Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple of Vacations? What I Learned From My Choice
The coffee was still steaming in my chipped oatmeal mug when Lila’s text popped up mid-scroll through our Greek island photos from last summer: “Should I wait to get pregnant after we do these two trips we’ve had planned for a year? Everyone keeps saying we’re wasting our fertility window.”
I remembered being in her exact spot, five years ago. My husband and I had just put down the final payment for a two-week Banff camping trip, booked three months out, and had non-refundable jazz festival tickets for New Orleans two months after that. We were 28, and all anyone asked when we saw them was “When are you guys starting a family?” When we mentioned the trips, my aunt pulled me aside at a birthday dinner and said, “Honey, you don’t want to wait too long. My neighbor waited to travel and now she can’t get pregnant at 32.” My coworker, who had two kids, told me I’d regret wasting those “peak fertility years” on a couple of trips I’d forget anyway.
I went home that night and cried a little, because I didn’t know what to do. We’d saved for those trips for two years, picking up extra side jobs and skipping takeout every Friday to put away cash. I didn’t want to cancel, but I was scared I was being selfish, that I’d mess up our chance to have a kid just for a couple of hikes and bad festival food.
Then I did the first thing that made sense: I called my OB and made an appointment to ask her, not my aunt, not Google. She leaned back in her chair and laughed a little when I told her the situation. She said if I was healthy with no history of fertility issues, waiting six months for two pre-planned trips wasn’t going to change anything. “If you were waiting five years, that’s a different conversation,” she said. “Six months? Go get your sunburn and your nachos. Come back when you’re ready.”
So we went. The tent leaked on our third night in Banff, we woke up with our sleeping bags damp and had to dry everything over a fire we built at 2 a.m. We hiked the Plain of Six Glaciers trail, my legs ached so bad I could barely sit down on the bus ride back, but we stopped for cheese curds at a little stand on the side of the road and it was worth every twinge. In New Orleans, we stayed in a tiny guesthouse in the French Quarter, walked 8 miles a day between sets, ate beignets covered in powdered sugar at 10 a.m. every day. No one asked me when I was going to have a kid, no one quizzed me on my baby plans. We just were.
We came home, started trying, and I got pregnant on the third try. Our son is four now, and he’s the best messy, loud, wonderful thing that ever happened to us. But I still think about that choice all the time, especially when friends ask me the same question Lila did.
The biggest thing no one tells you is that this isn’t a black and white question. It’s not “you’re selfish for waiting” or “you’re reckless for starting early.” It’s just a choice that depends on your situation, and there are concrete things you can do to make the choice that’s right for you, instead of caving to everyone else’s timeline.
If you’re under 35 and have no known fertility issues, the first step is just ask your doctor what a 3 to 6 month wait actually means for you. Most of the time, the “fertility window” panic is overblown for a short wait, and your doctor will tell you that straight. If you’re over 35 or have known risk factors like PCOS or endometriosis, that doesn’t mean you have to cancel your trips automatically. You can start trying before you go; lots of people travel in early pregnancy before they even have a bump, if your doctor clears it. Or you can do a 30-minute basic fertility workup before you leave, just to get a sense of your ovarian reserve, so you’re not guessing. That’s not expensive, most insurance covers it, and it takes the unnecessary fear out of the wait.
The other thing I learned is that the regret of skipping something that matters to you doesn’t go away once you have a baby. My friend Sarah canceled her trip to Japan six years ago because her mom told her she needed to start trying right away. She got pregnant a month later, has two healthy kids now, and she still mentions that trip at least once every couple of months. They can’t afford that kind of trip now between daycare and mortgage, and she doesn’t want to leave the kids anyway. That trip isn’t a big tragedy, but it’s a small, persistent what-if that sticks around.
Vacations before kids aren’t just wasted time. They’re the last stretch you’ll get to be just you and your partner, no early wake-up calls, no daycare drop off panic, no one needing you every minute of the day. After kids, you can take great trips, but they’re different. You won’t hike 10 miles a day or stay out till 2 a.m. listening to music for a long time, and that’s okay, but it’s not the same.
Last week, Lila texted me back. She went to her doctor, did the basic blood work, everything looked good, so they’re keeping their trips. She said all her family is still giving her a hard time, but she doesn’t care anymore. She’s just excited to sit on the beach and not think about ovulation tests for a couple of weeks.
I told her to send me all the photos, and I’ll have a bottle of her favorite rosé chilling in the fridge for when she gets back. I still look at our Banff photos some nights, when my son is asleep and the house is quiet. I don’t regret a single damp sleeping bag or overpriced cheese curd. If we’d canceled, those trips would still be the what-if in the back of my head. There’s no perfect choice here. Some people are ready to start right away, some people need to check those trips off their list first. Either way, it’s your call. Next summer, we’re taking our son camping for the first time. It’ll be messy, it’ll start way too early, it’ll be nothing like our Banff trip. But that’s okay. We’ve got both sets of memories now.
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