Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple Vacations? What I Wish I’d Considered First
The salt air stuck to my forearms as I leaned over the balcony rail of our Puerto Vallarta Airbnb, watching my partner Jesse haul two frozen margaritas up the chipped concrete stairs. It was March 2019, we’d been married eight months, and we’d spent the whole seven-day trip circling the same question over tacos and sunburns: stop my birth control when we got home, or wait until after our two already-booked trips that fall?
The first was a 10-day backcountry Rockies hike with college friends, permits non-refundable, two years in the planning. The second was my cousin’s wedding outside Lisbon, the first full extended family gathering in 12 years, tickets already paid for. Everyone we knew said the same thing: go now, before you have kids.
We ran into a high school classmate at the resort pool, on her first trip away from her 10-month-old son. When we mentioned our debate, she didn’t hesitate. “Wait,” she said, passing me sunscreen. “Do every kid-free trip you can fit. I can’t even pee alone anymore, let alone hike 10 miles or stay out late at a wedding. You’ll never get this time back.”
That line stuck. I was 31, my OB had already cleared me to start trying whenever we wanted, we had stable jobs with paid parental leave, and we’d planned to start our family within our first year of marriage. But the fear of wasting my last shot at uncomplicated fun felt too heavy to ignore. We decided to wait.
The Rockies trip was mostly great. We summited the peak, laughed so hard at old college stories I snort-laughed into my camp chili. But I spent half the trip on low-grade alert: I forgot my pill pack one night, panicked about an accidental pregnancy through the whole summit push, and treated the whole trip like a fragile, once-in-a-lifetime treasure I had to absorb every second of, instead of just a fun weekend with friends. Portugal was messier: half the wedding party got food poisoning, Jesse left his passport in a taxi, and we spent six hours in a fluorescent consulate waiting room while everyone else went wine tasting. We got home jet-lagged, I threw my birth control in the trash, and I got pregnant two cycles later. Our son Leo was born 13 months after the wedding.
I didn’t think about that choice again until last spring, when Leo was four and stuck in a preschool classroom that was a terrible fit. His teacher ran a rigid, sit-still program, and Leo needs to move and dig in dirt every 45 minutes to stay regulated. By March, he had meltdowns every Sunday evening, started wetting the bed again after six months dry, and kept saying he “wasn’t good at school” because he got in trouble for wiggling during story time.
We’d toured a play-based co-op near our house with an opening, and we had a 10-day beach vacation booked six weeks out. My first instinct was the exact same one I’d had on that Mexican balcony: wait. Don’t rock the boat. Transition stress will ruin vacation. Deal with the hard change after the fun thing.
I said as much to Jesse while unloading the dishwasher, and he leaned against the counter and said, “That’s exactly what we did with those two trips before Leo, isn’t it? We acted like the messy part would ruin the fun part, instead of just letting both exist.”
He was right. We pulled Leo out of the old preschool two weeks before vacation. The first three days were rough: he cried at drop-off, came home quiet, ate an entire family bag of Goldfish in 10 minutes flat. By the end of the week, he came home chattering about the class carrot patch, and stuffed a smooth white rock from the sensory bin in his pocket to bring to the beach.
Vacation wasn’t ruined. He had one 20-minute meltdown in the grocery store parking lot, because we wouldn’t let him haul the entire bucket of beach toys inside. We left our full cart by the door, drove back for an early nap, and grabbed blue raspberry popsicles on the way back when he woke up. That’s the part he still talks about six months later. He doesn’t remember transition stress. He remembers the popsicle and chasing seagulls with his rock.
When friends ask me whether they should delay pregnancy for pre-booked trips—or delay switching their kid’s school, potty training, or any big messy transition to protect a fun plan—I never give a one-size-fits-all answer. There are very real, concrete reasons to wait: if you need three months to switch off a medication unsafe in early pregnancy, if all your bookings are non-refundable and you can’t afford to lose the money, if you genuinely don’t feel ready for a kid and the trips just give you the time you need. Those are all good calls.
But I suggest one tiny, concrete exercise I did after that beach trip: grab a scrap of paper, draw a line down the middle. On one side, write all factual, non-negotiable costs of moving forward now: numbers, medical guidance, hard deadlines. On the other, write the vague fears: “vacation won’t be fun,” “it’ll be too stressful,” “I’ll miss out.” Back in 2019, my concrete side only had $1,800 in non-refundable bookings. The other side was all borrowed fear, absorbed from a culture that frames parenthood as a hard stop to joy instead of a shift in what joy looks like. Kids don’t need perfectly stress-free plans to feel secure; they just need to see that small messes don’t ruin whole days.
We went back to Puerto Vallarta when Leo was 18 months, same Airbnb. We didn’t get three-hour margarita dinners. We woke at 6 a.m. to build sandcastles and hunt hermit crabs. It was different, not worse. We’re doing the Rockies car camping next summer with Leo and our 8-month-old daughter Lila, and we’re planning a Portugal trip for the wedding’s 10th anniversary, kids and all.
I don’t regret waiting for those two trips, not exactly. But I do regret spending three months treating them like the last good thing I’d ever do, instead of two regular, imperfect trips—one with great views, one with food poisoning and a lost passport.
Last weekend, Leo showed Lila his pinecone collection (that original sensory rock still sits on his bookshelf) while Jesse pulled up the old photo of us eating pizza on the consulate steps. Leo leaned in and asked when he gets to go to Portugal. I told him two years, if we save enough, and he can get a warm pastel de nata from the same bakery we visited. He asked if he can bring his favorite pinecone. I told him yes.
Some days I still wonder what would have happened if we’d started trying right after that first Puerto Vallarta trip, if Leo would be a little older, if we’d have laughed off early pregnancy morning sickness around that campfire. I’ll never know. But I do know waiting didn’t give me perfect trips, and switching Leo’s school early didn’t ruin vacation. Most of the time, fun and mess don’t cancel each other out. They just happen, one after the other, sometimes on the same day.
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