Should I wait to get pregnant after a couple of vacations? Insight for first-time parents
The patio awning above our brunch table filtered the April sun into splotchy stripes across the menu, and Lila slid her phone across the table to show me photos from her and her husband’s recent trip to Portugal. A crumb of blueberry pancake stuck to the corner of the screen, left by my 10-month-old daughter who’d been stealing bites off Lila’s plate for the last 20 minutes. Lila leaned in, twisting the silver band of her wedding ring around her finger, and asked the question I knew was coming: “We checked off the two big vacations we promised ourselves before starting a family. But everyone keeps saying we should wait longer, go to Iceland, do one more big trip. Should I wait to get pregnant after these two, or just start trying now?”
I wiped syrup off my sleeve and nodded, because I’d been exactly where she was three years ago. My husband and I got married, saved up for two big trips: a two-week road trip around the Rocky Mountains, where we camped most nights and ate too many s’mores, then a week eating tacos and exploring textile markets in Oaxaca for our first anniversary. That was the plan: two trips, then start trying. But once we got home, the unsolicited advice started pouring in. You’ll never get to travel alone again, everyone said. Why rush? Go to Japan, do that cross-Europe train trip you’ve been talking about, enjoy this time while you have it. I spiraled a little, scrolling mom blogs late at night after work, switching from “we should start now” to “we should wait two more years” every other day.
We ended up waiting two more years. We went to Japan, spent a week hiking in Vermont that fall, and then started trying. It took 10 months for me to get pregnant, longer than I ever expected when I was 28 and healthy and assuming it would happen right away. Now that I’m on the other side, I’ve got a lot more messy, real thoughts than the “yes wait forever” or “never wait” takes you see online.
The first thing I told Lila was to separate what you actually want from what other people tell you you should want. People love to repeat the line that you’ll never travel again after you have a baby, and that’s just not true. Last month, we took our daughter to the Gulf Coast for a long weekend, stayed in a cheap beach house with my in-laws, and it worked fine. We brought a pack and play, extra diapers, and spent most days sitting on a blanket watching her put sand in her mouth. It was different from the trips I took pre-baby, but it wasn’t worse. If you love slow beach trips or cabin getaways, you can absolutely do those with kids. If you love 12-hour days of museum hopping and backpacking across multiple countries, that’s harder to pull off with a toddler, but it’s not impossible, and you can do it when they’re older.
I gave Lila one concrete thing to do that took me months to figure out: write down every pre-baby trip you’ve ever thought you wanted to take, then rank them from one to 10 by how much they actually matter to you, not how good they look on Instagram. If the top two or three are already checked off, you don’t need to keep checking off more just to check a box. For me, Japan was always number one, so waiting was worth it. I still don’t have that lingering “what if” feeling hanging over me now that I’m a mom, and that’s worth a lot. If your top trips are already done, there’s no reason to wait just because someone says you should.
The other concrete thing I tell anyone asking this question is to get real about your fertility timeline, especially if you’re over 30. I didn’t think anything of waiting two extra years when I was 28, but I was shocked when it took 10 months to get pregnant. I know multiple people who waited to check off that “one last trip” and ended up struggling with fertility that made that wait a lot harder than they expected. It doesn’t take much: a quick pre-conception checkup with your OB, ask them what your risk factors are, and factor that into your decision. It’s not meant to scare you, just to make sure you’re making a choice with all the information.
Lila nodded, and my daughter banged her spoon on the high chair tray demanding more pancake, and I told her I don’t regret my choice to wait, but I also know I would have been fine if I’d started right after those first two vacations. My daughter would just be a couple years older, that’s all. I don’t look at other people who start trying right after their honeymoon and think they made a mistake. I have a friend who did that, and she just posted photos of her family trip to the Grand Canyon with her 3-year-old, and she looks just as happy as I am.
We paid the bill, and I strapped my daughter into her car seat, and she fell asleep before we even hit the highway. I still think about Lila’s question sometimes. There’s no perfect answer, no one right choice that works for everyone. The only bad choice I see is waiting just because everyone else says you should, instead of doing what fits your life and what you actually want. If you’re ready to start a family after two vacations, you don’t owe anyone one more trip. If you’ve got one more big dream you can’t stop thinking about, waiting a little longer is okay too. It’s not a test of how good a parent you’ll be, it’s just a choice about the order you do things in.
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