Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple of Vacations? A Parent’s Honest Experience
Last month, I sat across from my friend Lila at our usual weekend brunch spot, the one with chipped blue mugs and sticky maple syrup residue on every table. She was twisting the silver band of her engagement ring around her finger, her avocado toast getting cold, while her golden retriever puppy chewed on the leg of my chair. Six months prior, she and her fiancé had checked two big trips off their list: a two-week Pacific Coast road trip they’d saved for since college, and a 10-day stay in Portugal to visit her older sister. They’d pushed back their plan to start trying for a baby to make those trips happen, and now she was riddled with guilt. “Everyone keeps asking me why I’m waiting,” she said. “My mom texts me about my biological clock every other week. I keep wondering if I’m being selfish for wanting just a couple more trips before everything changes.”
I’d been in her exact spot five years earlier. My husband and I had pushed back our own attempt to start a family to fit in a 10-day Patagonia hiking trip and a long beach weekend to visit my grandma in Florida, who was 88 and hadn’t met my husband yet. I was 32, and every family dinner came with a side of questions about when we’d “get serious” about starting a family. I laid awake more than once scrolling fertility forums at 2 a.m., wondering if I was throwing away my shot at a kid for a couple of hikes and sunsets.
What pulled me out of the guilt spiral was a random suggestion from my sister: go talk to my OB before we left, just to get a clear picture of my personal risk. I didn’t do anything fancy, just asked her to run a few quick blood tests to check my egg reserve and talk through my history of irregular periods. She told me that for me, waiting 18 months to start trying wasn’t going to make a meaningful difference in my outcomes, and that if we didn’t get pregnant within six months of starting, we’d jump straight to testing. That 20-minute appointment took 90% of the guilt off my shoulders. I didn’t have to guess based on random internet comments or my aunt’s story about her friend who waited and never had kids. I had actual information for my body.
We went on the trips, and they were everything we’d hoped for. I remember huffing my way up that 10-mile Patagonia trail to the glacier view, sore and sweaty and grinning the whole time. When I was eight months pregnant with my oldest two years later, I could barely walk a mile around our neighborhood without stopping to catch my breath and adjust my belly. There’s no way I would have made that hike. And after we had kids, the first three years we didn’t take any trips longer than a day trip to the local lake. We had a toddler who still nursed every two hours, a baby who got ear infections every time we got on a plane, and we couldn’t afford a babysitter anyway. Those two trips we took before we started trying are still the last trips we took where it was just the two of us, no diaper bags, no nap schedules to plan around, no one asking for a snack every 10 minutes.
But I also know it doesn’t work out that way for everyone. My cousin Sarah is three years older than me, and she waited three years to start trying so she could do three big international trips. She didn’t think to check in with her doctor first, assumed she was young and healthy and everything would work out. By the time she started trying, she was 37, and it took four years of IVF and multiple miscarriages before she had her first kid. She still says she doesn’t regret the trips, but she wishes she’d gotten a checkup first so she’d gone into it with her eyes open, not just blind optimism.
What I told Lila that day, that I think anyone wondering this should know, is that there’s no universal right answer, but there are a few small concrete things you can do to make whatever choice you make less stressful. First, if you’re thinking of waiting, go get that 20-minute checkup with your OB or fertility provider before you lock in your trip dates. Get the simple tests that tell you what your personal risk is, not just what the general stats say. If you have risk factors for infertility, you can decide if an 18-month wait is worth it, or if you want to adjust your timeline. That’s way better than lying awake at night guessing.
Second, if you do decide to wait, you don’t have to put pregnancy prep on hold entirely. I started taking prenatal vitamins a full year before we started trying, and I kept them in my carry-on bag so I never forgot them even on vacation. I didn’t cut out wine entirely on our trips, but I usually swapped the second glass for sparkling water with lime, just in case we ended up getting pregnant earlier than we planned. It’s not about ruining your vacation, it’s about small, low-effort steps that keep you prepared no matter what happens.
Third, come up with one simple line to shut down nosy questions, so you don’t have to defend your choice to everyone. I used “We’ve got a plan that works for us” and that almost always ended the conversation. You don’t owe anyone a detailed breakdown of your fertility timeline or your travel goals.
After brunch, Lila went home and booked that checkup with her doctor. A week later she texted me that all her tests came back great, and her doctor said waiting six more months for the small fall trip they’ve planned is totally fine. The guilt’s mostly gone, she said.
There’s no neat answer to this question, no one-size-fits-all moral. I got lucky, my cousin had a harder time than we expected, and both of them made the choice that felt right for them at the time. I wouldn’t trade my pre-baby trips for anything—those memories are all mine, the kind I pull out on hard sleep-deprived days when I need a reminder of who I was before I was mom. But I also know that waiting isn’t the right call for everyone. Right now, I’m packing for our first big family trip to the Great Smoky Mountains this summer. I’ve already got three extra changes of clothes for the toddler, a bag of snacks, and a portable DVD player for the car ride. It’ll be chaotic, it’ll be expensive, and someone will probably have a meltdown over a lost stuffed animal before we even get there. That’s just how it is now. No one can tell you what the right choice is for you, but a little information and a little preparation goes a long way no matter what you decide.
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