to Get Pregnant Until After One More Vacation? What We Realized on the Way Home
The carousel at terminal 3 was still coughing up suitcases when my husband said, “You know, we could do one more trip.” He held up his phone showing a flight deal to the Azores. We had just spent ten days hiking in northern Spain, and I was sunburned, tired, and happy. I understood what he meant. For three years, our plan had been simple: take the big trips, then have a baby. The problem was that the big trips kept expanding. After the first couple of vacations, there was a cycling trip, then a cabin in Greece, then a plan to see cherry blossoms in Japan. Every time we came home, one of us would say over jet-lagged coffee, “Maybe just this one more.”
I work at a small preschool, and I think about waiting more than I used to. Children wait for snack, wait for their turn, wait for their parents to arrive. Some kids are good at it because they trust the thing will come. Others aren’t really waiting—they’re hiding. I see it when a child who is anxious about pickup suddenly becomes fascinated with a puzzle. It isn’t that they don’t want to leave; it’s that the transition feels too big. Their whole body says, “If I start this other thing, maybe I won’t have to go through with the hard part.” That was exactly what our vacation deals had become: an expensive puzzle.
Grace, a co-teacher with three kids, laughed when I mentioned the Azores before breakfast. “There is always going to be one more trip,” she said. “The moment you decide to close the door, another flight sale will open.” Then she added, “That’s not a reason not to travel. It’s a reason to notice when you’re using the flight sale to keep the door shut.”
We needed that. The real question wasn’t whether we’d regret missing the Azores. It was whether we were ready for the next phase, and whether we were willing to say so. There are good reasons to wait: health, shared planning, a big move, or simply needing to feel rested. Taking a couple of vacations can be one of those reasons. But if the vacation is a way to postpone, no number of stamps in a passport will be enough.
A friend had a baby in April. We visited on a Sunday, and she took the baby out to a patio while we had lukewarm coffee. They had not taken a big trip before getting pregnant. They had gone to a wedding, felt tired, and decided they could either keep waiting for the perfect season or start the imperfect one. Their daughter was six weeks old and had already been in a car, a stroller, and a carrier on a trail. They weren’t on vacation. But they were out in the world, figuring out what kind of world it was.
That made us ask three things slowly. First: what is this trip actually for? If the answer is “to rest,” a long weekend near home can do that. If the answer is “to escape all thoughts of pregnancy,” no trip will ever be long enough. We started saying, “Is this a want or a wait?” A want is a real thing you are choosing. A wait is a thing you use to guard a future you’re not sure about.
Second, we wrote out what we would actually give up. Not as a guilt exercise. Just on a scrap of paper: plane tickets, a week of vacation days, and some freedom, versus doctor visits, a crib, and a lot of unknown. The strange realization was that the vacation felt larger than it was. The real cost wasn’t the money—it was the mental energy. I spent an hour looking at flight comparisons and another hour imagining Portugal. That was an hour I wasn’t spending on the harder question. So we made a rule: no booking anything until we’d talked about it on two separate days, not including the day we saw the deal. If we still wanted the trip after a week, it was probably real. Most airline deals don’t last a week, which is helpful because most “once in a lifetime” prices are not once in a lifetime.
Third, we decided that we could start trying without taking a vacation first, and we could also take a vacation while trying. They weren’t opposites. Plenty of people get on a plane after a positive pregnancy test. Some are miserable on that plane, but that’s separate. We had built this idea that pregnancy had to be the beginning of a giant contained project, like a renovation. It isn’t. It’s just a next season with a lot of unknown. It doesn’t have to erase the rest of our lives.
I can’t tell you the exact decision because we still haven’t fully made it. What changed is that we stopped treating every travel deal as an emergency. We moved money from a “last big trips” savings folder to a general “lifestyle” folder. We left the Azores listing open until it expired. We also set a reminder for the first Sunday of each month to talk about how we feel about starting a family. The reminder is not a deadline. It’s just a way of making sure we don’t go a whole month silently waiting for an answer to appear.
This month, I still haven’t booked anything. We might wait until next fall. We might take a week somewhere with no agenda and come back ready to move. The difference is that I no longer think a vacation has to happen before life can. If we take one, it will be because we want it, not because we’re hiding from the uncertain part. And if we don’t, I won’t spend the first months of parenthood wondering whether we should have gone to the Azores. At least, I hope I won’t. But I’ll let you know after a couple of months with a baby. You know how plans go.
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