Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple of Vacations? What to Consider
I’m folding faded newborn onesies at my kitchen table, the edge of a blue Portugal ferry sticker still stuck to my window frame from our trip three years ago, when my phone pings. It’s my best friend Lila, typing three back-to-back texts: We just put a deposit on our fall trip to Alaska, and we already did the Mexico trip in March. Should we hold off on trying to get pregnant until after both? I lean back in my chair, because I’ve had this exact conversation with myself, with my husband, with my obgyn, over too many glasses of iced tea to count.
Three years ago, my husband and I were in the same spot. We’d spent our first five years of marriage paying off student loans, putting off the two trips we’d talked about since our first date: a two-week backpack around northern Portugal, and a long weekend to see his grandma in the Florida panhandle, who’d just been diagnosed with early dementia and kept asking when we’d come visit. Everyone we talked to had an opinion: Go now, once you have kids you’ll never sleep past 7am again. Don’t wait, I know three people who delayed and ended up struggling with fertility. I stayed up late scrolling message boards, one minute convinced we were being selfish for waiting, the next minute convinced we’d resent our kid if we gave up the trips before we started.
We made an appointment just to talk it through, which is the first thing I now tell anyone who asks. She didn’t tell us what to do, just pulled up my chart, noted I was 28 with no history of reproductive issues, said if we wanted to wait 12 months, that was low risk for me, but if I was 32 or had PCOS, that would be a different conversation. We left with a clear sense of our own boundaries, not just other people’s opinions, and decided to move forward with the trips.
We did Portugal first, ate gelato for breakfast every other day, walked 7 or 8 miles a day through cobblestone villages, stayed in guest houses with no air conditioning and woke up to roosters crowing. Then we did Florida, sat on the beach with Grandma, ate her favorite key lime pie, took a hundred photos that we now have on our fridge. When we got home, we stopped using protection, and I got pregnant three months later. It worked out for us, but I’ve seen it go the other way too. My cousin waited two years to do a round-the-world trip before starting to try, and by the time she started, she was 36, and it took her four years and two rounds of IVF to have her first. She still loves the photos from her trip, but she says she thinks about that time all the time, and wishes she’d tried while she traveled instead of waiting completely.
That’s the thing no one tells you about this choice: it’s not a “right” or “wrong” answer, but there are small, concrete things you can do to make the choice fit you, instead of just going off what everyone on social media says.
First, before you decide to delay, get a 15-minute check-in with your gynecologist. Ask them to go over your personal risk factors for fertility issues—your age, any existing conditions, family history. That takes 15 minutes, and it gives you actual information instead of the scary anecdotes you see on Facebook. I’ve had friends who found out their egg count was lower than expected, decided to go on just one shorter trip instead of two, and don’t regret that choice at all.
Second, write down three specific things you want to do on these vacations that you actually can’t do (or really don’t want to do) pregnant or with a small baby. If your list is “hike the 10-mile trail in Denali, drink wine on every glacier tour, sleep 12 hours a day with no wake ups”, that’s a real list that justifies waiting. If your list is “go to the beach, see my college friends, eat good seafood”, you can do all of that pregnant, or even bring a small baby with you later. Most of the “you’ll never travel again” stuff is overblown—you’ll travel differently, but you’ll still travel.
Third, if you’re really torn, don’t go all or nothing. You don’t have to either start trying right now or pause for a full year. You can use condoms or other barrier methods while you’re traveling, so you don’t deal with morning sickness on a long hike or give birth mid-vacation, and then stop using them as soon as you get home. If you get pregnant accidentally a month before your trip, you can decide if you still want to go (most people do just fine traveling in the second trimester) and it’s not a disaster.
I texted all that to Lila, and added a photo of my toddler covered in gelato at our local ice cream shop, just to show her life goes on either way. She texted back 10 minutes later that she’s calling her doctor tomorrow to book that check-in, and she’s going to keep the trips, but hold off on pausing trying entirely instead of waiting a whole year. I don’t know how it’ll go for her. She might get pregnant next month, have a great trip pregnant, and end up fine. She might wait until after, get pregnant right away, and be as happy as I am. There’s no perfect ending here, no neat moral. I just know that for me, checking those two trips off my list before I became a mom meant I never laid awake at 2am with a teething baby wondering what I missed. That’s enough for me.
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