Do I Really Need to Wait for More Vacations Before Getting Pregnant?
I was folding my winter hoodies last night when I pulled out the crumpled plane ticket stub from our Portugal trip back in May, stained with the oat latte I spilled on it rushing through security. It fell into my lap and suddenly the question I’ve been dancing around for six months popped right back up, uninvited: should we wait to get pregnant to check a couple more vacations off the list first?
My best friend Lila texted an hour before that, all caps: WE GOT THE HOTEL IN TOKYO, DEPOSIT DUE FRIDAY. The trip’s next April, four of us, been planning it for two years, ever after the pandemic lifted and we all realized we could actually leave the country again. Me and my boyfriend Jake have been talking about trying for a baby for going on a year now. We pushed it back once for Portugal, pushed it back again for Jake’s family’s annual lake house trip in July. Now this trip would push it back another eight months, minimum.
Thanksgiving was two weeks ago, my aunt pulled me aside by the pie table, asked when we’d get started, and I laughed and said “just waiting to get a couple more trips in before we’re tied down!” and she patted my arm and said good for you, you don’t want to regret missing out. But ten minutes later my mom pulled me into the kitchen, quiet, said “you know I want you to do whatever you want, but I just… don’t want you to wait so long it becomes hard. Your cousin Sarah waited till 34, remember? Took her five years.” I just nodded, scraped crumbs off the counter, didn’t say anything. I already think about that every single night before I fall asleep, why does she have to put it out there too?
I went to the grocery store on Tuesday, saw a very pregnant woman in the checkout line buying a jar of dill pickles and a pint of mint chocolate chip, exactly the cliché. I stared a little, too long, and she caught me and smiled. I smiled back, but my chest felt all tight, like I was both excited for that to be me and terrified of it at the same time. I thought about what Portugal was like: we slept till 10 every day, no alarms, drank vinho verde at lunch, walked 10 miles a day just looking at old buildings, didn’t have to check a single app or worry about anyone but us. I remember lying on a cliff outside Lagos watching the sunset, and I thought this is the last soft, easy time we’ll have, isn’t it? Why would I rush giving that up?
But then last weekend Jake’s sister brought her 10 month old over, and he fell asleep on Jake’s chest on the couch, and Jake just sat there for an hour, not moving, keeping his voice low so he wouldn’t wake the baby, and I looked at them and thought, I want that. I want that more than I want the sushi in Tokyo, more than I want another lazy day drinking cold beer by the lake. But the deposit on Tokyo is $800. That’s $800 we can’t just throw away, that’s almost our entire new couch fund. If I get pregnant now, I can’t go, right? What if I’m sick the whole first trimester, or what if something goes wrong when I’m 6000 miles from home? I read a comment on an Instagram post last month, a woman said she miscarried in Paris, had to go to a random hospital, couldn’t even speak the language, and it still gives me chills when I think about it. It’s not that I think that’s definitely going to happen, it just sticks, you know?
I know people say you can still travel with kids. My friend Mia took her 8 month old to Costa Rica this fall, said it was fine, just more diapers in the suitcase, more stops for nursing. But it’s not the same, is it? It’s not that trip where you stay up too late drinking and wander off the beaten path and don’t have to plan everything around nap times. I want that one more time, just me, not the mom version of me yet. But then I think, what if I wait, and it doesn’t happen easy? What am I gonna do then, if I gave up a whole year of trying for a vacation? That’s the worst case scenario I can’t stop turning over in my head.
I made a pros and cons list last week, on the back of a junk mail envelope for car insurance. Pros of waiting: get to go to Japan, get to go to the lake trip next summer, don’t spend the whole rest of my life wondering what I missed. Cons: another year of trying pushed back, I turn 32 next month, that’s one more year closer to 35, and all that fertility stuff my doctor mentions offhand at checkups. I stared at it for ten minutes then crumpled it up and threw it away. Didn’t help at all.
Last night Jake asked me what I was staring at, after I found the ticket stub. I told him the whole pregnancy vacation thing, how I can’t make up my mind. He shrugged and said “we can do whatever you want. If you want to wait, we wait. If you want to start now, we lose the deposit, it’s just money. We’ll get another couch eventually.” Which is very Jake, he doesn’t overthink this stuff like I do.
I still don’t know what I want. Half the time I think we should just wait, get the trips out of the way, no what-ifs later. Half the time I think I’m just hiding behind the vacations, because I’m scared to actually start trying, scared of what comes after. No one gives you a straight answer for this stuff, right? Everyone’s story is different, everyone’s body is different. I still have the coffee-stained ticket stub sitting on my kitchen counter, haven’t put it away yet. I guess I’ll know when I know, or maybe I won’t, and we’ll just pick something and go with it. That’s how most big decisions go, isn’t it? (Word count: 1128)
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