Should I put baby-making on hold for two vacations first?
I’m sitting at my kitchen table right now, half a lukewarm matcha latte (the new place down the street still forgot my honey) sweating into the wooden tabletop, and my 70-pound golden retriever is currently chewing the strap off my sunflower flip-flop – the one I bought specifically for our Portugal trip next March. It’s the second trip we’ve locked in, after the Lake District hiking cottage we booked a full year ago for this September. And all I’ve been thinking about for the past three weeks is: should we just hit pause on trying to get pregnant until after both are done?
It came up last Sunday at Mother’s Day brunch, when my mom was passing the blueberry pancakes and just dropped it, casual as anything. “You know those trips are already paid for, right? Wouldn’t you rather go not pregnant? I saw Sarah – you remember Sarah, my friend from book club – her daughter waited to go to Greece and by the time she got back she had trouble conceiving, but wait, no, I also think she’d have had trouble anyway, but still… why be miserable on your nice vacation throwing up in a foreign bathroom?” That’s the thing, it’s not just her. Everyone has a hot take. My best friend Lila, who had her first baby 14 months ago, leans hard into the wait camp. She’s been saying for months that you’ll never get that kind of uncomplicated, sleep-in-late, no-one-needs-you-at-3am vacation ever again once you have a kid. She’s still waiting for the trip she put off three years ago, and says it’ll be at least another five before they can afford to take one that doesn’t involve bringing a pack ‘n play and begging a grandma to come along.
I brought it up at my annual check-up last week, when the nurse was asking about my family plans and I just blurted the whole question out before I could stop myself. She was pressing the cold wand on my belly for the ultrasound check, didn’t even look up from the screen when she said “I’ve seen it go all ways. One of my patients got pregnant on the vacation she planned before starting trying, had a great time. Another waited two years for her dream safari and then needed IVF that took another three. All you can do is what feels okay for you.” Not helpful, not unhelpful, just… honest. I left the office more confused than I went in.
I get where the wait side is coming from, honestly. Three years ago, we did a family beach trip to Myrtle Beach, and my cousin was 14 weeks pregnant, morning sickness that just wouldn’t quit. She couldn’t eat the raw oysters we got from the food truck on the boardwalk, couldn’t swim in the ocean because the doctor warned her about bacteria levels that year, spent half the day napping in the condo because she couldn’t keep her eyes open. I sat with her under the umbrella one day and she said she’d give anything to have just one more trip where she didn’t have to check every snack with an app or ask the doctor if the activity was allowed. That stuck with me. I already have all these little plans for our trips: 8-mile hikes up Cat Bells in the Lakes, surf lessons in Porto, eating a dozen pastel de nata in a week, drinking a whole bottle of vinho verde on the rooftop at sunset. What if I can’t do any of that? What’s the point of going if I’m just going to be miserable and miss out on all the stuff we’ve been hyping up for a year?
And the other side of it, the one that nags at me when I lie awake at 2am? My friend Mia got pregnant unexpectedly two months before her long-planned trip to Tokyo last year. I thought for sure she’d cancel, but she just reworked the itinerary, cut out the 10-mile walking days, adjusted all the food stops, and went anyway. She sent me photos from Ueno Park, 12 weeks pregnant, sitting under cherry blossoms eating cooked salmon sushi, grinning with an iced matcha in her hand. She said it was the best trip they ever took, because they stopped trying to cram 100 things into 10 days and just enjoyed the slow bits. She said if she’d waited, she doesn’t know when they would’ve gotten around to going, because her job got crazy right after they got back, and they probably would’ve kept pushing it forever.
My partner said something when we were folding socks last night that I can’t stop thinking about. He said “What if we don’t force a decision? We stop using condoms, like we’ve been talking about, and if it happens before the trips, we adapt. If it doesn’t, we have the best time ever on the trips. Why do we have to plan every single outcome?” He’s right, of course, but I’m the person who color-codes our shared calendar. I already made a Google Doc for Portugal with all the bakery addresses saved. What if I have to delete it? What if I lose the deposit? What if I’m that person that waits and then struggles and spends the next five years wishing I’d just started sooner?
I had a really stupid little breakdown in Target last Tuesday, actually. I was picking up sunscreen for the Lake District and walked past the prenatal vitamin aisle, and suddenly I was just standing there crying, quiet, so the old lady buying cotton balls wouldn’t notice. It just felt so stupid that I have to choose between two things I want: two stupid nice trips and a baby. Why can’t I have both, in whatever order they show up?
The dog just jumped up and stole the half blueberry scone I left on the edge of the table, so I should probably go chase him before he eats the whole thing and throws up on the living room rug. I still don’t have an answer, if you were expecting one. Some mornings I wake up and throw away all the condoms and decide we’re starting today. Some nights I’m sure waiting six more months won’t kill anyone, and we deserve those trips just for us, before everything changes forever. I know whatever I decide, I’ll probably have a what-if hanging around somewhere. That’s just how big decisions go, right? No one gets a perfect roadmap. I guess we’ll just see what happens.
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