I keep asking if I should wait to get pregnant so we can take two more vacations first
I was folding our clean swimsuits last night when I started thinking about this again, which is stupid, because folding swimsuits shouldn’t lead to life questions, but here we are. I pulled out my old high-waisted blue one, the one I bought for our Cabo trip last spring, and found a crumpled peanut butter Chewy bar wrapper tucked in the bottom of the bag from that trip, and suddenly I was right back in that cab ride from the airport, sun coming through the window, my bare feet sticking to the leather seat, no place to be for 7 whole days.
Last weekend we had brunch with my husband’s side of the family, and his great-aunt asked when we’re finally gonna stop gallivanting and have kids. I laughed and said we’re thinking of waiting for two more trips first, and she made this tight little pursed-lip face, spilled a little maple syrup on her pancake in the process, like I’d just told her I was planning to waste my 30s robbing banks. “Honey, you can’t travel when you have a baby,” she said, like it’s a fact carved in stone. “Better get all that out of your system now.”
The two trips aren’t even anything fancy. One is the backcountry camping trip to the Rockies we’ve been planning for two years. My husband got this beat-up canvas backpack from his dad when he died three years ago, and he’s spent every other Sunday for three months re-gluing the seams and replacing the frayed zippers. He’s got a list of peaks he wants to hike that’s longer than my arm, and we can’t bring a baby on that, not for a week, not when the closest cell service is 10 miles back down the trail. The other is a cheap beach trip to Gulf Shores to see my grandma. She’s 87, her knees are so bad she can barely make it from her bed to the front porch anymore, and she calls me every other week to say she wants to watch the sunset with me one more time before she can’t get to the beach at all. I can’t put that off until after a baby comes, right? What if I wait too long?
But then I think about my friend Lila, who had a baby 14 months ago, and she just got back from a week in Puerto Rico with the kid. She sent me a picture of her napping on the beach, baby sleeping in a shaded stroller next to her, a piña colada propped on the handle. Said it was way more low-key than people made it sound, just extra snacks and more diaper changes, and she still got three hours of uninterrupted sun time. But then my other friend Mia told me when she tried to go to the lake with her 6-month-old, her husband spent the whole time panicking the baby would get bit by mosquitoes or catch a chill, and they packed up and left after an hour and a half, and she didn’t even get to go swimming. So who’s right? There’s no universal rule, is there? Just a bunch of people projecting their own experiences onto you.
I brought it up to my OBGYN at my checkup last month. She asked what my timeline looked like, I told her we wanted to do two trips first, start trying after. She nodded, said 31 is still young, most people don’t have issues at 31, and then I saw that quick little flick of her eyes to my chart, that half-second pause before she said “but of course, it’s your decision.” I went home and scrolled fertility posts until 1 in the morning, which I know is stupid, but I couldn’t stop. What if we wait two years for the trips, and it takes another two years to get pregnant, and then I’m 35, and all those scary forum posts start talking about higher risk? That little nudge of worry sits in the back of my throat all the time now, even when I’m doing something stupid like watering my houseplants.
I held my neighbor’s 2-month-old last week, when she ran to get her package from the curb and asked me to hold him for a second. He smelled like baby powder and spit up and that sweet newborn milk smell, and he fell asleep right on my shoulder, all warm and heavy, and I had to blink back tears when I gave him back. I want that so bad. I want it right now, some days. But I also want that hike in the Rockies. I want to sit on the beach with my grandma and eat saltwater taffy and watch the sunset without checking a baby monitor every two minutes. Is that selfish? Everyone acts like it’s selfish to want a couple more trips before you start, but why? Why can’t I want both things?
Last night we ate frozen pepperoni pizza for dinner, and my husband leaned against the counter and wiped crumbs off his shirt and said “if we get pregnant before the trips, we can just go anyway. If you’re too pregnant to hike, I’ll go for a day hike and you can sit at base camp and read that romance novel you’ve been wanting to finish. If the beach trip happens when the baby’s here, we bring the baby. Grandma would love that, she’d get to hold her great-grandkid on the beach.” That makes sense, right? But I still overthink it. I still lie awake sometimes, running through all the different timelines in my head. What if this, what if that.
I put the swimsuit back in the drawer just now, that blue one that still has a faint stain of coconut sunscreen on the hip. I still don’t know the answer. I don’t have some big takeaway, some neat little conclusion that makes everything make sense. I know that people have babies young and people have babies old, people travel with babies and people don’t travel at all, and most of the time everything works out okay. But that doesn’t stop me from wondering. I think I’m gonna book the camping trip this week. I’ll keep my prenatals in my toiletry bag, anyway. Just in case. (1182 words)
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